On these Leonard and Otter opened fire with rifles, but it was not until three or four of them had fallen that the rest fled to join their companions beneath the shelter of the sheds.
"Oh! look, look!" said Juanna, pointing to the east.
It was indeed a spectacle never to be forgotten.
The dense reeds, measuring twelve to fifteen feet in height, had been fired far to the east of the Nest, and as the wind gathered to a gale and the fire got firmer hold, it rolled down upon the doomed place in billows and sheets--a sea of flame that sometimes spouted high into the air and sometimes ran swiftly along the ground.
The reeds crackled and roared like musketry as the fire ate into them, giving out thick volumes of smoke.

At first this smoke had passed above the spectators, now it blew into their faces, half choking them and blotting out the sky, and mixed up with it were showers of sparks and fragments of burning reeds brought forward on the wind.
"The house and sheds will soon catch now," said Leonard; "then they must take refuge in the open spaces, where we can deal with them," and he nodded towards the gun.
As he spoke tongues of flame darted into the air, first from the thatch of the shed, then from the roof of the Nest.

They were afire.
"We must be careful, Baas," said Otter, "or the slave-shelters behind us will burn also, and all those in them." "Heavens! I never thought of that," answered Leonard.

"Here, Father, if you wish to do a good work, take some of these people and the buckets they use to water the slaves.

Let three or four men get on to each roof and extinguish the sparks as they fall, while others bring them water from the moat." The priest sprang up and set to the task, at which he laboured gallantly for two long hours.