As we marched forth thus to war the sky was by degrees blackening up for
rain, and a deep, distant roll of thunder was heard from time to time
creeping over the ridge of the world. The old women, whose furrowed
faces and ragged top-knots stuck over the kraal palisades as they
watched us deploy into rank, were dumb and shaking with apathy and fear,
for in them still lived an ingrained terror of the might of Tshaka,
whereas we young people had almost forgotten it, and with us it was a
mere tradition. Of young women and girls there seemed to be none in the
kraal, or if there were they were keeping in hiding. And though my
thoughts now were all of war, I could not refrain from looking backward
to try and obtain a glimpse of Lalusini. But in vain.

Not backward should I have looked, however, but forward; for now, as we
turned the corner of a hill, a sound as of singing was heard in front.
_Whau_! There on a little rise stood Lalusini herself. She was arrayed
in her beautiful beaded dress, and wore her heavy golden ornaments.
Behind her came a great number of girls, all carrying green boughs in
their hands and singing songs of war and of victory, as was their wont
to hearten us when we set out upon any expedition of weight and
importance.

As we came near, Lalusini drew a little apart from the rest, and
standing thus upon the summit of the rise, in full view of the whole
army, her proudly-reared head and splendid form thrown out by the livid
thundercloud behind the hill, she lifted up her voice and sang, this
time not in the dark tongue of the Bakoni, but in pure Zulu. And the
wild sweetness of her voice was of the sort which renders warriors mad.

"A song of the Shield,
In the battle's ring!
A droop of the Shield
Guards the life of a King.

"Proud tuft, proud hide,
Which the White Bull gave!
Now the White Bull's pride
Shall a nation save.

"Burnt kraal, stamped field--
Thick the vultures soar,
And laugh o'er the Shield
In the van of war.

"Rolls the battle song
On the war-wave's crest,
Bringing might to the strong,
To the weak ones--rest.

"Great is small,
Little is great.
Who may fall
In the coming Fate.

"Who may fear
On the death-soaked field?
None who hear
The Song of The Shield!"

Now the last words were taken up by her band of attendant girls, but the
voices of these were soon lost in the grea