around, swept two men to the earth, finishing off by swinging it with a
hollow thud hard against the side of Sivuma's head, bringing the leader
to his knees.

So rapid had been Jambula's movements, so unexpected withal, that before
the warriors had quite understood what had happened, he had hewn his way
through them; and, still holding the pole, had plunged to the water's
edge and sprang far out into the stream. But swift as he had been, he
had not been swift enough, for even as he leaped, quite half a dozen
assegais out of the shower hurled at him transfixed his body; and as he
struck the water, and was immediately whirled away by the current, I
knew that the frame which the waters swept down was that of a dead man.

This, then, _Nkose_, was the end of Jambula, my slave and faithful
follower, and his end was a noble one, and worthy of the bravest warrior
who ever lived, for he endured much horrible torture, and of himself
plunged into the embrace of death rather than betray his chief; and
further, striking down in that death two or more of those who guarded
him armed; and if there exists a braver or more valiant form of death
for a warrior than this, why, _Nkose_, I, who am now very old, have
never heard of it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE RUMBLE OF THE ELEPHANT.

I was now left alone, and having lain hidden a few days--for that
_impi_, though it made good search all around my hiding-place, failed to
find me--I began to travel southward again. And as I travelled I
thought how once before I had fled from our people nationless and an
outcast, all for the sake of a woman, as I told you in that former tale
when I won the King's Assegai; and now a second time I thus fled--a
second time a woman had been the cause of my undoing; and yet it might
be otherwise, for I was not an old man then, and who may tell what time
holds in store?

And now, _Nkose_, I must leap over a great deal that happened during my
flight, for if I were to dwell upon everything, and all I went through,
and the peoples I fell in among--how some entertained me friendly and
well, and how from others--being but one man and alone--I had to fly as
fast and as far as from Umzilikazi's hunting dogs; how too, from others
again, who, seeming friendly, yet plotted against me the direst
treachery, from which I escaped as by a flash of time--all this, I say,
were I to dwell upon, I should never get to my story, which being bound
up with the fate of mighty natio