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The white and only wife of the great Arab travelled en reine; two outriders with modern rifles slung across the shoulder and brandishing throwing-spears, caused consternation amongst the spectators as at a word or touch of the unspurred foot they made their magnificent horses rear and back and plunge.
I noted, however, that they did not inter their war-axes or their throwing-spears with them as usual, probably because they thought that these might be needed. In place of them they put with the dead little models roughly shaped of bits of wood, which models they "killed" by first breaking them across. I lingered to watch the funeral and heard Goroko, the witch-doctor, make a little speech.
They flung their throwing-spears with great dexterity. They tried every device of cool, determined men practised in war and familiar with cavalry; and, besides, they swung sharp, heavy swords which bit deep. The hand-to-hand fighting on the further side of the khor lasted for perhaps one minute.
And, to make matters worse, the consul formed his men into such close columns that they could not avoid being hampered by each other's movements. The two armies when facing each other in order of battle must have presented a curious contrast. The Roman legions and their allies, amounting in all to seventy-six thousand men, wore helmets and cuirasses and carried swords and short throwing-spears.
Three naked blacks dipped with noiseless paddles. Long-hafted, slender, bone-barbed throwing-spears lay along the gunwale of the canoe, while a quiverful of arrows hung on each man's back. The eyes of the man-hunters missed nothing. They had seen Sheldon and Joan first, but they gave no sign.
First comes the able-bodied though elderly sire carrying a few light throwing-spears and a knobkerry or a gim-crack stabbing-spear, and close behind him are the adult males of his house similarly armed or with a rifle or two supplied by a benevolent Government for protection against the Mullah, to whom these children of nature frequently offer them for sale at very reasonable prices.
A blood-chilling yell of concentrated fury smote their ears; a hastily loosed storm of war arrows and short throwing-spears ripped into their flesh; a swift-running arc of light-skinned men swerved around them, shooting and stabbing as they went. They, who had so exultantly surrounded the homes of women and children, now were surrounded in turn.
All the furniture was handmade, cunningly pegged together and highly polished. On the walls hung trophies of weapons thrusting-spears and throwing-spears, crossbows and quarrels, and a number of heavy guns, crude things, but carefully made. "Pick all this stuff up off the locals?" Harkaman asked. "Yes, we got most of it at a big town down at the forks of the river," Valkanhayn said.
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