gai through the beast's spine,
whereupon his roarings woke every living echo in the country side, and a
moment later a moving mass of dark forms could be seen gliding out from
the friendly shadows cast by the mountain, and stringing themselves
across the veldt in a vain effort to escape from their active foes.

Quickly Grenville sent up his rocket, and as the glittering thread of
fire traced its way across the heavens, Leigh and his eager party dashed
down the mountain, and followed the flying foe at speed across the
veldt, fearing from their apparent strength that the slavers might prove
too heavy for Amaxosa and his little band.

A mile from the rocks, finding their retreat cut off, the slavers formed
in square and stood at bay between two fires. Leigh called to them to
surrender, and lay down their arms, but the answer was hurled back in
the shape of a contemptuous curse and a rattling volley, which stretched
several of the Atagbondo upon the ground.

Not one moment after this could Leigh or Amaxosa restrain their men, who
simply flung themselves upon the very muzzles of the slavers. Nothing
short of a triple line of bayonets could have withstood such a
magnificently audacious charge, and in less time than it takes to tell,
the "People of the Stick" had literally wiped their hated foes off the
face of the earth.

Five minutes covered the whole ghastly affair from beginning to end, and
in that short space of time, Zero, in addition to the loss of his pet
tiger, had suffered to the extent of fifty-three men, whilst our friends
had on their side eleven killed outright and seventeen wounded, two of
these last, dying the next day.

"Haow Inkoos," said the Zulu chief approvingly; "it is indeed a brave
people, and fights well, almost as well as the Amazulu, but I would they
used the assegai or the axe and made cleaner work of it. Well, what is
done is done, my father, and these evil witch-finders will never trouble
us again," and the great Zulu philosophically took a mighty pinch of
snuff and offered one to Leigh in token of his entire satisfaction with
the result of the night's work.

As soon as the arms had been collected, and the wounded men properly
attended to, a council of war was held by the entire party, and under
the circumstances it was considered useless to try and impose deceptive
messages upon Zero, the more so as Kenyon himself was strongly of
opinion, that not the pigeons, but the jaguar, had in the