It was a crushing blow--but the native did not fall. Like lightning he aimed a blow at his assailant's head with his heavy kerrie--a blow which would have shattered the skull like an egg shell. But the other threw up his arm in time, receiving nearly the full force of the blow on that member, which dropped to his side completely paralysed. Without attempting to follow up his success the savage sprang back, whirling his kerrie round his head. The crowd, taken by surprise, scattered before him. Only for a moment, though. Like a pack of hounds pressed back by a stag at bay they gave way but to close up again. In a trice the man's kerrie was struck from his grasp, and he was thrown down, beaten, kicked, and very roughly handled. "Tie up the _schelm_!" "Give him six dozen well-laid on!" "Six dozen without counting!" "Cheeky brute!" were some of the shouts that accompanied each kick and blow dealt or aimed at the prostrate Kafir, who altogether seemed to be having a pretty bad time of it. "That's a damned shame!" exclaimed a voice behind them. All started and turned their heads, some astonished--all angry--some perhaps a little ashamed of themselves--towards the owner of the voice, a horseman who sat calmly in his saddle some twenty yards away--an expression of strong disgust upon his features. "What have you got to say to it anyhow, I'd like to know?" cried the man who had just struck the native. "What I said before--that it's a damned shame," replied Eustace Milne unhesitatingly. "What's a shame, Mister?" sneered another. "That one o' your precious black kids is getting a hidin' for his infernal cheek?" "That it should take twenty men to give it him, and that, too, when he's down." "I tell you what it is, friend," said the first speaker furiously. "It may take rather less than twenty to give you one, and that, too, when you're up!" which sally provoked a blatant guffaw from several of the hearers. "I'm not much afraid of that," answered Eustace tranquilly. "But now, seeing that British love of fair play has been about vindicated by a score of Englishmen kicking a prostrate Kafir, how would it be to let him get up and go?" The keen, biting sarcasm told. The group, which mainly consisted of the low element, actually did begin to look a trifle ashamed of itself. The better element composing it gave way and took itself off, as Eustace deliberately walked his horse up to the fallen native. There were a few muttered jeers about "the nigger's friend" and getting into the Assembly on the strength of "blanket votes," [The native franchise, derisively so termed] and so forth, but none offered any active opposition except one, however, and that was the man who had originated the disturbance. "Look here," he shouted savagely. "I don't know who you are and I don't care. But if you don't take yourself off out of this mighty quick, I'll just about knock you into a jelly; you see if I don't."