rmed them, and of its dangers they
took no thought, being content to leave me, in whom they had a
blind faith, to manage everything. Moreover, Heda, who in the
joy of her love was beginning to forget the sorrow of her
father's death and the other tragic events through which she had
just passed, took a great fancy to the young witch-doctoress who
conversed with her in Zulu, a language of which, having lived so
long in Natal, Heda knew much already. Indeed, when I suggested
to her that to be over-trusting was not wise, she fired up and
replied that she had been accustomed to natives all her life and
could judge them, adding that she had every confidence in Nombe.

After this I held my tongue and said no more of my doubts. What
was the use since Heda would not listen to them, and at that time
Anscombe was nothing but her echo?

So this, for me, very dull journey continued, till at length,
after being held up for a couple of days by a flooded river where
there was nothing to do but sit and smoke, as Nombe requested me
not to make a noise by shooting at the big game that abounded, we
began to emerge from the bush-veld on to the lovely uplands in
the neighbourhood of Nongoma. Leaving these on our right we
headed for a place called Ceza, a natural stronghold consisting
of a flat plain on the top of a mountain, which plain is
surrounded by bush. It is at the foot of this stronghold that
the Black Kloof lies, being one of the ravines that run up into
the mountain.

So thither we came at last. It was drawing towards sunset, a
tremendous and stormy sunset, as we approached the place, and lo!
it looked exactly as it had done when first I saw it more than a
score of years before, forbidding as the mouth of hell, vast and
lonesome. There stood the columns of boulders fantastically
piled one upon another; there grew the sparse trees upon its
steep sides, mingled with aloes that looked like the shapes of
men; there was the granite bottom swept almost clean by floods in
some dim age, and the little stream that flowed along it. There,
too, was the spot where once I had outspanned my wagons on the
night when my servants swore that they saw the Imikovu, or
wizard-raised spectres, floating past them on the air in the
shapes of the Princes and others who were soon to fall at the
battle of the Tugela. Up it we went, I riding and Nombe, who had
descended from the cart that followed, walking by my side and
watching me.

"You se