"For heaven's sake don't talk of eating!" cried West. "Look here: let's creep along through the cover and try and get away."

"On foot, followed by mounted men? No good; we should be pumped out in less than a couple of hours!"

"Then let's make the brutes pay dearly for what they've done!" cried West angrily. "Now Ingle, let's prove to them that we can use our rifles too! I'm going to shoot every horse I can."

"Very well: so am I; and if that does not beat them off I'm going to bring down man after man till the rest of them run for their lives. Got a good place?"

"Yes," said West, whose rifle-barrel rested in a crack between two stones.

"Then fire away; but don't waste a shot!"

"Trust me!" cried West grimly. "Now then, fire; and remember the despatch!"

He took careful aim as he spoke, and drew trigger, with the result that one of the Boer ponies stopped short, spun round, flung its rider, and galloped madly away.

The next moment Ingleborough's rifle cracked, and a second pony began to walk on three legs, while the party opened out, galloping so as to form a half-circle about their enemies, the two ends resting on the river bank and forming a radius of about three hundred yards.

"Sixteen more ponies to bring down," said Ingleborough; "and those two dismounted men will take cover and begin to stalk us."

"That's what the whole party will do!" said West bitterly. "We shall hit no more ponies: they'll get them all into cover, and then come creeping nearer and nearer."

At that moment Ingleborough fired again right in front where one of the Boers dismounted among some trees.

"There's one more though," said Ingleborough, for the poor brute he had fired at reared up and then fell, to lie kicking on its flank. "Try for another yourself, lad!"

Before he had finished speaking West had fired again, and another pony was. .h.i.t, to come tearing towards them, dragging its dismounted rider after it, for the man clung to the reins till he was jerked off his feet and drawn along the ground some fifty yards, when his head came in contact with a stone, and he lay insensible, his pony galloping for another hundred yards and then falling, paralysed in its hindquarters.

And now the Boers' bullets began to rattle about the stones which protected the hidden pair, keeping them lying close and only able to fire now and then; but they got chances which they did not miss of bringing down, killing, or disabling five more of the enemy's ponies, which upon being left alone began to graze, and naturally exposed themselves.

Maddened by their losses and inability to see their foes, the Boers kept reducing the distance, creeping from stone to bush and from bush to stone, rendering the defenders' position minute by minute one of greater peril.

But the danger did not trouble West. It only increased the excitement from which he suffered, and, with his eyes flashing in his eagerness, he kept on showing the Boers where he lay by firing at every opportunity, religiously keeping his aim for the ponies, in the full belief that before long the Boers would retire.

"It's no good to play that game!" cried Ingleborough suddenly, and he made a quick movement, turning a little to his right and firing.

There was a hoa.r.s.e yell, and a man sprang up not above a hundred yards away, dropped his rifle, and turning round he began to stagger away.

"You are firing at the Boers, Ingle," cried West excitedly.

"Yes: it was time!" growled Ingleborough, through his teeth, with his voice sounding hoa.r.s.e and strange. "I've hit three. Two haven't moved."

"What's the matter?" asked West, in a tone of anxiety, for he felt that something serious had happened to his comrade.

"Don't talk," growled Ingleborough angrily. "Look! Those two. Fire!"

Two of the Boers away to West's left front had suddenly sprung up, and bending low were running towards him, evidently making for a patch of bush, out of which a ma.s.s of grey stone peered, not a hundred yards from the young men's shelter. Feeling now that it was life for life, West glanced along the barrel of his rifle, waiting till the Boers had nearly reached their goal, and then, just as the second dashed close behind his leader, West drew trigger, shivering the next moment, for as the smoke rose he saw one of the men lying upon his face and the other crawling back on all-fours.

"Good shot!" said Ingleborough hoa.r.s.ely, and then he uttered a deep groan.

"Ingle, old fellow, what is it?" cried West.

The only answer he obtained was from his comrade's piece, for the latter fired again, and another Boer sprang into sight not a hundred yards away, fell upon his knees, and then rolled over.

"Ingle, old fellow," cried West; "don't say you're hurt!"

"Oh!" groaned Ingleborough. "Wasn't going to, old man; but that last brute got me."

"Hurt much?"

"Much? It's like red-hot iron through me. Oh, if I only had some water!"

"Water?" cried West, springing up. "Yes; I'll get some."

_Crack, crack, crack_! Half-a-dozen rifles rang out in different directions, and in an instant West suffered for his thoughtless unselfish act, for he felt as if someone had struck him a cruel blow with a sjambok across the face from the front, while someone else had driven the b.u.t.t of his rifle with all his force full upon his shoulder-blade--this blow from the back driving him forward upon his knees and then causing him to fall across Ingleborough. Then for a few moments everything seemed as a blank.

"Hurt much?" came the next minute, as if from a distance.

"Hurt? No!" said West huskily, and he made an effort and rose to his knees. Then, stung to rage by an agonising pain which stiffened him into action, he levelled his rifle once more, took a quick aim at a couple of the Boers who were running towards them in a stooping position, fired, and distinctly saw one of the two drop to the ground.

The next moment someone fired over his shoulder, and the other went down, just as West's rifle dropped from his hand and he fell over sideways, yielding to a horribly sickening sensation, followed by a half-dreamy fancy that someone had felt for and got hold of his hand, to grip it in a way that was at first terribly painful--a pang seeming to run up from hand to shoulder. The pain appeared to grow worse and worse, then deadened, and came again, and so on, like spasms of agony, while all the time the firing went on from all around.

"Poor old Ingle!" was about his last clear thought; "they've killed him, and now they're firing till they've quite frightened me! Oh, how they keep on shooting! Get it over, you cowardly brutes--nearly a score of you against two! Oh!" he groaned then: "if I could only have delivered my despatch!"

His left hand was raised painfully to his breast to feel whether the paper was still safe; but the pain of the effort was sickening, and his hand glided over something wet and warm and sticky.

"Poor old Ingle! Blood!" flashed through his brain, as the rifle reports rang out from very close now, and then all was blank.

The end of everything seemed to have come.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.

THE SURGEON'S WORDS.

"Bad enough, poor fellow; but I think I can pull them both round.

Nothing vital, you see, touched, and these Mauser bullets make wonderfully clean wounds!"

"And the other?"

"Bad flesh-wounds--great loss of blood. I just got at that artery in time."

West heard these words spoken by someone whose head kept getting in his way as he lay staring up at the great bright stars directly overhead, and it seemed very tiresome.

He tried to speak and ask whoever it was to move aside; but his tongue would not stir, and he lay perfectly still, trying to think what it all meant, and in a dull far-off sort of way it gradually dawned upon him that the people near him were talking about the Boers he had somehow or another and for some reason shot down.

Then, as he thought, the calm feeling he was enjoying grew troubled, and he began to recall the fact that he had been shooting somebody's ponies to supply somebody else with food, and that he must have been mad, for he felt convinced that they would not be nice eating, as he had heard that the fat was oily and the flesh tasted sweet. Besides which, it would be horrible to have to eat horseflesh at a time when his throat was dry with an agonising thirst. Then the terrible thought forced itself upon him that while shooting down ponies he had missed them and killed men instead, and once more all was blank.

The next time the power of thinking came to the poor fellow all was very dark, and a jarring pain kept running through him, caused by the motion of his hard bed, which had somehow grown wheels and was being dragged along.