ause mysterious. The night wore
on, and soon all sounds were hushed but the rhythmic champ champ of the
ruminating cattle, and the occasional trumpet-like sneeze of a goat,
and, beneath the dark loom of the hills against the star-gemmed vault,
the tiger-wolves howled as they scented the flock which they dare not
approach. But it was upon the first faint streak of dawn that all the
alertness of those two watchers was concentrated, for that is the hour
invariably chosen by the savage foe for the sudden, swift, demoralising
rush, which shall overwhelm his doomed victims before they have time so
much as to seize their weapons in order to sell dearly their miserable
lives.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

MUTINY.

At the time when Dawes and Gerard were commencing their return journey
from Swaziland--having achieved, as we have said, a fairly successful
enterprise--there began to get about rumours with regard to a certain
tribe, or rather clan, which was credited with strange, and, to native
ideas, most gruesome and repellent practices. The principal of these
was a custom, or a rule rather, that each member of this weird
confraternity should drink a portion of the blood of some human being
slain by him. It need not be an enemy slain in battle, or even an enemy
at all. Any one would do, whether man, woman, or child. From this
practice the clan was said to take its name--Igazipuza--"blood-drink,"
i.e. "Blood-drinkers."

Rumour could not yet quite locate its habitation nor its numerical
strength. Whether, again, it inhabited the grim natural fastnesses of
the Lebombo range, or the hill-country just south of the Pongolo, was
equally uncertain. What was certain, however, was that its sporadic
raids, and the ruthless massacre of all who fell in its way, had about
depopulated the strip of debatable borderland between the Swazi and the
Zulu countries. Kraals were deserted, and crops left standing, as the
inhabitants fled northward in blind panic at the mere rumour of the
approach of the Igazipuza, so complete was the terror inspired by the
very name of this ferocious and predatory clan.

Its chief was one Ingonyama, a Zulu, to which nationality belonged the
bulk if not the whole of its members. Indeed, on this consideration, if
on no other, would Dawes have scouted the imputed blood-drinking custom
as absolutely mythical, for no one has a greater horror of coming in
contact with human blood that he has not himself shed than the