horn will pass
between us and the right flank of the Isigqosa. Oh! awake, awake,
Elephant! Are you asleep with Mameena in a hut? Unloose your spears,
Child of the King, and at them as they mount the slope. Behold!" he went
on, "it is the Son of Dunn that begins the battle! Did I not tell you
that we must look to the white men to show us the way? Peep through your
tube, Macumazahn, and tell me what passes."

So I "peeped," and, the telescope which John Dunn had kindly left with
me being good though small, saw everything clearly enough. He rode
up almost to the point of the left horn of the Usutu, waving a white
handkerchief and followed by his small force of police and Natal Kafirs.
Then from somewhere among the Usutu rose a puff of smoke. Dunn had been
fired at.

He dropped the handkerchief and leapt to the ground. Now he and his
police were firing rapidly in reply, and men fell fast among the Usutu.
They raised their war shout and came on, though slowly, for they feared
the bullets. Step by step John Dunn and his people were thrust back,
fighting gallantly against overwhelming odds. They were level with us,
not a quarter of a mile to our left. They were pushed past us. They
vanished among the bush behind us, and a long while passed before ever I
heard what became of them, for we met no more that day.

Now, the horns having done their work and wrapped themselves round
Umbelazi's army as the nippers of a wasp close about a fly (why did
not Umbelazi cut off those horns, I wondered), the Usutu bull began
his charge. Twenty or thirty thousand strong, regiment after regiment,
Cetewayo's men rushed up the slope, and there, near the crest of
it, were met by Umbelazi's regiments springing forward to repel the
onslaught and shouting their battle-cry of "Laba! Laba! Laba! Laba!"

The noise of their meeting shields came to our ears like that of the
roll of thunder, and the sheen of their stabbing-spears shone as shines
the broad summer lightning. They hung and wavered on the slope; then
from the Amawombe ranks rose a roar of

_"Umbelazi wins!"_

Watching intently, we saw the Usutu giving back. Down the slope they
went, leaving the ground in front of them covered with black spots which
we knew to be dead or wounded men.

"Why does not the Elephant charge home?" said Maputa in a perplexed
voice. "The Usutu bull is on his back! Why does he not trample him?"

"Because he is afraid, I suppose," I answered, and went on watching