a match. It was a 'tandstickor' match, and burnt
slowly and dimly, and as the light gradually increased I made out what I
took to be a family of people, men, women, and children, fast asleep.
Presently it burnt up brightly, and I saw that they too, five of them
altogether, were quite dead. One was a baby. I dropped the match in a
hurry, and was making my way from the hut as quick as I could go, when I
caught sight of two bright eyes staring out of a corner. Thinking it
was a wild cat, or some such animal, I redoubled my haste, when suddenly
a voice near the eyes began first to mutter, and then to send up a
succession of awful yells.

"Hastily I lit another match, and perceived that the eyes belonged to an
old woman, wrapped up in a greasy leather garment. Taking her by the
arm, I dragged her out, for she could not, or would not, come by
herself, and the stench was overpowering me. Such a sight as she was--a
bag of bones, covered over with black, shrivelled parchment. The only
white thing about her was her wool, and she seemed to be pretty well
dead except for her eyes and her voice. She thought that I was a devil
come to take her, and that is why she yelled so. Well, I got her down
to the waggon, and gave her a 'tot' of Cape smoke, and then, as soon as
it was ready, poured about a pint of beef-tea down her throat, made from
the flesh of a blue vilderbeeste I had killed the day before, and after
that she brightened up wonderfully. She could talk Zulu--indeed, it
turned out that she had run away from Zululand in T'Chaka's time--and
she told me that all the people whom I had seen had died of fever. When
they had died the other inhabitants of the kraal had taken the cattle
and gone away, leaving the poor old woman, who was helpless from age and
infirmity, to perish of starvation or disease, as the case might be.
She had been sitting there for three days among the bodies when I found
her. I took her on to the next kraal, and gave the headman a blanket to
look after her, promising him another if I found her well when I came
back. I remember that he was much astonished at my parting with two
blankets for the sake of such a worthless old creature. 'Why did I not
leave her in the bush?' he asked. Those people carry the doctrine of
the survival of the fittest to its extreme, you see.

"It was the night after I had got rid of the old woman that I made my
first acquaintance with my friend yonder," and he nodded towar