As for Dick, he seemed to bear a charmed life; for although he fearlessly exposed himself, day after day, wherever the fighting happened to be fiercest and most stubborn, he had thus far received no hurt more serious than a mere scratch or two, and a rather severe contusion from the blow of a knobkerrie that had all but unhorsed him; but this immunity may have been due, at least in part, to the fact that Mafuta was always unobtrusively close at hand, ready to guard his beloved young master, ay, and even to lay down his life for him, if necessary. Those were strenuous days indeed for all concerned, and especially for the defenders; for the fighting usually began with the dawn, and continued all through the day as long as there was light enough to distinguish friend from foe; while, so far as the Izreelites were concerned, they were obliged to maintain a watch all through the hours of darkness, in order to be prepared for the surprise night attacks which the savages sprang upon them from time to time, with the obvious purpose of exhausting the defenders' strength. But while Mokatto and the other savage kings who had thrown in their lot with him for the purpose of "eating up" the Izreelites, and partitioning their country, were solacing themselves with the assurance that, despite their frightful daily losses in men, they were winning all along the line, Dick was artfully drawing them after him into the heart of the chain of mountains that encircled the lake and the island city of Bethalia. These mountains, or hills rather--for they were scarcely lofty enough to be worthy of the more imposing appellation--were of an exceptionally rugged and precipitous character, to such an extent, indeed, that they were absolutely impassable except at four points, where the natural features had been so far improved upon that passes of a sort--narrow ledges for the most part, bounded on one side by a vertical, unclimbable face of rock and upon the other by an appalling chasm--had been painfully hewn out of the stubborn granite; and it was in the direction of these four passes that young Maitland was now retiring in excellent order, and enticing the enemy to follow him. For it was in these passes that he expected to win the victory which he intended to convert finally into a complete, disastrous, panic-stricken rout of the enemy. To this end he had already made certain preparations, for news of the completion of which he was anxiously waiting. And at length the news came; whereupon, having dispatched to the commanders at the other three points identical sets of instructions, of a sufficiently elastic character to leave plenty of scope for initiative on the part of the leaders, he summoned the commanders of his own division to his tent as soon as the day's fighting was over, and, having carefully and fully explained his plans to them, gave them explicit instructions regarding their conduct upon the following day, and dismissed them.