here like buck in a pitfall, let us go out now and fall upon
the Impi while it sleeps."

This proposition excited some discussion, but in the end only one man
could be found to vote for it. Boers as a rule lack that dash which
makes great soldiers; such forlorn hopes are not in their line, and
rather than embark upon them they prefer to take their chance in a
laager, however poor that chance may be. For my own part I firmly
believe that had my advice been taken we should have routed the Zulus.
Seventeen desperate white men, armed with guns, would have produced no
small effect upon a camp of sleeping savages. But it was not taken, so
it is no use talking about it.

After that we went back to our posts, and slowly the weary night wore
on towards the dawn. Only those who have watched under similar
circumstances while they waited the advent of almost certain and cruel
death, can know the torturing suspense of those heavy hours. But they
went somehow, and at last in the far east the sky began to lighten,
while the cold breath of dawn stirred the tilts of the waggons and
chilled me to the bone. The fat Dutchwoman behind me woke with a yawn,
then, remembering all, moaned aloud, while her teeth chattered with
cold and fear. Hans Botha went to his waggon and got a bottle of peach
brandy, from which he poured into a tin pannikin, giving us each a stiff
dram, and making attempts to be cheerful as he did so. But his affected
jocularity only seemed to depress his comrades the more. Certainly it
depressed me.

Now the light was growing, and we could see some way into the mist which
still hung densely over the river, and now--ah! there it was. From the
other side of the hill, a thousand yards or more from the laager, came
a faint humming sound. It grew and grew till it gathered to a chant--the
awful war chant of the Zulus. Soon I could catch the words. They were
simple enough:

"We shall slay, we shall slay! Is it not so, my brothers? Our spears
shall blush blood-red. Is it not so, my brothers? For we are the
sucklings of Chaka, blood is our milk, my brothers. Awake, children
of the Umtetwa, awake! The vulture wheels, the jackal sniffs the air;
Awake, children of the Umtetwa--cry aloud, ye ringed men: There is
the foe, we shall slay them. Is it not so, my brothers? _S'gee! S'gee!
S'gee!_"

Such is a rough translation of that hateful chant which to this very day
I often seem to hear. It does not look particularly imposing on pap