a fresh-faced intelligent
looking young fellow, probably not long out from home. The magistrate
could see at a glance that he was a `gentleman ranker.' He seemed so
eager and earnest about it that Elvesdon said:

"Very well, Parry. You can stay. Any objection, sergeant?"

"No, sir."

The boy's face flushed with delight. He had read plentifully about this
sort of thing--in fact such reading had had largely to do with bringing
him out to the country at all. Now he was going to see it--to see the
real thing.

Soon arose from Tongwana's kraal a weird, long-drawn cry. By this time
the chief and every native in the immediate neighbourhood of the camp--
except Elvesdon's servants--had disappeared. The cry was echoed, then
taken up by many voices till it tailed off into a kind of strophe-like
chant. Then from the distant kraal a broad dark stream was issuing, its
blackness relieved as it drew nearer, by many a patch of white.
Suddenly the chant changed to a lower key, and its sombre thunder-notes
harmonised to the measured tread of the marching warriors.

These, for their parts, offered a perfect spectacle of wild
picturesqueness. Each and all had discarded any article of European
clothing, and were arrayed in the fantastic, if spare adornments of
native apparel; the _mutya_ of cat-tails and cow-hide, beads and
bangles, jackal teeth necklaces, flowing tufts of cow-hair, and other
gimcrackery of the kind. Then too, the points of bright assegais
gleamed wickedly in the sunshine, and the variegated faces of broad
shields, lent colour to the wild array.

The column advanced, marching four deep. The rapping of assegai hafts
against shield sticks, beat a weird accompaniment to the war-song,
which, now risen to a deafening roar, ceased, with a suddenness that was
almost startling, as the whole array spreading out into crescent
formation, halted, and flinging the right hand aloft, shouted, as one
man:

"Amakosi!" ["Chiefs!"]

"They ought to have given the _Bayete_, to a representative of
Government--confound their cheek!" murmured Elvesdon, who was filling
his pipe. "That's the salute royal, you know, Miss Carden."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," was the answer. "They look grand--grand, but a
little alarming. Still I'm so glad we came."

"Don't know about a couple of hundred," remarked Thornhill. "More like
six or seven."

Now again the song and dance was renewed. So catching was the latter
that the European