Long Odds by Harold Bindloss — Read

Forest and compound were wrapped in obscurity, and the night was almost insufferably hot, when Nares, who had arrived there during the afternoon, sat in a room of the Mission of Our Lady of Pity. The little, heavily thatched dwelling stood with the mud-built church and rows of adherents' huts on the shadowy frontier of the debatable land whose dusky inhabitants were then plotting a grim retribution for their wrongs, and on the night in question black, impenetrable darkness shut it in. Though the smell of wood smoke was still in the steamy air, the cooking-fires had died out an hour ago, and there was no sound from any of the clustering huts. Nares, who sat, gaunt and worn in face, by an open window, could not see one of them. Still, he was looking out into the compound, and his attitude suggested expectancy. One could have fancied that he was listening for something.

"My boys heard in the last village we stopped at that there was another party coming up behind us, and it's quite likely that there is," he said. "The bushmen are generally right in these things. I've seen a whole village clear out half a day before a section or two of troops arrived, though it's hard to understand how they could possibly have known."