nal bleeding.

I looked about me desperately. To attempt the plain on foot
meant death. What then was I to do? Glancing at the cliff I saw
that there was a gully in it worn by thousands of years of
rainfall, in which grew scanty bushes. Into this I ran, and
finding it practicable though difficult, began to climb upwards,
quite unnoticed by the Zulus who were all employed upon the
further side. The end of it was that I reached the very crest of
the mount, a patch of bare, brown rock, except at one spot on its
southern front where there was a little hollow in which at this
rainy season of the year herbage and ferns grew in the
accumulated soil, also a few stunted, aloe-like plants.

Into this patch I crept, having first slaked my thirst from a
little pool of rain water that lay in a cup-like depression of
the rock, which tasted more delicious than any nectar, and seemed
to give me new life. Then covering myself as well as I could
with grasses and dried leaves from the aloe plants, I lay still.

Now I was right on the brink of the cliff and had the best view
of the Isandhlwana plain and the surrounding country that can be
imagined. From my lofty eyrie some hundreds of feet in the air,
I could see everything that happened beneath. Thus I witnessed
the destruction of the last of the soldiers on the slopes below.
They made a gallant end, so gallant that I was proud to be of the
same blood with them. One fine young fellow escaped up the peak
and reached a plateau about fifty feet beneath me. He was
followed by a number of Zulus, but took refuge in a little cave
whence he shot three or four of them; then his cartridges were
exhausted and I heard the savages speaking in praise of
him--dead. I think he was the last to die on the field of
Isandhlwana.

The looting of the camp began; it was a terrible scene. The oxen
and those of the horses that could be caught were driven away,
except certain of the former which were harnessed to the guns and
some of the wagons and, as I afterwards learned, taken to Ulundi
in proof of victory. Then the slain were stripped and Kaffirs
appeared wearing the red coats of the soldiers and carrying their
rifles. The stores were broken into and all the spirits drunk.
Even the medical drugs were swallowed by these ignorant men, with
the result that I saw some of them reeling about in agony and
others fall down and go to sleep.

An hour or two later an officer who came from the direct