ription.

"How did you escape, Sintoba, and where have you been hiding?" said
Dawes, wonderingly.

Then Sintoba proceeded to explain how he and Fulani and the boy had been
put into a hut together, but, unlike their master, had been left
unbound, and fairly well treated in general. But something they had
overheard led them to attempt their escape, and in the confusion which
had followed daring the mastering of the warriors to resist the invasion
of the king's troops, and the despatching of the women and cattle to a
place of safety, they had succeeded in slipping away and hiding among
the rocks on the opposite side of the hollow to that whereon the battle
had taken place. Here they had been discovered by the victorious
_impi_, and being taken for Igazipuza, would have been massacred on the
spot but for the intervention of the sub-chief, Matela, who suggested
that they should be led before Sobuza, who, with his advance guard, was
then in pursuit of Vunawayo and a few surviving fugitives.

"_Whau_, Jandosi! Your _Amakafula_ have had a narrow escape from the
spears of our people," said Sobuza, quizzically. "Almost as narrow a
one as you yourself had from the bite of The Tooth of the Igazipuza.
And now let us stand beneath the rock of death and see if these wizards
have been able to take to themselves wings and fly down unhurt."

All misgivings on that score, however, was soon set at rest. At the
foot of the cliff, shattered, shivered into a horrible mangled mass, lay
the body of Vunawayo--a great gash over the heart, showing where it had
received the stab which had, as by a hair's breadth, saved Gerard from
being dragged over by the fierce and desperate savage. At this ghastly
evidence of the terrible fate from which he had so narrowly escaped,
Gerard shuddered.

"_Ha_! Jeriji!" said Sobuza, with a grim smile. "My broad _umkonto_
[the short-handled stabbing spear] has done its work well, as well as
your fists did among those Amakafula dogs near the Umgeni. That was a
great day; but this has been a greater one."

"It has indeed, Sobuza," answered Gerard. "And so yours was the stroke
that saved my life? Well, we are very much more than quits now, at any
rate."

Close beside the shattered remains of Vunawayo, lay those of the warrior
who had leaped of his own accord from the summit, choosing rather to die
by his own act than that his enemies should have the satisfaction of
boasting that they had slain him.