ived a spear-thrust that passed right through it, and still
holding in his hand his favourite carving knife now bent nearly
double, from which I gathered that he had been successful in
his rough and tumble with the Elmoran.

'Ah, Quatermain!' he sang out in a trembling, excited voice,
'so we have conquered; but it is a sorry sight, a sorry sight;'
and then breaking into broad Scotch and glancing at the bent
knife in his hand, 'It fashes me sair to have bent my best carver
on the breastbone of a savage,' and he laughed hysterically.
Poor fellow, what between his wound and the killing excitement
he had undergone his nerves were much shaken, and no wonder!
It is hard upon a man of peace and kindly heart to be called
upon to join in such a gruesome business. But there, fate puts
us sometimes into very comical positions!

At the kraal entrance the scene was a strange one. The slaughter
was over by now, and the wounded men had been put out of their
pain, for no quarter had been given. The bush-closed entrance
was trampled flat, and in place of bushes it was filled with
the bodies of dead men. Dead men, everywhere dead men -- they
lay about in knots, they were flung by ones and twos in every
position upon the open spaces, for all the world like the people
on the grass in one of the London parks on a particularly hot
Sunday in August. In front of this entrance, on a space which
had been cleared of dead and of the shields and spears which
were scattered in all directions as they had fallen or been thrown
from the hands of their owners, stood and lay the survivors of
the awful struggle, and at their feet were four wounded men.
We had gone into the fight thirty strong, and of the thirty
but fifteen remained alive, and five of them (including Mr Mackenzie)
were wounded, two mortally. Of those who held the entrance,
Curtis and the Zulu alone remained. Good had lost five men killed,
I had lost two killed, and Mackenzie no less than five out of
the six with him. As for the survivors they were, with the exception
of myself who had never come to close quarters, red from head
to foot -- Sir Henry's armour might have been painted that colour
-- and utterly exhausted, except Umslopogaas, who, as he grimly
stood on a little mound above a heap of dead, leaning as usual
upon his axe, did not seem particularly distressed, although
the skin over the hole in his head palpitated violently.

'Ah, Macumazahn!' he said to me as I limped