f
children. And still the messengers of retribution marched on, a fell
purpose in each grim countenance; eyeballs rolling with a lurid fury,
weapons gripped, step elastic and eager. The dawn had broken lowering
and murky, and there was no sun. The wind sang mournfully through the
hollow; moaning among the cliffs, as with the wail of spirit voices over
the drama of carnage and massacre which was here to be played out. As
in the first instance, the Igazipuza had selected a place where their
assailants would be obliged to approach them from below.

Sobuza having satisfied himself that all the fighting force of the rebel
clan was before him, sent back two swift runners to order forward the
detachment he had left on the outer ridge, with the exception of a few
who were to remain to cut off any stray fugitives who might break
through. The contingency that anything like a number might do so seemed
hardly worth reckoning on. Then he ordered the immediate attack.

As the king's troops came sweeping up the slope, in perfect line of
battle, regular and unbroken, there floated to their ears, rising in
dull menace on the fitful puffs of the morning, the weird rhythmical
chorus of a war-song.

"Cubs of the Lion we,
Whose roar sounds Death;
Vultures who sit on high,
Whose swoop means Death;
Serpents who creep below,
Whose fangs deal Death--
We drink of the blood of men,
We laugh at Death!

"Wizards of thunder we
Whose voice rolls Death;
Wizards of lightning we
Who flash forth Death!
Ho! `hunting-dogs of the king,'
Come, taste our Death!
We drink of the blood of men--
We drink _your_ Death!"

The great ironstone cliffs echoed back the weird words of the savage
strophe with almost the effect of articulate repetition, and when, in
its final paean of defiance, the chorus swelled to a clamourous,
threatening roar, the disgust and hatred and repulsion which ran through
the minds of the king's soldiers knew no bounds. For to the average
Zulu nothing is more repellent than any suggestion of dark dealing, and
the gruesome import of the song of the Igazipuza, who had already earned
a reputation for wizardry in its foulest form, inspired in the minds of
these a fell determination to rid the earth of the whole evil brood.

"Usutu!"

"Igazi--Pu--Za!"

The war-shout of the royal house and the defiant slogan of the rebel
clan, mingled in booming echoes from the