had seen the death of their two scouts, I turned my horse and drove
my heels into his sides. As soon as I was down the slope of the rise I
pulled a little to the right in order to intercept the waggons before
the Zulus saw them. I had not gone three hundred yards in this new
direction when, to my utter astonishment, I struck a trail marked with
waggon-wheels and the hoofs of oxen. Of waggons there must have been
at least eight, and several hundred cattle. Moreover, they had passed
within twelve hours; I could tell that by the spoor. Then I understood;
the Impi was following the track of the waggons, which, in all
probability, belonged to a party of emigrant Boers.

The spoor of the waggons ran in the direction I wished to go, so I
followed it. About a mile further on I came to the crest of a rise, and
there, about five furlongs away, I saw the waggons drawn up in a rough
laager upon the banks of the river. There, too, were my own waggons
trekking down the slope towards them.

In another five minutes I was there. The Boers--for Boers they
were--were standing about outside the little laager watching the
approach of my two waggons. I called to them, and they turned and saw
me. The very first man my eyes fell on was a Boer named Hans Botha, whom
I had known well years ago in the Cape. He was not a bad specimen of his
class, but a very restless person, with a great objection to authority,
or, as he expressed it, "a love of freedom." He had joined a party of
the emigrant Boers some years before, but, as I learned presently,
had quarrelled with its leader, and was now trekking away into the
wilderness to found a little colony of his own. Poor fellow! It was his
last trek.

"How do you do, Meinheer Botha?" I said to him in Dutch.