" means "the Heavens."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 3. A royal acclamation demanded by Zulu etiquette on such
occasions, and which generally consists in a string of extravagant
titles.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

THE TWO EMISSARIES.

The long sound sleep he had had stood Gerard in good stead as he fell
into the march of the _impi_--whose work was indeed cut out for it, for
it would take all the hours of darkness before them, and rapid marching
at that, to get into position by earliest dawn, that being the time
appointed for falling upon the Igazipuza kraal. But these picked men of
the king's troops seemed thoroughly up to their work. Hour after hour
they marched, with no sign of flagging, ever the same swift elastic
stride, and lucky indeed was it for Gerard that he was in excellent
condition or he might have found serious difficulty in keeping pace with
them.

There was another thing, too, that stood him in good stead--the
foresight of Dawes to wit, which had provided against the very emergency
in which he had been placed. More than half of his rifle and revolver
cartridges had been done up in several rolls of the most completely
watertight wrapping, waxed at the seams. He might have to swim more
than one river, Dawes had reasoned. It was as well to be prepared for
every contingency. So here he stood, provided with a supply of dry
cartridges; and as by this time he was an adept at that sort of thing,
he had employed the few minutes of daylight before setting out on the
march in taking his weapon to pieces and carefully drying and greasing
the mechanism.

Hour followed hour, and still the _impi_ kept on its way. Now and again
a brief halt of a few minutes would be called, in order to take a rest
and a pinch or two of snuff, then on again; now through jungly tracts of
grass and forest-belts, now over spurs of rugged and desolate mountain
ranges, now splashing through quaking reedy morasses, where the deep
boom of the bull-frog rose above the more treble croak of his smaller
kin, and the will-of-the-wisps glinted in many a sickly blue
corpse-candle. On, unflagging, strode those iron warriors, grim, silent
angels of Death, speeding through the night.

"We are not far from the place now," said Gerard at length, touching
Sobuza's arm. "Just beyond that spar the slope leading up to the
entrance to the hollow begins."

It was the last hour of the night, tha