king and
yelling. The wind had fanned the flames so that the kraal was now one
mass of red fire and whirling smoke-clouds. The women and children,
panic-stricken, were fleeing wildly, rushing headlong upon our spears.
But just then the fighting Basutu, massing into a body, charged
furiously out of the kraal on the side I was attacking. With their
heads lowered, emitting from their teeth a succession of the most shrill
and strident whistles, striking to right and to left with their assegais
and battle-axes, on they came. Not even the King's troops could have
charged more impetuously, more unswervingly. _Whau_! In a moment they
were in our midst. In a moment we had closed up around them. Their
whole fighting strength was here, and we had hemmed it in. In a moment
they were all broken up into furious struggling groups--and how they
fought, how we fought! It was silence then. No man spoke--no man
shouted. You could hear only the gasp of laboured breathing, the stamp
of striving feet, the jarring crash of shields and weapons, the dull
thump of a falling body, the crackling roar of the blazing kraal, whence
clouds of smoke were floating across our faces and blinding our eyes so
that we could hardly see each other, and struck and stabbed wildly at
random, to the peril of friend as well as of foe. But it could not
last--we were too many, too invincible. We stood stupidly staring at
each other, swaying, tottering with exhaustion and excitement, for the
fray had been fierce. Before, around us, lay heaps of weltering
corpses, hacked and battered, the blood welling from scores of
spear-stabs. These we ripped according to our custom; those of the
enemy, that is; for of our own warriors there were also heaps of slain;
indeed, the Basutu had fought like cornered lions. No prayer for mercy
was upon their lips. Brave, fierce, defiant to the last, they had
fallen.

"And now above the crackling roar of the flames and the wild, fierce,
triumphant shout which swelled to the heavens from our victorious
throats came the doleful shrieking of women, who saw their little ones
speared or flung into the flames, who themselves lay beneath the sharp
kiss of the spear-blade; for we Zulus, when we see red, spare no living
thing. And we saw red that day--ah, yes, we saw red. Ha! By the time
a man could have counted fifty from the moment the fighting had ceased
not one who had inhabited that kraal, even to the last dog, was left
al