he lightning should strike me. But
there--I did not.

At last the thunder died away and in the most mysterious fashion that
violent tempest came to a sudden end, as does a storm upon the stage. No
rain fell, which in itself was surprising enough and most unusual,
but in place of it a garment of the completest calm descended upon
the earth. By degrees, too, the darkness passed and the westering sun
reappeared. Its rays fell upon the place where the Amahagger companies
had stood, but now not one of them was to be seen.

They were all gone and Ayesha with them. So completely had they vanished
away that I should have thought that we suffered from illusions, were
it not for the line of dead men which lay there looking very small and
lonesome on the veld; mere dots indeed at that distance.

We stared at each other and at them, and then Goroko said that he would
like to inspect the bodies to learn whether lightning killed at Kor as
it did elsewhere, also whether it had smitten them altogether or leapt
from man to man. This, as a professional "Heaven-herd," he declared he
could tell from the marks upon these unfortunates.

As I was curious also and wanted to make a few observations, I
consented. So with the exception of the wounded men, who I thought
should avoid the exertion, we scrambled down the debris of the tumbled
wall and across the open space beyond, reaching the scene of the tragedy
without meeting or seeing anyone.

There lay the dead, eleven of them, in an exact line as they had stood.
They were all upon their backs with widely-opened eyes and an expression
of great fear frozen upon their faces. Some of these I recognised, as
did Umslopogaas and Hans. They were soldiers or captains who had marched
under me to attack Rezu, although until this moment I had not seen any
of them after we began to descend the ridge where the battle took place.

"Baas," said Hans, "I believe that these were the traitors who slipped
away and told Rezu of our plans so that he attacked us on the ridge,
instead of our attacking him on the plain as we had arranged so nicely.
At least they were none of them in the battle and afterwards I heard the
Amahagger talking of some of them."

I remarked that if so the lightning had discriminated very well in this
instance.

Meanwhile Goroko was examining the bodies one by one, and presently
called out,

"These doomed ones died not by lightning but by witchcraft. There is not
a burn upon one of