"It were a ole muzzle-loader--one smooth, one rifle--and I shifted, but it weren't long afor' they picked up my spoor, and in the fust rush I could hear the rattle of assegais as they follered. Then it was quiet in the kloof, an' I knew what a animile must feel when the hunter's after him, or the tiger's tracking him down. Bymby I yeard the call of the bush-dove every side, and I gave the call too at a venture, keepin' my eye on a dark spot where the last cry came from. Sure enough I seed the leaves tremble, and there was a show of red paint where the Kaffir stood. That were the bush-dove, and he called again; then he came steppin' along to the fern chump where I were hid, movin' like a shadder with the whites of his eyes showin' as he glanced around. By gum, lad, I thought it was all over, but another dove called an' he moved off. I yeard the calls growin' softer an' softer, and I made a move to slip away; but there's no gettin' to the bottom of a red Kaffir's cuteness." "How is that?" "Why, sonny; that chap never went off when he made as if he would. He jes' slipped behind a tree, and when I ris my head out of them ferns he druv his assegai at me, and it clean pinned my left arm to my side. See, here's the scar;" and the old man rolled back the sleeve of his worn shirt until a white scar was revealed on the fleshy part of the upper arm. "I fetched a groan, and he sprang out to belt me over the head, but I kep' my senses, an' knocked the wind clear outer him with a straight thrust of the muzzle. As he stood gasping, I give him back his own assegai." "You killed him?" "Maybe he died; but Kaffirs is tough, and at the thrust he gave his cry, standin' there with his legs wide apart, afore he sank among the ferns. I turned an' ran, keeping down the little stream till I come to a krantz, with the water slidin' down, an' I swung over, holdin' fast to a monkey tow. I slid down fifty feet, and then let go, holdin' the rifle high over head, and fell feet first inter a little round pool at the bottom. It was a chance, sonny, but I kep' my bones sound and the powder dry. I did that. I tell you young Abe Pike was some pumpkins. Then I pushed on an' on till I went over a ridge into another kloof, an' through that to another kop, standing up above the wood in a mass of stone. I sat down in a cleft, and the weakness came on me from the loss of blood and the want of food. Well, I tell you, sonny, I fit ag'inst the weakness, an' with a spread of shirt, holdin' one end in my teeth, I bound up the wound after plugging it with dirt. Right away I looked over the country, an' I see'd to the right the smoke rising and across a stretch of veld I seed a black patch movin'. 'Twere Kaffirs on the march, an' following the directshun they were taking, I seed a white speck to the left; a farmhouse, sonny, with a thin trail of smoke going up from the one chimney." "The Kaffirs were on their way to sack the place."