. Hardly a half-hour that the bugle was not sounding--either at
the Police camps, or at those of the regular troops now being rapidly
moved to the front, and scarcely a day went by but a corps of mounted
burghers or volunteers passed through, _en route_ for the seat of war.
The store keepers and Government contractors laughed and waxed fat.

All sorts of rumours were in the air, and as usual wildly contradictory.
The white forces in the Transkei were in imminent peril of
annihilation. The Gcaleka country had been swept clear from end to end.
Kreli was sueing for peace. Kreli had declared himself strong enough
to whip all the whites sent against him, and then with the help of the
Gaikas and Hlambis to invade and ravage the Eastern Province of the
Colony. The Gaikas were on the eve of rising, and making common cause
with their Gcaleka brethren. The Gaikas had not the slightest wish for
war. The Gaikas were never more insolent and threatening. The Gaikas
were thoroughly cowed and lived in mortal dread of being attacked
themselves. Thus Rumour many tongued.

The while events had taken place at the seat of war. The Kafirs had
attacked the Ibeka, a hastily fortified trading post in the Transkei, in
great force, and after many hours of determined fighting had been
repulsed with great loss, repulsed by a mere handful of the Mounted
Police, who, with a Fingo levy, garrisoned the place. Kreli's principal
kraal on the Xora River had been carried by assault and burnt to the
ground,--the Gcaleka chieftain, with his sons and councillors, narrowly
escaping falling into the hands of the Colonial forces--and several
other minor engagements had been fought. But the powerful Gaika and
Hlambi tribes located throughout British Kaffraria, though believed to
be restless and plotting, continued to "sit still," as if watching the
turn of events, and night after night upon the distant hills the signal
fires of the savages gleamed beneath the midnight sky in flashing, lurid
tongues, speaking their mysterious, awesome messages from the Amatola to
the Bashi.

Hoste--who, with other of his neighbours, was occupied with the armed
tending of his stock in _laager_--was growing daily more restless and
discontented. It was cruelly rough on him, he declared, to be pinned
down like that. He wanted to go and have his share of the fun. The war
might be brought to an end any day, and he would have seen nothing of
it. He would try and make som