As the words left her lips it seemed to her as though some giant had thrown the big horse back upon its haunches, for he slipped past her, his flanks almost touching the ground, which he ploughed with outstretched hoofs. Then he stopped dead.
“Have I found you at last, wife?” cried Ralph, in a voice of joy so strange that it sounded scarcely human. “Mount swiftly, for the Zulus are behind.”
Thus, then, these two met again, not on the Mountain of the Man’s Hand indeed, as the vision had foretold, but very near to it.
“Nay,” Suzanne answered, as she sprang on to the saddle before him, “they are in front, for I saw them.”
Ralph looked. Yes, there they were in front and to the side and behind. All round them the Zulu impi gathered and thickened, crying, “_Bulala umlungu_” (Kill the white man) as they closed in upon them at a run.
“Oh! Ralph, what can we do?” murmured Suzanne.
“Charge them and trust to God,” he answered.
“So be it, husband,” and, turning herself upon the pommel of the saddle, she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him on the lips, whispering, “At least we have met again, and if we die it shall be together.”
“Hold fast,” said Ralph, and calling aloud to the horse he set his teeth and charged.
By now the Zulus in front were running down the opposing slope in clusters not much more than a hundred yards away; indeed, the space between them was so narrow that the _schimmel_, galloping up hill under his double load, could scarcely gather speed before they were among them. When they were within ten yards Ralph held out the gun in one hand and fired it, killing a man. Then he cast it away as useless, and placing his right arm about the waist of Suzanne, he bent his body over her to protect her if he might, urging on the horse with feet and voice.
Now they were in them and ploughing through their ever-thickening ranks, throwing their black bodies to this side and to that as a ship throws the water from its bows. Here, there, everywhere spears flashed and stabbed, but as yet they were unhurt, for the very press saved them, although an assegai was quivering in the flank of the _schimmel_. Ah! a pang as of the touch of red-hot iron and a spear had pierced Ralph’s left shoulder, remaining fast in the wound. Still lower he bent his body till his head was almost hidden in the flowing mane of the _schimmel_, but now black clutching hands caught feet and bridle rein, and slowly the great horse lost way and stopped. A tall Zulu stabbed it in the chest, and Ralph gasped, “It is over!”