mighty slabs of red
flesh--the fierce, dark figures seated around--the gleam of weapons in
the firelight.

[The unwonted meal. In former days, meat was very sparingly eaten among
the Amaxosa races, milk and mealies being the staple articles of diet.
When employed on such a scale as above described, it had a curiously
stimulating effect upon a people habitually almost vegetarians. Hence
it was looked upon as a preparation for war.]

At length even the very bones are picked clean, and thrown over the
feasters' shoulders to the dogs. Then voices are raised and once more
the kraal becomes a scene of wild and excited stir. Roused by a copious
indulgence in an unwonted stimulant, the Kafirs leap to their feet.
Weapons are brandished, and the firelight glows upon assegai points and
rolling eyeballs. A wild war-song rises upon the air; then falling into
circular formation, the whole gathering of excited warriors join in,
beating time with their feet--clashing the hefts of their weapons
together. The weird rhythm is led off in a high, wailing key by a kind
of _choragus_, then taken up by the rest, rising louder and louder, and
the thunder of hundreds of pairs of feet keeping regular time, make the
very earth itself tremble, and the quivering rattle of assegai hafts is
echoed back from the dark, brooding hills, and the volume of the fierce
and threatening song, with its final chorus of "Ha--ha--ha!" becomes as
the mad roaring of a legion of wild beasts, ravaging for blood. Worked
up to a degree of incontrollable excitement, the savages foam at the
lips and their eyeballs seem to start from the sockets, as turning to
each other they go through the pantomime of encountering and slaying an
imaginary foe; and even in the background a number of women have formed
up behind the dancing warriors and with more than all the barbarity of
the latter are playing at beating out the brains of the wounded with
knob-kerries. The roar and rattle of the hideous performance goes up to
the heavens, cleaving the solemn silence of the sweet African night.
The leaping, bounding, perspiring shapes, look truly devilish in the red
firelight. The excitement of the fierce savages seems to have reached a
pitch little short of downright frenzy. Yet it shows no signs of
abating. _For they have eaten meat_.

CHAPTER SIX.

HLANGANI, THE HERALD.

Suddenly, as if by magic, the wild war-dance ceased, and the fierce,
murderous rhythm was reduced