e the laager was like the back of an angry
porcupine, for from it we gathered nearly fourteen hundred heavy
assegais. For the rest, the two men lay dead where they had fallen,
their faces turned towards the sky, each of them pierced through by a
spear, and out of our little number twelve others were wounded, though
none of them died of their wounds. Not a woman or a child was touched.

Outside the laager there was a sight to see, for there on the red
grass, some lying singly and some in heaps, were over four hundred Zulu
soldiers, most of them dead, and how many wounded they carried away with
them I cannot tell.

Now we saw that the Kaffirs were collecting our cattle, and about twenty
men under Potgieter saddled up and rode out to try and recapture them,
since without oxen to draw the waggons we were helpless. Till sunset
they followed them, killing many, but being so few they could not
recapture the cattle, and in the end were obliged to return empty
handed. Ralph went with his party, and, because of an act of mercy which
he did then it came about in the end that Suzanne was found and many
lives were saved. So plenteously do our good deeds bear fruit, even in
this world.

Yes, you may have thought that this tale of the battle of Vetchkop was
only put in here because it is one of the great experiences of an old
woman's life. But it is not so; it has all to do with the story of Ralph
and of my daughter Suzanne.

CHAPTER XXVI

HOW GAASHA BROUGHT GOOD LUCK

When Ralph returned from pursuing the Zulus, as he drew near to the
laager he lingered a little behind the others, for he was very weary of
all this work of killing, also the flesh-wound that he had got from
the Kaffir's spear having stiffened pained him when his horse cantered.
There was no more danger now, for the savages were gone, leaving their
path marked by the corpses of those who had been shot down by the Boers,
or of men who had limped away wounded either to die upon the road or to
be killed by their comrades because their case was hopeless. Following
this black trail of death backwards Ralph rode on, and when he was
within a hundred yards of the waggons halted his horse to study the
scene. He thought that he would never see such another, although, in
fact, that at the Blood River when we conquered the Zulu king, Dingaan,
was even more strange and terrible.

The last crimson rays of the setting sun were flooding the plain with
light. Blood-red they