re not possible to destroy him.

The adventure was a most desperate one. Umlimo was secreted in a cave
on the top of a huge kopje. At the base of this was a village where were
gathered two regiments, of a thousand men each, of his fighting men.

For miles around this village the country was patrolled by roving bands
of the enemy.

Against a white man reaching the cave and returning, the chances were a
hundred to one, and the difficulties of the journey are illustrated by
the fact that Burnham and Armstrong were unable to move faster than at
the rate of a mile an hour. In making the last mile they consumed three
hours. When they reached the base of the kopje in which Umlimo was
hiding, they concealed their ponies in a clump of bushes, and on hands
and knees began the ascent.

Directly below them lay the village, so close that they could smell the
odors of cooking from the huts, and hear, rising drowsily on the hot,
noonday air, voices of the warriors. For minutes at a time they lay as
motionless as the granite bowlders around or squirmed and crawled over
loose stones which a miss of hand or knee would have dislodged and sent
clattering into the village. After an hour of this tortuous climbing
the cave suddenly opened before them, and they beheld Umlimo.
Burnham recognized that to take him alive from his stronghold was an
impossibility, and that even they themselves would leave the place was
equally doubtful. So, obeying orders, he fired, killing the man who had
boasted he would turn the bullets of his enemies into water. The echo of
the shot aroused the village as would a stone hurled into an ant-heap.
In an instant the veldt below was black with running men, and as,
concealment being no longer possible, the white men rose to fly a great
shout of anger told them they were discovered. At the same moment two
women, returning from a stream where they had gone for water, saw the
ponies, and ran screaming to give the alarm. The race that followed
lasted two hours, for so quickly did the Kaffirs spread out on every
side that it was impossible for Burnham to gain ground in any one
direction, and he was forced to dodge, turn, and double. At one time
the white men were driven back to the very kopje from which the race had
started.

But in the end they evaded assegai and gunfire, and in safety reached
Buluwayo. This exploit was one of the chief factors in bringing the war
to a close. The Matabeles, finding their leader was on