Explore "Allan and the Holy Flower" by H. Rider Haggard on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Well, we did all that we could in the way of making ready. After we had strengthened the thorn fence of our _boma_ as much as possible and lit several large fires outside of it to give us light, I allotted his place to each of the hunters and saw that their rifles were in order and that they had plenty of ammunition. Then I made Stephen lie down to sleep, telling him that I would wake him to watch later on. This, however, I had no intention of doing as I wanted him to rise fresh and with a steady nerve on the occasion of his first fight.
As soon as I saw that his eyes were shut I sat down on a box to think. To tell the truth, I was not altogether happy in my mind. To begin with I did not know how the twenty bearers would behave under fire. They might be seized with panic and rush about, in which case I determined to let them out of the _boma_ to take their chance, for panic is a catching thing.