hen I understood;
the Impi was following the track of the waggons, which, in all
probability, belonged to a party of emigrant Boers.

The spoor of the waggons ran in the direction I wished to go, so I
followed it. About a mile further on I came to the crest of a rise, and
there, about five furlongs away, I saw the waggons drawn up in a rough
laager upon the banks of the river. There, too, were my own waggons
trekking down the slope towards them.

In another five minutes I was there. The Boers--for Boers they
were--were standing about outside the little laager watching the
approach of my two waggons. I called to them, and they turned and saw
me. The very first man my eyes fell on was a Boer named Hans Botha, whom
I had known well years ago in the Cape. He was not a bad specimen of his
class, but a very restless person, with a great objection to authority,
or, as he expressed it, "a love of freedom." He had joined a party of
the emigrant Boers some years before, but, as I learned presently,
had quarrelled with its leader, and was now trekking away into the
wilderness to found a little colony of his own. Poor fellow! It was his
last trek.

"How do you do, Meinheer Botha?" I said to him in Dutch.

The man looked at me, looked again, then, startled out of his Dutch
stolidity, cried to his wife, who was seated on the box of the waggon--

"Come here, Frau, come. Here is Allan Quatermain, the Englishman, the
son of the 'Predicant.' How goes it, Heer Quatermain, and what is the
news down in the Cape yonder?"

"I don't know what the news is in the Cape, Hans," I answered, solemnly;
"but the news here is that there is a Zulu Impi upon your spoor and
within two miles of the waggons. That I know, for I have just shot two
of their sentries," and I showed him my empty gun.

For a moment there was a silence of astonishment, and I saw the bronzed
faces of the men turn pale beneath their tan, while one or two of the
women gave a little scream, and the children crept to their sides.

"Almighty!" cried Hans, "that must be the Umtetwa Regiment that Dingaan
sent against the Basutus, but who could not come at them because of the
marshes, and so were afraid to return to Zululand, and struck north to
join Mosilikatze."

"Laager up, Carles! Laager up for your lives, and one of you jump on a
horse and drive in the cattle."

At this moment my own waggons came up. Indaba-zimbi was sitting on the
box of the first, wrapped in a blanket. I