overhanging cliffs, as the dark
crescent line swept unswervingly on; the line of white shields, and the
flanking companies of parti-coloured ones, the bristling groups of
bright spears. In their wild and fantastic array, the red disk, the
hideous stamp of their dreaded order, freshly painted on forehead and
chest, the strength of ten men in the hopeless desperation of each, the
doomed clansmen stood awaiting the shock. It came.

Then again was the silence of voices, but the tramp of striving feet as
the conflicting crowd surged backwards and forwards--with the hiss and
heave of a dark billow split up on a half-submerged rock--the crash of
shields and weapons, the stagger of falling bodies, and the gasp of the
slain beneath the savage slashing blows of the infuriated slayers. The
Igazipuza are fighting like a race of giants. At this rate barely half
the king's force will return to Ulundi. All three of its leaders are
wounded; Sobuza is streaming with blood, but still his gigantic form
towers in the thick of the fray, still his battle-axe shears aloft in
wavy circles of light, still his white shield shivers that of an
opponent like the shock of a charging elephant.

Suddenly a sharp shrill warning cry rings forth. Even above the din of
the strife there rises a doll, rambling sound which shakes the ground.
Nearer, nearer it draws. Thunder? No. Even the combatants pause. A
dense cloud of dust is rolling down the kloof, and through it can be
seen a forest of bristling horns, a sea of rolling eyes. Even the
combatants take up the warning shout, "_Xwaya--xwaya! 'Zinkomo_!"

["Look out--look out! The cattle!"]

Like a whirlwind the frantic herd sweeps down the narrow gorge.
Bellowing, leaping, throwing up their horns, the maddened beasts plunge
onward, hundreds and hundreds of them, shaking the earth with the
thunder of their hoofs, smothering and blinding all with the cyclone of
their dust, heading for the outlet. There is no staying the headlong
course of the stampeded beasts. The whole _impi_ will be crashed to
pulp by the horned terror. In dismay the combatants spring
helter-skelter up the rocks, and it goes roaring and thundering by,
crushing many as it does so.

Whether the move was a spontaneous one, and that the animals, frantic
with the shouting and the reek of blood, and all penned up moreover in
such small compass, had stampeded of their own accord, or whether it was
a last desperate resource on