s concluded that it was the
shield of a Zulu, and therefore believed that it belonged to a man who
must be on watch there. As long as daylight existed, Hans continued to
examine this shield, and finding that no movement whatever occurred, he
fancied the owner of the shield was either killed, or it had been
dropped by some man in his retreat. When darkness spread on all around,
Hans as silently as possible moved through the bush, and being desirous
of examining the Zulu's shield, made his way towards it. It was not
without difficulty that Hans reached the exact spot on the opposite
slope on which was the shield, for it is very difficult to keep to any
particular line in a dense forest. He, however, reached the spot, and
there found a Zulu dead. The man had been shot through the body, and
had evidently sought this retired locality to die quietly.

When Hans saw the thick skin tails that the man wore round his body and
neck, and the shield which had proved so useless against the Dutchmen's
bullets, he thought that these articles might be of some use to himself.
Divesting the body of these scanty articles of attire, he fastened them
on himself, and found that they in a great measure covered him from the
neck to the knee. Knowing the extreme danger of his position, and the
risk he ran of being discovered and at once overwhelmed by numbers, Hans
decided on a bold and novel expedient. Divesting himself of his coat,
he rolled this up, and fastened it inside the Kaffir's shield. His
trousers he cut off at the knee, to which point the tails of the dead
Kaffir reached. His felt hat he also fastened up with the coat, and was
thus bare-headed and bare-legged, whilst his body was concealed by the
Kaffir's strips of skin. In the ravine below him there were some pools
of water, in which was dark black mud. To these pools Hans quietly
stole, and walking into the water, lifted out handfuls of the mud, with
which he covered his face, hair, legs, and hands. Thus besmeared with
black, there was no sign of his white complexion, and if viewed from a
distance he might easily have been taken for a Zulu even by day. By
night, however, it was impossible to distinguish him, and this he
concluded would be the case, although he had no looking-glass to guide
him. His gun he carried with the shield, so as not to attract
attention, and his powder-horn and bullets, being slung over his
shoulder, were covered by the long skin strips that fel