_!" cried the Zulu, the ferocity which blazed from his countenance
fading into a look of profound contempt. "They show their backs, the
cowards. Well, let them run. Ha! they have all gone," he added,
noticing that the others, too, had sneaked quietly away. "_Whau_!"

The last ejaculation was a staccato one of astonishment. For he
recognised in Gerard his rescuer of the morning.

"I say, friend, you floored those two chappies neatly. By Jove, you
did!"

Both turned towards the voice. It proceeded from a light buggy, which
stood drawn up on the road behind them. In this were seated a young man
some three or four years older than himself, and an extremely pretty
girl, at sight of whom Gerard looked greatly confused, remembering the
circumstances under which she had beheld him.

"It was an A1 row," continued the former. "We saw the whole of it.
_Allamaghtaag_! but I envy the way in which you spun those two to the
right and left."

"Well, I had to," answered Gerard. "It was five to one. That's not
fair play, you know." And his eyes met the blue ones of the young lady
in the buggy, and were inclined to linger there, the more so that the
said blue orbs seemed to beam an approval that was to the last degree
heterodox in one of the tenderer sex and therefore, theoretically, an
uncompromising opponent of deeds of violence.

"Who's your long-legged friend?" went on the young man, proceeding to
address a query or two to the Zulu, in the latter's own language, but in
a tone that struck even Gerard as a trifle peremptory. "He's a surly
dog, anyhow," he continued, annoyed at the curtness of the man's answer.

"He's a Zulu--a real Zulu--and his name's Sobuza," said Gerard.

"A Zulu, is he? Do you know him, then?" was the surprised rejoinder.

"I didn't before this morning. But I happen to have got him out of one
little difficulty already to-day. I never expected to see him again,
though."

"The deuce you did! Was he engaged in the congenial pastime of
head-breaking then, too?"

"N-no. The fact is--" And then Gerard blushed and stuttered, for he saw
no way out of trumpeting his own achievements, and somehow there was
something about those blue eyes that made him shrink instinctively from
anything approaching this. "The truth is he got into difficulties in
the river--a bit of string or something twisted round his legs in the
water so that he couldn't swim, and I helped him out."

The girl's face lighted u