having succeeded in my end, for that great chief whom I had
gone out to visit had hearkened to my words. As the light broke I
reached the town, and lo! it was a blackness and a desolation.

"Here is the footmark of Dingaan," I said to myself, and walked to and
fro, groaning heavily. Presently I found a knot of men who were of the
people that had escaped the slaughter, hiding in the mealie-fields lest
the Slayers should return, and from them I drew the story. I listened
in silence, for, my father, I was grown old in misfortune; then I asked
where were the Slayers of the king? They replied that they did not know;
the soldiers had gone up the Ghost Mountain after the Wolf-Brethren
and Nada the Lily, and from the forest had come a howling of beasts and
sounds of war; then there was silence, and none had been seen to return
from the mountain, only all day long the vultures hung over it.

"Let us go up the mountain," I said.

At first they feared, because of the evil name of the place; but in the
end they came with me, and we followed on the path of the impi of the
Slayers and guessed all that had befallen it. At length we reached
the knees of stone, and saw the place of the great fight of the
Wolf-Brethren. All those who had taken part in that fight were now but
bones, because the vultures had picked them every one, except Galazi,
for on the breast of Galazi lay the old wolf Deathgrip, that was yet
alive. I drew near the body, and the great wolf struggled to his feet
and ran at me with bristling hair and open jaws, from which no sound
came. Then, being spent, he rolled over dead.

Now I looked round seeking the axe Groan-Maker among the bones of
the slain, and did not find it and the hope came into my heart that
Umslopogaas had escaped the slaughter. Then we went on in silence to
where I knew the cave must be, and there by its mouth lay the body of
a man. I ran to it--it was Umslopogaas, wasted with hunger, and in his
temple was a great wound and on his breast and limbs were many other
wounds. Moreover, in his hand he held another hand--a dead hand, that
was thrust through a hole in the rock. I knew its shape well--it was the
little hand of my child, Nada the Lily.

Now I understood, and, bending down, I felt the heart of Umslopogaas,
and laid the down of an eagle upon his lips. His heart still stirred and
the down was lifted gently.

I bade those with me drag the stone, and they did so with toil. Now
the light flowed