Then for a few moments everything seemed as a blank.
"Hurt much ?" came the next minute, as if from a distance.
"Hurt?
No!" said West huskily, and he made an effort and rose to his knees.

Then, stung to rage by an agonising pain which stiffened him into action, he levelled his rifle once more, took a quick aim at a couple of the Boers who were running towards them in a stooping position, fired, and distinctly saw one of the two drop to the ground.
The next moment someone fired over his shoulder, and the other went down, just as West's rifle dropped from his hand and he fell over sideways, yielding to a horribly sickening sensation, followed by a half-dreamy fancy that someone had felt for and got hold of his hand, to grip it in a way that was at first terribly painful--a pang seeming to run up from hand to shoulder.

The pain appeared to grow worse and worse, then deadened, and came again, and so on, like spasms of agony, while all the time the firing went on from all around.
"Poor old Ingle!" was about his last clear thought; "they've killed him, and now they're firing till they've quite frightened me! Oh, how they keep on shooting! Get it over, you cowardly brutes--nearly a score of you against two! Oh!" he groaned then: "if I could only have delivered my despatch!" His left hand was raised painfully to his breast to feel whether the paper was still safe; but the pain of the effort was sickening, and his hand glided over something wet and warm and sticky.
"Poor old Ingle! Blood!" flashed through his brain, as the rifle reports rang out from very close now, and then all was blank.
The end of everything seemed to have come..