and the others left.

About an hour before daylight I heard them stirring again, and
when its first gleams came all of them had vanished over the nek
of slaughter, with what thoughts in their hearts, I wondered, and
to what fate. The captains on the plateau beneath had gone also,
and so had the circle of guards upon the slopes of the mount, for
I saw these depart through the grey mist. As the light gathered,
however, I observed bodies of men collecting on the nek, or
rather on both neks, which made it impossible for me to do what I
had hoped, and run to overtake the English troops. From these I
was utterly cut off. Nor could I remain longer without food on
my point of rock, especially as I was sure that soon some Zulus
would climb there to use it as an outlook post. So while I was
still more or less hidden by the mist and morning shadows, I
climbed down it by the same road that I had climbed up, and thus
reached the plain. Not a living man, white or black, was to be
seen, only the dead, only the dead. I was the last Englishman to
stand upon the plain of Isandhlwana for weeks or rather months to
come.

Of all my experiences this was, I think, the strangest, after
that night of hell, to find myself alone upon this field of
death, staring everywhere at the distorted faces which on the
previous morn I had seen so full of life. Yet my physical needs
asserted themselves. I was very hungry, who for twenty-four
hours had eaten nothing, faint with hunger indeed. I passed a
provision wagon that had been looted by the Zulus. Tins of bully
beef lay about, also, among a wreck of broken glass, some bottles
of Bass's beer which had escaped their notice. I found an
assegai, cleaned it in the ground which it needed, and opening
one of the tins, lay down in a tuft of grass by a dead man, or
rather between him and some Zulus whom he had killed, and
devoured its contents. Also I knocked the tops off a couple of
the beer bottles and drank my fill. While I was doing this a
large rough dog with a silver-mounted collar on its neck, I think
of the sort that is called an Airedale terrier, came up to me
whining. At first I thought it was an hyena, but discovering my
mistake, threw it some bits of meat which it ate greedily.
Doubtless it had belonged to some dead officer, though there was
no name on the collar. The poor beast, which I named Lost, at
once attached itself to me, and here I may say that I kept it
till its death,