e been in many a hard-fought battle since
that of which I am telling. But never have I seen so vast a number of
slain as that evening at the Place of the Three Rifts. They lay, here
in heaps, there thickly strewn in twos and threes. Many of my kindred
and friends fell there, and of our captains and valiant leaders not a
few, while two whole regiments of our incorporated slaves had gone down
before the Zulu spears. Far and wide they lay, and of the enemy the
number of slain was as great as ourselves, and among them some of our
older men recognised many whom they had known before our flight from
Tshaka. But among the chiefs and leaders we found not the body of
Mhlangana nor that of Silwane.

Thus we returned, weary with the flight and the pursuit, but with pride,
and joy, and triumph in our hearts, for we had beaten back the most
formidable of our foes, and of whom we had gone in dread ever since we
had been a nation. And already, though the day was nearly done, vast
clouds of vultures were gathering in the heavens, which beholding, many
laughed exultantly, remembering the presage in the Song of the Shield.
But as the sun sank below the rim of the world, again the great smooth
cliffs of the mountain face glowed blood-red, even as I alone had seen
them glow the evening before the last, and so wonderful was this omen
that many cried out that the mountain itself was bleeding afresh for
those who lay slain beneath it, and that it was a place of _tagati_.
And, indeed, who shall gainsay this, remembering the strange things
which it had witnessed; yet was such magic good towards us though evil
to our foes, since but for the heartening result of that wild, sweet,
mysterious song, and the _muti_ of the white shield, even the King's
strategy, perfect as it was, could hardly have availed to save the life
of a nation. And this, and nothing less, is what was accomplished that
day at the Place of the Three Rifts.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

LALUSINI'S CHOICE.

"So, Untuswa! My commands were those of a general gone mad?"

"Not so, Serpent of Wisdom," I answered, "for the eyes of one who sits
aloft see farther than those who watch below."

"Yet the order must have seemed passing strange. _Whau_! but these bore
their part as cubs of the lion indeed," went on the King, his
snuff-spoon arrested in mid-air, as he rolled his eyes in pride over the
assemblage of our warriors, who, squatted in rank, were resting after
their hard-w