er pretence that I
brought him a message from Natal. Within a couple of hours,
however, from the top of a hill I saw ahead of me an impi and
with it captured wagons, which was evidently heading for the
king's kraal. So as I knew what kind of a greeting these
warriors would give me, I bore away in another direction with the
hope of reaching the border by a circuitous route. In this too I
had no luck, since presently I caught sight of outposts stationed
upon rocks, which doubtless belonged to another impi or regiment.
Indeed one soldier, thinking from my dress that I also was a
Zulu, called to me for news from about half a mile away, in that
peculiar carrying voice which Kaffirs can command. I shouted
back something about victory and that the white men were wiped
out, then put an end to the conversation by vanishing into a
patch of dense bush.

It is a fact that after this I have only the dimmest recollection
of what happened. I remember off-saddling at night on several
occasions. I remember being very hungry because all the food was
eaten and the dog, Lost, catching a bush buck fawn, some of which
I partially cooked on a fire of dead wood, and devoured. Next I
remember--I suppose this was a day or two later--riding at night
in a thunderstorm and a particularly brilliant flash of lightning
which revealed scenery that seemed to be familiar to me, after
which came a shock and total unconsciousness.

At length my mind returned to me. It was reborn very slowly and
with horrible convulsions, out of the womb of death and terror.
I saw blood flowing round me in rivers, I heard the cries of
triumph and of agony. I saw myself standing, the sole survivor,
on a grey field of death, and the utter loneliness of it ate into
my soul, so that with all its strength it prayed that it might be
numbered in this harvest. But oh! it was so strong, that soul
which could not, would not die or fly away. So strong, that
then, for the first time, I understood its immortality and that
it could _never_ die. This everlasting thing still clung for a
while to the body of its humiliation, the mass of clay and nerves
and appetites which it was doomed to animate, and yet knew its
own separateness and eternal individuality. Striving to be free
of earth, still it seemed to walk the earth, a spirit and a
shadow, aware of the hatefulness of that to which it was chained,
as we might imagine some lovely butterfly to be that is fated by
nature