th
weapon-haft upon hard hide shield, amid the streaming dust, made up a
picture--as terrific as it was formidable--of the ferocious and pent-up
savagery of a hitherto unconquered, and in its own estimation,
unconquerable race.

A musky, foetid effluvium hung in the air, the mingled result of all
this gathering of perspiring, moving humanity, and vast heaps of
decaying bones, already decomposing in the fierce sunlight there on the
killing place just outside the huge kraal at its eastern end, where a
great number of the King's cattle had been slaughtered on the previous
day in order to feast the regiments mustered for war--while myriads of
buzzing flies combined to render the surcharged atmosphere doubly
pestilential. Seated together, in a group apart, the principal indunas
of the nation were gathered in earnest conference, while, further on,
the whole company of _izanusi_, or war-doctors, arrayed in the hideous
and disgusting trappings of their order, were giving a final eye to the
removal of huge _mutt_ bowls, containing some concoction equally hideous
and disgusting, from the secluded and mysterious precincts wherein such
had been brewed: for the whole army was about to be doctored for war.

Now a fresh stir arose among the excited armed multitude gathered there,
and all eyes were turned to the eastward. Away over the rolling plain,
from the direction of the flat-topped Intaba-'Zinduna, a moving mass was
approaching, and as it drew nearer the gleam of spears and the sheen of
hide shields flickered above the dark cloud. It was the Insukamini
regiment, for whose presence those here had been waiting in order to
render the master complete. As it swung up the slope, an old war-song
of Umalikazi came volleying through the air to those here gathered:

"Yaingahlabi
Leyo'mkonzi!
Yai ukufa!"

[Note: "That Bull did not gore (merely). It was death!"]

With full-throated roar the vast gathering took it up, re-echoing the
fell chorus until it became indescribable in its strength of volume, and
soon, the newly arrived regiment, over a thousand strong, filed in, and
fell into line, amid the thunder of its vociferous welcome.

Then the company of _ixanuri_ came forward, and for some time these were
busy as they went along the lines, administering to each warrior a
morsel of the horrible hotch-potch they had been concocting, and which
was designed to render him, if not quite impervious to the enemy's
missiles, at any