of the new moon--when Nanea comes--and then I will tell you whether or
no I agree with you that she is fair. Go now, my child, and you, White
Man, go also; those who are to accompany you shall be with you at the
dawn. Farewell, but remember we meet again at the new moon, when we will
settle what pay you shall receive as keeper of my guns. Do not fail me,
White Man, or I shall send after you, and my messengers are sometimes
rough."

"This means that I am a prisoner," thought Hadden, "but it will go hard
if I cannot manage to give them the slip somehow. I don't intend to
stay in this country if war is declared, to be pounded into _mouti_
(medicine), or have my eyes put out, or any little joke of that sort."

*****

Ten days had passed, and one evening Hadden and his escort were encamped
in a wild stretch of mountainous country lying between the Blood and
Unvunyana Rivers, not more than eight miles from that "Place of the
Little Hand" which within a few weeks was to become famous throughout
the world by its native name of Isandhlwana. For three days they had
been tracking the spoor of a small herd of buffalo that still inhabited
the district, but as yet they had not come up with them. The Zulu
hunters had suggested that they should follow the Unvunyana down towards
the sea where game was more plentiful, but this neither Hadden, nor the
captain, Nahoon, had been anxious to do, for reasons which each of them
kept secret to himself. Hadden's object was to work gradually down to
the Buffalo River across which he hoped to effect a retreat into Natal.
That of Nahoon was to linger in the neighbourhood of the kraal of
Umgona, which was situated not very far from their present camping
place, in the vague hope that he might find an opportunity of speaking