nch a casting assegai, which could not have missed, when, hard as our
case was, I remembered that it was not fitting that one of the brother
Kings of Zululand should be slain from behind, pierced through the back.

"Turn, Great Great One, brother of Dingane!" I cried.

Mhlangana turned; and, as he did so, zip! went my casting spear. Then
he laughed. It was quivering in his shield--the great white shield
which was like my own.

"Take back thy spear, thou whom I know not!" he cried; and I, it was all
I could do to catch the assegai as he had done, or, rather, to turn it
off.

"Ha! bearer of the other white shield!" I cried. "It may be that my
day is done, but so is thine." And I hurled at him another assegai.
This struck him in the side, wounding him, for I saw the blood flow.

"_Bayete_, brother King!" he called out mockingly. And then I knew that
he mistook me for Umzilikazi.

We got within striking distance, but he was a little above me, and,
covered by his shield, I could hardly reach him. I sprang upward,
driving at him with a long-handled spear, and our shields clashed, as we
met in full shock. _Whau_! they crashed together, the two white
shields, but I felt I had wounded him again, and he began to totter. A
moment more, and Dingane would have reigned sole King, when, I know not
how it came about, but the whole crowd of Mhlangana's picked men swept
furiously down upon us, rolling us back, themselves pressed down by the
other half of my regiment of Scorpions driving them from above. Then I
could no longer see Mhlangana, for the gully was filled with men,
fighting, struggling, stabbing, and the air was resonant with groans and
hissing, and the slapping of the hide shields together, as warriors met
in mortal shock, each fighting now to his own hand.

But the pursuers had by this time become the pursued; for, in turn, a
great body of the Zulu force had surged up the ridge, and was driving
The Scorpions before it. We were hemmed in completely now. We were cut
off from the pass, through which the bulk of us might have escaped--
others covering the retreat--for below, the other horn of Mhlangana's
force had closed in, and was merely waiting--waiting grimly until we
should be driven down upon its spears. Then the Amandebeli would be no
longer a nation.

In despair, still keeping our ranks close, we retreated slowly, fighting
our way step by step, up the outermost of the three rifts. We could not
esca