over the scattered trees,
and stunted bush, and long grass, and over the dried up river beds. Far
in the blue, so high the eye could scarcely mark them, vultures were
flying southward, where forty miles off kraals had been destroyed and
two hundred black carcasses were lying in the sun.

Under a group of tall straggling trees among the grass and low scrub,
on the banks of an almost dried up river bed, a small camp had been
pitched.

The party had lost their mules, and pending their recovery had already
been there seven days. The three cart loads of provisions they were
conveying to the large camp were drawn up under the trees and had a sail
thrown across them to form a shelter for some of the men; while on the
other side of the cleared and open space that formed the camp, a smaller
sail was thrown across two poles forming a rough tent; and away to the
left, a little cut off from the rest of the camp by some low bushes,
was the bell-shaped tent of the captain, under a tall tree. Before
the bell-shaped tent stood a short stunted tree; its thick white stem
gnarled and knotted; while two stunted misshapen branches, like arms,
stretched out on either side.

Before this tree, up and down, with his gun upon his arm, his head
bent and his eyes fixed on the ground, while the hot sun blazed on his
shoulders, walked a man.

Three or four fires were burning about the camp in different parts,
three cooking the mealies and rice which formed the diet of the men,
their stock of tinned meats having been exhausted; while the fourth,
which was watched by a native boy, contained the more appetising meal of
the Captain.

Most of the men were out of camp; the coloured boys having gone to fetch
the mules, which had been discovered in the hills a few miles off, and
were expected to arrive in the evening; and the white men had gone out
to see what game they could bring down with their guns to flavour
the mealie pots, or to reconnoitre the country; though all native
habitations had been destroyed within a radius of thirty miles, and the
land was as bare of black men as a child's hand of hair; and even the
beasts seemed to have vanished.

In the shade of the tent, formed of the canvas across two posts, lay
three white men, whose work it was to watch the pots and guard the camp.
They were all three Colonial Englishmen, and lay on the ground on their
stomachs, passing the time by carrying on a desultory conversation,
or taking a few whiffs