ace.

Dismounting, the party proceeded to examine the ruins, but found
nothing. The Kafirs were very taciturn, but the chief said, on being
pressed, that he believed it had been a mission station which wicked men
of other tribes had burned.

On the outbreak of this war some of the missionaries remained by their
people, others were compelled to leave them.

The station just passed had been deserted. At the one to which Hintza
was now leading Orpin the missionaries had remained at their post.
There he found them still holding out, but in deep dejection, for nearly
all their people had forsaken them, and gone to the war. Even while he
was talking with them, crowds of the bloodstained savages were returning
from the colony, laden with the spoils of the white man, and driving
thousands of his sheep and cattle before them. In these circumstances,
Stephen resolved to make the best of his way back to Salem. On telling
this to Hintza, that chief from some cause that he could not understand,
again offered to escort him. He would not accompany him personally, he
said, but he would send with him a band of his warriors, and he trusted
that on his arrival in the colony he would tell to the great white chief
(the Governor) that he, Hintza, did not aid the other Kafir tribes in
this war.

Stephen's eyes were opened by the last speech, and from that moment he
suspected Hintza of treachery.

He had no choice, however, but to accept the escort. On the very day
after they had started, they came to a spot where a terrible fight had
obviously taken place. The ground was strewn with the mangled corpses
of a party of white men, while the remains of waggons and other signs
showed that they had formed one of the bands of Dutch emigrants which
had already begun to quit the colony. The savages made ineffectual
attempts to conceal their delight at what they saw, and Orpin now felt
that he was in the power of enemies who merely spared his life in the
hope that he might afterwards be useful to them.

The band which escorted him consisted of several hundred warriors, a few
of whom were mounted on splendid horses stolen from the settlers. He
himself was also mounted on a good steed, but felt that it would be
madness to attempt to fly from them. On the second day they were
joined--whether by arrangement or not Orpin had no means of judging--by
a band of over a thousand warriors belonging to a different tribe from
his escort. As the tr