The “Light-Bobs” deploy into line on the opposite bank, covered by an effective fire from the Rifles, and advance as if they were on parade. “Old Swipes” feels his heart leap for joy. On they march like one man, and the dark masses of the enemy fly before them. “Well done, my lads!” says the old captain, as, from their flank, he marks the regularity of their movement. They are his very children now, and he is not thinking of the little blue-eyed girl far away at home. A belt of _mimosas_ is in their front, and it must be carried with the bayonet! The “Light-Bobs” charge with a wild hurrah; and a withering volley, very creditable to the savages, well-nigh staggers them as they approach. “Old Swipes” runs forward, waving them on, his shako off, and his grey locks streaming in the breeze--down he goes! with a musket-ball crashing through his forehead. Charlie could yell with rage, and a fierce longing for blood. There is a calm, matronly woman tending flowers, some thousand miles off, in a small garden in the north of England, and a little girl sitting wistfully at her lessons by her mother’s side. They are a widow and an orphan--but the handsome lieutenant will get his promotion without purchase; death-vacancies invariably go in the regiment, and even now he takes the command. “Kettering,” says he, cool and composed, as if he were but giving orders at a common field-day, “take a sub-division and clear that ravine; when you are once across you can turn his flank. Forward, my lads! and if they’ve any nonsense _give ’em the bayonet_!” Charlie now finds himself actually in command--ay, and in something more than a skirmish--something that begins to look uncommonly like a general action. Waving the men on with his sword he dashes into the ravine, and in another instant is hand-to-hand with the enemy. What a moment of noise, smoke, and confusion it is! Crashing blows, fearful oaths, the Kaffir war-cry, and the soldiers’ death-groan mingle in the very discord of hell. A wounded Kaffir seizes Charlie by the legs, and a “Light-Bob” runs the savage through the body, the ghastly weapon flashing out between the Kaffir’s ribs. “You’ve got it _now_, you black beggar!” says the soldier, as he coolly wipes his dripping bayonet on a tuft of burnt-up grass. While yet he speaks he is writhing in his death-pang, his jaws transfixed by a quivering assagai. A Kaffir chief, of athletic frame and sinewy proportions, distinguished by the grotesque character of his arms and his tiger-skin _kaross_, springs at the young lancer like a wild-cat. The boy’s sword gleams through that dusky body even in mid-air. “Well done, blue ’un!” shout the men, and again there is a wild hurrah! The young one never felt like this before. * * * * *