And so the fight was ended. On returning from the shocking scene it suddenly struck me that I had seen nothing of Alphonse since the moment, some twenty minutes before—for though this fight has taken a long while to describe, it did not take long in reality—when I had been forced to hit him in the wind with the result of nearly getting myself shot. Fearing that the poor little man had perished in the battle, I began to hunt among the dead for his body, but, not being able either to see or hear anything of it, I concluded that he must have survived, and walked down the side of the kraal where we had first taken our stand, calling him by name. Now some fifteen paces back from the kraal wall stood a very ancient tree of the species. So ancient was it that all the inside had in the course of ages decayed away, leaving nothing but a shell of bark.
‘Alphonse,’ I called, as I walked down the wall. ‘Alphonse!’
‘Oui, monsieur,’ answered a voice. ‘Here am I.’
I looked round but could see nobody. ‘Where?’ I cried.
‘Here am I, monsieur, in the tree.’
I looked, and there, peering out of a hole in the trunk of the banyan about five feet from the ground, I saw a pale face and a pair of large mustachios, one clipped short and the other as out of curl as the tail of a newly whipped pug. Then, for the first time, I realized what I had suspected before—namely, that Alphonse was an coward. I walked up to him. ‘Come out of that hole,’ I said.
‘Is it finished, monsieur?’ he asked anxiously; ‘quite finished? Ah, the horrors I have undergone, and the prayers I have uttered!’
‘Come out, you little wretch,’ I said, for I did not feel ; ‘it is all over.’
‘So, monsieur, then my prayers have prevailed? I emerge,’ and he did.
As we were walking down together to join the others, who were gathered in a group by the wide entrance to the kraal, which now resembled a veritable charnel-house, a Masai, who had escaped so far and been hiding under a bush, suddenly sprang up and charged furiously at us. Off went Alphonse with a howl of terror, and after him flew the Masai, upon doing some execution before he died. He soon overtook the poor little Frenchman, and would have finished him then and there had I not, just as Alphonse made a last double in the vain hope of avoiding the yard of steel that was flashing in his rear, managed to plant a bullet between the Elmoran’s broad shoulders, which brought matters to a satisfactory conclusion so far as the Frenchman was concerned. But just then he tripped and fell flat, and the body of the Masai fell right on the top of him, moving convulsively in the death struggle. Thereupon there arose such a series of piercing howls that I concluded that before he died the must have managed to stab poor Alphonse. I ran up in a hurry and pulled the Masai off, and there beneath him lay Alphonse covered with blood and jerking himself about like a galvanized frog. Poor fellow! thought I, he is done for, and kneeling down by him I began to search for his wound as well as his struggles would allow.
‘Oh, the hole in my back!’ he yelled. ‘I am murdered. I am dead. Oh, Annette!’
I searched again, but could see no wound. Then the truth dawned on me—the man was frightened, not hurt.
‘Get up!’ I shouted, ‘Get up. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? You are not touched.’
Thereupon he rose, not a penny the worse. ‘But, monsieur, I thought I was,’ he said apologetically; ‘I did not know that I had conquered.’ Then, giving the body of the Masai a kick, he ejaculated , ‘Ah, dog of a black savage, thou art dead; what victory!’
disgusted, I left Alphonse to look after himself, which he did by following me like a shadow, and proceeded to join the others by the large entrance. The first thing that I saw was Mackenzie, seated on a stone with a handkerchief twisted round his , from which he was bleeding freely, having, indeed, received a spear-thrust that passed right through it, and still holding in his hand his favourite knife now bent nearly double, from which I gathered that he had been successful in his rough and tumble with the Elmoran.
‘Ah, Quatermain!’ he sang out in a trembling, excited voice, ‘so we have conquered; but it is a sorry sight, a sorry sight;’ and then breaking into broad and glancing at the bent knife in his hand, ‘It fashes me sair to have bent my best carver on the breastbone of a savage,’ and he laughed . Poor fellow, what between his wound and the excitement he had undergone his nerves were much shaken, and no wonder! It is hard upon a man of peace and heart to be called upon to join in such a gruesome business. But there, fate puts us sometimes into very comical positions!
