it was the preliminary rumble
of the coming storm--the battle-song of the warlike and now hostile
Gaika clans.

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE WAR-DANCE AT NTEYA'S KRAAL.

The sun has just touched the western horizon, bathing in a parting flood
of red and gold the round spurs of the rolling hills and the straggling
clusters of dome-shaped huts which lie dotted about the valley in
irregular order for a couple of miles. There is a continuous hum of
voices in the air, mingling with the low of cattle, and the whole place
seems to be teeming with human life. Indeed, such is the case; for this
kraal--or rather collection of kraals--is the head centre of Nteya's
location and the residence of that chief himself.

Each group of huts owns its cattle inclosure, whose dark space, girdled
with a strong thorn palisade, is now filled with the many-coloured forms
of its horned denizens. It is milking time, and the metallic squirt of
liquid into the zinc pails rises rhythmic above the deep hum of the
monotonous chant of the milkers. Women step forth from the kraal gates
balancing the full pails on their heads, their ochre-smeared bodies
shining like new flower pots, while their lords, _reim_ in hand, set to
work to catch a fresh cow--for among Kafirs milking is essentially man's
work. About the huts squat other groups of natives, men smoking their
queer shaped, angular pipes, and exchanging _indaba_ [Gossip or news];
women also smoking, and busy with their household affairs, whether of
the culinary or nursery order; round bellied, beady-eyed children
tumbling over each other in their romps, and dogs ever on the prowl to
pick up a stray bone, or to obtain a surreptitious lick at the interior
of a cooking-pot; and over all the never-ending flow of voices, the deep
bass of the men blending with the clearer feminine treble, but all
rhythmic and pleasing, for the language and voices of the Bantu races
are alike melodious. The blue reek of wood-smoke rising upon the
evening air, mingles with that pungent odour of grease and kine
inseparable from every Kafir kraal.

That something unwonted is impending here to-night is manifest. Men
would start suddenly from beside their fellows and gaze expectantly out
upon the approaches to the kraal, or now and again the heads of a whole
group would turn in eager scrutiny of the surrounding _veldt_. For
strung out upon the hillsides in twos and threes, or in parties of ten
or a dozen, some mounted, s