The Namaqua recognised him too, and pointed enthusiastically
forward. Granville saw what he meant. To the front! To the front!
If there was fighting to be done, let them help their friends. Let
them go forward and claim the great reward offered.

Next moment, with a painful thrill of shame and remorse,
the Englishman saw what was the nature of the object they were so
jealously guarding. His heart stood still within him. It was a sort
of sedan chair, or invalid litter, borne on poles by four native
porters. Talk about coals of fire! Granville Kelmscott hardly knew
how to forgive himself for his unworthy distrust. Then Guy must
have reached the coast in safety, after leaving him in charge of
the Namaqua and fighting his way through, and now he was on his
way back to the interior again, with a sufficient escort and a
palanquin to fetch him.

Even as he looked, the assailants closed in more fiercely than
ever on the faltering little band. One of them thrust out with an
assegai at Guy. In an agony of horror, Granville cried aloud where
he stood. Surely, surely, they must be crushed to earth. No arms of
precision could ever avail them against such a swarm of assailants,
poured forth over their camp as if from some human ant-hill.

"Let us run!" the sick man cried to the Namaqua, pointing to the
fight below; and the Namaqua, comprehending the gesture, if not the
words, set forward to run with him down the slope into the valley.

At about a hundred yards off from the crowd, Granville, crouched
behind a clump of thorny acacia, and, signalling to the Namaqua to
hide at the same time, drew his revolver and fired point-blank at