at him. He, for his part, was not unmoved. This was an
experience clean outside any he had ever known. The might and stature of
these formidable warriors, lingering around in immense groups, many of
them bleeding from ghastly wounds, yet devouring the dried food they
carried, the while comrades were treating their hurts after a fashion
which would have caused the civilized being to shriek aloud with agony;
the ferocious volubility wherewith they discussed and fought the battle
over again; and away beyond their lines, the earth black with corpses of
the slain; while up yonder, though this he could not see, the rock
circle was literally piled with those who had been his friends or
followers for many a long day. All this impressed him to an extent which
he had hardly deemed possible, though of any outward evidence thereof he
gave no sign.

"Are all dead up yonder?" he asked some of the Ba-gcatya, as he joined
them in their frugal fare.

A laugh, derisive but not discourteous to himself, greeted the question.

"_Au!_ The bite of The Spider does not need repeating twice," was the
reply. "None who have once felt it live."

The Ba-gcatya, heavy as had been their losses, were in high good-humour
over their victory. After all, it was a victory, and a hard-fought one.
They only lived for such. Losses were nothing to them. The spoils of the
slavers' caravan--arms, ammunition, goods of all sorts, were distributed
for transport among the younger regiments of the _impi_, which, its
allotted period of rest over, at a mandate from its chiefs prepared for
departure. And now the solitary white man in its midst--captive or
guest, he himself was hardly certain which--had an opportunity of
admiring the stern and iron discipline of this splendid army of savages.
That of the Zulu troops under the rule of Cetywayo, or even under that
of Tshaka, might have equalled it, but could not possibly have surpassed
it. Each company fell into rank with machine-like precision and
celerity. The dead were left as they fell; those who were too grievously
wounded to move received death from the swift, sure spear-stroke of a
comrade; then, marching in five columns, the great army set forth on its
return, striking a course to the northward.

Laurence Stanninghame's feelings were passing strange as he found
himself thus carried captive, he knew not whither, by this mighty nation
which had hitherto been to him but a name, as to whose very existence he
had be