And now the firing opened from an unexpected quarter--and behold, the bushy slope in front was alive with Kafir warriors. The patrol was entirely surrounded, and now the savages began to shout exultantly to each other. "We have got the white men in a hole," they cried. "Ha! They cannot get out. Look, the sun is shining very bright, but it will be dark for the white men long before it touches the hill. They are caught like wolves in a trap. _Hau_!" "Ho-ho! Are they!" sung out Carhayes, in reply to this taunt. "When a wolf is caught in a trap, the dogs cannot kill him without feeling his teeth. The Amaxosa dogs have caught not a wolf, but a lion. Here is one of his bites." And quick as lightning he brought up his rifle and picked off a tall Gcaleka, who was flitting from one bush to another a couple of hundred yards above. The Kafir lurched heavily forward, convulsively clutching the earth with both hands. A yell of rage arose from the savages and a perfect hail of bullets and assegais came whistling around the whites--fortunately still overhead. "Aha!" roared Carhayes with a shout of reckless laughter. "Now does any other dog want to feel the lion's bite? Ha, ha! I am he whom the people call Umlilwane. `The Little Fire' can burn. He it was who helped to burn the kraal of Sarili, the Great Chief of the House of Gcaleka. He it is who has `burned' the life out of many dogs of the race of Xosa. He will burn out the lives of many more! Ha, ha--dogs-- black scum! Come forth! Try who can stand before The Little Fire and not be burned up--utterly consumed away! Come forth, dogs, come forth!" Catching their comrade's dare-devil spirit, the men laughed and cheered wildly. But the Kafirs, full of hate and rage, forgot their prudence. A great mass of them leaped from their cover, and shrilling their wild war-whistles, snapped their assegais off short, and bore down upon the handful of whites in full impetuous charge. Critical as the moment was, the latter were prepared never more dangerously cool than now when it was almost a case of selling their lives dearly. They instantly gave way, melting into cover with the serpent-like celerity of the savages themselves, and before these could so much as swerve, they poured such a deadly cross-fire upon the compact onrushing mass that in a second the ground was strewn with a groaning, writhing heap of humanity. With a roar like a wild beast, Carhayes sprang from his cover and, wrenching a heavy knob-kerrie from the hand of a dead Kafir, dashed among the fallen and struggling foe, striking to right and left, braining all those who showed the slightest sign of resistance or even of life. A Berserk ferocity seemed to have seized the man. His hair and beard fairly bristled, his eyes glared, as he stood erect, whirling the heavy club, spattered and shiny with blood and brains. He roared again: