ough the
stems of the mealies, we saw a party of my father's men pass searching
for us. They went on to a neighbouring kraal to ask if we had been seen,
and after that we saw them no more for awhile. At night we travelled
again; but, as fate would have it, we were met by an old woman, who
looked oddly at us but said nothing. After that we pushed on day and
night, for we knew that the old woman would tell the pursuers if she met
them; and so indeed it came about. On the third evening we reached some
mealie gardens, and saw that they had been trampled down. Among the
broken mealies we found the body of a very old man, as full of assegai
wounds as a porcupine with quills. We wondered at this, and went on a
little way. Then we saw that the kraal to which the gardens belonged
was burnt down. We crept up to it, and--ah! it was a sad sight for us
to see! Afterwards we became used to such sights. All about us lay
the bodies of dead people, scores of them--old men, young men, women,
children, little babies at the breast--there they lay among the burnt
huts, pierced with assegai wounds. Red was the earth with their blood,
and red they looked in the red light of the setting sun. It was as
though all the land had been smeared with the bloody hand of the Great
Spirit, of the Umkulunkulu. Baleka saw it and began to cry; she was
weary, poor girl, and we had found little to eat, only grass and green
corn.

"An enemy has been here," I said, and as I spoke I thought that I heard
a groan from the other side of a broken reed hedge. I went and looked.
There lay a young woman: she was badly wounded, but still alive, my
father. A little way from her lay a man dead, and before him several
other men of another tribe: he had died fighting. In front of the woman
were the bodies of three children; another, a little one, lay on her
body. I looked at the woman, and, as I looked, she groaned again, opened
her eyes and saw me, and that I had a spear in my hand.

"Kill me quickly!" she said. "Have you not tortured me enough?"

I said that I was a stranger and did not want to kill her.

"Then bring me water," she said; "there is a spring there behind the
kraal."

I called to Baleka to come to the woman, and went with my gourd to the
spring. There were bodies in it, but I dragged them out, and when the
water had cleared a little I filled the gourd and brought it back to the
woman. She drank deep, and her strength came back a little--the water
gave