Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 13 )( Page 3 ) The Allies

As Jock trotted out to head them off Jim reached up to the buck-rails and pulled down his bundle of sticks and lay down like a tiger on the spring.  I had had a lot of trouble with Jim that day, and this annoyed me; but my angry call to stop was unavailing.  Jim, pretending not to understand, made no attempt to stop Jock, but contented himself with calling to him to come back; and Jock, stone deaf, trotted evenly along with his head, neck, back, and tail, all level--an old trick of Jess's which generally meant trouble for some one.  Slowing down as he neared the Shangaans he walked quietly on until he headed off the leader, and there he stood across the path.  It was just the same as before: the boys, finding that he did nothing, merely stepped aside to avoid bumping against him.  They were boys taking back their purchases to their kraals to dazzle the eyes of the ignorant with the wonders of civilisation-- gaudy blankets, collections of bright tin billies and mugs, tin plates, three-legged pots, clothing, hats, and even small tin trunks painted brilliant yellow, helped to make up their huge bundles.  The last boy was wearing a pair of Royal Artillery trousers; and I have no doubt he regarded it ever afterwards as nothing less than a calamity that they were not safely stowed away in his bundle--for a kaffir would sacrifice his skin rather than his new pants any day.  It was from the seat of these too ample bags that Jock took a good mouthful; and it was the boy's frantic jump, rather than Jock's tug, that made the piece come out.  The sudden fright and the attempts to face about quickly caused several downfalls; the clatter of these spread the panic; and on top of it all came Jock's charge along the broken line, and the excited shouts of those who thought they were going to be worried to death. Jim had burst into great bellows of laughter and excited--but quite superfluous--shouts of encouragement to Jock, who could not have heard a trumpet at ten yards. But there came a very unexpected change.  One big Shangaan had drawn from his bundle a brand new side-axe: I saw the bright steel head flash, as he held it menacingly aloft by the short handle and marched towards Jock.  There was a scrambling bound from under the waggon, and Jim, with face distorted and grey with fury, rushed out.  In his right hand he brandished a tough stout fighting stick; in his left I was horrified to see an assegai, and well I knew that, with the fighting fury on him, he would think nothing of using it.  The Shangaan saw him coming, and stopped; then, still facing Jim, and with the axe raised and feinting repeatedly to throw it, he began to back away.  Jim never paused for a second: he came straight on with wild leaps and blood-curdling yells in Zulu fighting fashion and ended with a bound that seemed to drop him right on top of the other.  The stick came down with a whirr and a crash that crimped every nerve in my body; and the Shangaan dropped like a log. I had shouted myself hoarse at Jim, but he heard or heeded nothing; and seizing a stick from one of the other boys I was already on the way to stop him, but before I got near him he had wrenched the axe from the kicking boy and, without pause, gone headlong for the next Shangaan he saw.  Then everything went wrong: the more I shouted and the harder I ran, the worse the row.  The Shangaans seemed to think I had joined in and was directing operations against them: Jim seemed to be inspired to wilder madness by my shouts and gesticulations; and Jock--well, Jock at any rate had not the remotest doubt as to what he should do.  When he saw me and Jim in full chase behind him, his plain duty was to go in for all he was worth; and he did it. It was half an hour before I got that mad savage back.  He was as unmanageable as a runaway horse.  He had walloped the majority of the fifty himself; he had broken his own two sticks and used up a number of theirs; on his forehead there was a small cut and a lump like half an orange; and on the back of his head another cut left by the sticks of the enemy when eight or ten had rallied once in a half-hearted attempt to stand against him. It was strange how Jim, even in that mood, yielded to the touch of one whom he regarded as his "Inkos."  I could not have forced him back: in that maniac condition it would have needed a powerful combination indeed to bring him back against his will.  He yielded to the light grip of my hand on his wrist and walked freely along with me; but a fiery bounding vitality possessed him, and with long springy strides he stepped out- looking excitedly about, turning to right and left or even right about, and stepping sideways or even backwards to keep pace with me--yet always yielding the imprisoned arm so as not to pull me about.  And all the time there came from him a torrent of excited gabble in pure Zulu, too fast and too high-flown for me to follow, which was punctuated and paragraphed by bursting allusions to `dogs of Shangaans,' `axes,' `sticks,' and `Jock.' Near the waggons we passed over the `battlefield,' and a huge guffaw of laughter broke from Jim as we came on the abandoned impedimenta of the defeated enemy.  Several of the bundles had burst open from the violence of the fall, and the odd collections of the natives were scattered about; others had merely shed the outside luggage of tin billies, beakers, pans, boots and hats.  Jim looked on it all as the spoils of war, wanting to stop and gather in his loot there and then, and when I pressed on, he shouted to the other drivers to come out and collect the booty.