At the kraal entrance the scene was a strange one. The was over by now, and the wounded men had been put out of their pain, for no quarter had been given. The bush-closed entrance was flat, and in place of bushes it was filled with the bodies of dead men. Dead men, everywhere dead men—they lay about in knots, they were flung by ones and twos in every position upon the open spaces, for all the world like the people on the grass in one of the London parks on a particularly hot Sunday in August. In front of this entrance, on a space which had been cleared of dead and of the shields and spears which were in all directions as they had fallen or been thrown from the hands of their owners, stood and lay the of the awful struggle, and at their feet were four wounded men. We had gone into the fight thirty strong, and of the thirty but fifteen remained alive, and five of them (including Mr Mackenzie) were wounded, two mortally. Of those who held the entrance, Curtis and the Zulu alone remained. Good had lost five men killed, I had lost two killed, and Mackenzie no less than five out of the six with him. As for the survivors they were, with the exception of myself who had never come to close quarters, red from head to foot—Sir Henry’s might have been painted that colour—and , except Umslopogaas, who, as he grimly stood on a little above a heap of dead, leaning as usual upon his , did not seem particularly , although the skin over the hole in his head palpitated violently.
‘Ah, Macumazahn!’ he said to me as I limped up, feeling very sick, ‘I told thee that it would be a good fight, and it has. Never have I seen a better, or one more bravely fought. As for this iron shirt, surely it is “tagati” [bewitched]; nothing could pierce it. Had it not been for the garment I should have been there,’ and he nodded towards the great pile of dead men beneath him.
‘I give it thee; thou art a brave man,’ said Sir Henry, .
‘Koos!’ answered the Zulu, deeply pleased both at the gift and the compliment. ‘Thou, too, Incubu, didst bear thyself as a man, but I must give thee some lessons with the axe; thou dost waste thy strength.’
Just then Mackenzie asked about Flossie, and we were all greatly relieved when one of the men said he had seen her flying towards the house with the nurse. Then bearing such of the wounded as could be moved at the moment with us, we slowly made our way towards the Mission-house, spent with and bloodshed, but with the glorious sense of victory against overwhelming glowing in our hearts. We had saved the life of the little maid, and taught the Masai of those parts a lesson that they will not forget for ten years—but at what a cost!
Painfully we made our way up the hill which, just a little more than an hour before, we had under such different circumstances. At the gate of the wall stood Mrs Mackenzie waiting for us. When her eyes fell upon us, however, she out, and covered her face with her hands, crying, ‘Horrible, horrible!’ Nor were her fears when she discovered her husband being borne upon an improvized stretcher; but her doubts as to the nature of his injury were soon set at rest. Then when in a few brief words I had told her the upshot of the struggle (of which Flossie, who had arrived in safety, had been able to explain something) she came up to me and solemnly kissed me on the forehead.
‘God bless you all, Mr Quatermain; you have saved my child’s life,’ she said simply.
Then we went in and got our clothes off and doctored our wounds; I am glad to say I had none, and Sir Henry’s and Good’s were, thanks to those chain shirts, of a comparatively harmless nature, and to be dealt with by means of a few stitches and sticking-plaster. Mackenzie’s, however, were serious, though fortunately the spear had not any large . After that we had a bath, and what a luxury it was! And having clad ourselves in ordinary clothes, proceeded to the dining-room, where breakfast was set as usual. It was curious sitting down there, drinking tea and eating toast in an ordinary nineteenth-century sort of way just as though we had not employed the early hours in a regular hand-to-hand Middle-Ages kind of struggle. As Good said, the whole thing seemed more as though one had had a bad nightmare just before being called, than as a deed done. When we were finishing our breakfast the door opened, and in came little Flossie, very pale and , but quite unhurt. She kissed us all and thanked us. I congratulated her on the presence of mind she had shown in shooting the Masai with her Derringer pistol, and saving her own life.
‘Oh, don’t talk of it!’ she said, beginning to cry hysterically; ‘I shall never forget his face as he went turning round and round, never—I can see it now.’
I advised her to go to bed and get some sleep, which she did, and awoke in the evening quite recovered, so far as her strength was concerned. It struck me as an odd thing that a girl who could find the nerve to shoot a huge black ruffian rushing to kill her with a spear should have been so at the thought of it afterwards; but it is, after all, characteristic of the sex. Poor Flossie! I fear that her nerves will not get over that night in the Masai camp for many a long year. She told me afterwards that it was the that was so awful, having to sit there hour after hour through the livelong night utterly ignorant as to whethe............