presently, led by Amaxosa, they went right through the
slaver crowd, cutting them down on every hand, and driving all that were
left of the wretched men pell-mell into the town, which both bands
entered simultaneously.

Kenyon then bethought him of the prisoner, and, taking Grenville back,
both men turned to ascend the hill, and relieve the poor girl from her
painful and dangerous position. Still as a statue she stood, with her
head drooping forward upon her breast, and for one moment the thought
that some stray shot had struck her crossed painfully the minds of both;
but when they had arrived within twenty yards of her position the girl
heard them, and quickly raised her head, her beautiful face all wet with
tears, and eloquent with voiceless prayers to heaven. Staggering back,
as if struck by a shot, Grenville, to Kenyon's utter astonishment,
dropped his gun, and threw up his hands in a frenzy of terror.

"God in heaven!" he screamed, "Dora, sister Dora! or am I mad, indeed."

Well might poor Grenville think his brain had turned. After all Zero's
wicked boasts of crime, and all his cousin's bitter sorrow for his
long-dead wife, how could he believe that _there before him, in the
flesh, beautiful as when first he saw her in East Utah, stood Dora, Lady
Drelincourt_, dressed in deep black, with a pure white cross upon her
breast, and fastened to a martyr's stake, in the darkest part of darkest
Equatorial Africa?

"Dick!" she cried, "dear Dick Grenville, tell me, does my darling
husband live, or have I lost him, too. Tell me, tell me! I beseech
you, for the love of God."

Pulling himself together, as the music of those well-known accents
reached his ears, Grenville at once ran to the poor girl's side, and
quickly unbound the chain which fixed her to the cruel stake, speaking
meanwhile soothing words of hope and joy, and peace on earth, whilst
Kenyon, hearing that her boy was in the town, went off, like an arrow
from the bow, to make certain of the safety of his friend and patron's
little son.

In every direction, as the detective entered the town, he found blazing
houses, and dead and dying men, but the Atagbondo had behaved
splendidly, and set a lesson to their evil white-skinned foes, in this
respect, that on woman or on child they laid no hand, but every man they
found died by the spear or by "the stick." One ghastly sight, however,
did Kenyon see, for absolutely pinned to a burning house by a Zulu
assega