murmurs and protests,
had knocked off fully twenty miles by noon, and at four o'clock insisted
upon a fresh start being made, keeping the pace easier, however, until
evening came on.

The three aged Mormons were carried by the Zanzibaris in hammocks, so
that these formed no obstacle whatever to their forced marching.

Soon the moon came up in all her radiant loveliness, casting a weird and
silvery glamour over the wide expanse of veldt on every side, and on the
distant horizon there ever hung the blazing, star-like cone of the
distant mountain-peak, for which the leaders steered. And so forward
through the livelong night they pressed, faint yet pursuing, and when at
dawn of day all crept into cover, and threw their wearied bodies on the
ground, Amaxosa, who had been acting as whipper-in, brought up to the
front the glad news that only twenty men had so far fallen by the way.

The mountain was distant now but twenty miles, and all felt relatively
happy, for it was a shrewd count that three thousand naked savages, even
though led by Zero, would not make very much of a figure when they found
themselves between two bands, each of five hundred desperate whites,
armed for the most part, with quick-firing rifles.

Grenville, Kenyon, and Amaxosa had watched and slept by turns, the last
watch before night being the Zulu's, and when his friends woke up they
found the chief excessively uneasy in his mind regarding the weather,
which looked to him like storm.

However, the party set out as soon as the moon began to rise, and had
arrived within a mile of the mountain, and had despatched the great Zulu
on ahead to scout, before the storm broke upon them.

The heavens by this time were transformed into an enormous mass of
dense, black, lowering clouds, which had sunk until they almost shrouded
the waning moon herself, which as yet, however, sailed along in a narrow
glorious belt of glittering azure, looking far more lovely from contrast
with the frowning bank of clouds which hung above her, and which
stretched away in every direction ominous in their sullen death-like
quietude.

The Zulu had not left the main body above five minutes when the
inky-looking vault right over head was suddenly rent in twain as if some
giant hand had ripped the veil of clouds, and heaven and earth seemed
fairly to meet for one brief instant in a dazzling, blazing glare of
lurid light, which flooded veldt and mountain, rock and river, for miles
aro