their cornfields?

"The bolt fell upon them,
The thunder-cloud smote them;
The might of `The Heavens'
In fury it burned them--
It smote and it burned them--
Its ruin destroyed them!

"The wizards are scattered
In blood and in ashes;
The roar of the Lion
In thunder pursued them;
The praise of the Lion
His children re-echo;
The praise of the Lion,
The Lion of Zulu,
The Lord of the Nations!"

The flames sunk low, sunk into red heaps of ashes pierced with bright
and glowing caverns. A dense cloud of smoke overhung the hollow; and
now the king's _impi_, marching in companies, was moving up towards the
ridge. The two waggons, with their full spans of oxen creaking up the
rocky way, had already gained the entrance to the hollow, and their
owners, riding on horseback, for both the steeds had been recovered too,
paused for a moment on the ridge to look back. Their peril and
captivity was at an end. They were being brought out in something like
a triumphal procession. Far on in front, the dust was rising from the
great herd of cattle and the crowd of captives. Behind, below, lay the
gruesome and blood-stained hollow. The thunder of the war-song echoed
from the slopes, and the rhythmic movement of the lines of shields of
marching warriors was a fitting accessary to the lurid background of the
picture, the amphitheatre of cliffs, "The Tooth," the pyramid of Death
in the centre, its dismal burdens still dangling against its face, and
below, the great smouldering circle of blackening ashes, while the dense
smoke cloud mounting to the heavens in the grey and murky noontide, as
from the crater of a volcano, proclaimed to all, far and near, that the
king's justice had been executed, and that the power of the dreaded,
indomitable, bloodthirsty Igazipuza had now become a thing of the past.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

THE LAST OF ALL OUR FRIENDS.

Maritzburg again. Gerard, strolling through the busy streets, keenly
enjoying the bustle and stir of civilised life after his wild
experiences in savage lands, now no longer to him a sealed book, can
hardly realise that it is the same place, that he is the same being.
Could it be through those very streets that he hurried so eagerly in
search of what might bring him a bare subsistence; returned so
despondently from each successive failure? Now he felt himself the
equal in experience and resource of pretty nearly ever