Nothing could touch his iron nerves.
The moon went down.

For a long while she had been getting nearer and nearer to the horizon.

Now she finally sank and left the world in darkness save for a faint grey tinge in the eastern sky that palely heralded the dawn.
Mr Mackenzie stood, watch in hand, his wife clinging to his arm and striving to stifle her sobs.
'Twenty minutes to four,' he said, 'it ought to be light enough to attack at twenty minutes past four.

Captain Good had better be moving, he will want three or four minutes' start.' Good gave one final polish to his eyeglass, nodded to us in a jocular sort of way -- which I could not help feeling it must have cost him something to muster up -- and, ever polite, took off his steel-lined cap to Mrs Mackenzie and started for his position at the head of the kraal, to reach which he had to make a detour by some paths known to the natives.
Just then one of the boys came in and reported that everybody in the Masai camp, with the exception of the two sentries who were walking up and down in front of the respective entrances, appeared to be fast asleep.

Then the rest of us took the road.
First came the guide, then Sir Henry, Umslopogaas, the Wakwafi Askari, and Mr Mackenzie's two mission natives armed with long spears and shields.