They were through and living yet, though one broad _bangwan_ was fast in Ralph's shoulder, and another stood in the _schimmel's_ chest.
Not two miles away rose the koppie.

"The horse will die," thought Ralph as he drew Suzanne closer to him, and gripped the saddle with his knees.
Indeed, he was dying; yet never since he was a colt did the _schimmel_ cover two miles of plain so fast as those that lay between the impi and the camp.

Slowly and surely the spear worked its way into his vitals, but stretching out his head, and heedless of his burden, he rushed on with the speed of a racer.
The Boers in the laager were awake at last, the sound of the gun and the war-cry of the Zulus had reached them faintly.

Half-clad, men and women together, they stood upon their waggon-boxes looking towards the west.
Behind them the pencils of daylight were creeping across the sky, and presently in their low rays they saw such a sight as they would never see again.

Fast, fast towards them thundered a great roan horse, blood dripping from his chest, and jaws, and flank, and on its back a yellow-bearded man, in whose shoulder stood a spear, and who held in front of him a fainting woman.
"Soon he will fall suddenly, and we shall be crushed," thought Ralph, and had the horse died while travelling at that speed it must have been so.