About an hour before daylight I heard them stirring again, and when its first gleams came all of them had vanished over the nek of slaughter, with what thoughts in their hearts, I wondered, and to what fate.  The captains on the plateau beneath had gone also, and so had the circle of guards upon the slopes of the mount, for I saw these depart through the grey mist.  As the light gathered, however, I observed bodies of men collecting on the nek, or rather on both neks, which made it impossible for me to do what I had hoped, and run to overtake the English troops.  From these I was utterly cut off.  Nor could I remain longer without food on my point of rock, especially as I was sure that soon some Zulus would climb there to use it as an outlook post.  So while I was still more or less hidden by the mist and morning shadows, I climbed down it by the same road that I had climbed up, and thus reached the plain.  Not a living man, white or black, was to be seen, only the dead, only the dead.  I was the last Englishman to stand upon the plain of Isandhlwana for weeks or rather months to come.

Of all my experiences this was, I think, the strangest, after that night of hell, to find myself alone upon this field of death, staring everywhere at the distorted faces which on the previous morn I had seen so full of life.  Yet my physical needs asserted themselves.  I was very hungry, who for twenty-four hours had eaten nothing, faint with hunger indeed.  I passed a provision wagon that had been looted by the Zulus.  Tins of bully beef lay about, also, among a wreck of broken glass, some bottles of Bass’s beer which had escaped their notice.  I found an assegai, cleaned it in the ground which it needed, and opening one of the tins, lay down in a tuft of grass by a dead man, or rather between him and some Zulus whom he had killed, and devoured its contents.  Also I knocked the tops off a couple of the beer bottles and drank my fill.  While I was doing this a large rough dog with a silver-mounted collar on its neck, I think of the sort that is called an Airedale terrier, came up to me whining.  At first I thought it was an hyena, but discovering my mistake, threw it some bits of meat which it ate greedily.  Doubtless it had belonged to some dead officer, though there was no name on the collar.  The poor beast, which I named Lost, at once attached itself to me, and here I may say that I kept it till its death, which occurred of jaundice at Durban not long before I started on my journey to King Solomon’s Mines.  No man ever had a more faithful friend and companion.

When I had eaten and drunk I looked about me, wondering what I should do.  Fifty yards away I saw a stout Basuto pony still saddled and bridled, although the saddle was twisted out of its proper position, which was cropping the grass as well as it could with the bit in its mouth.  Advancing gently I caught it without trouble, and led it back to the plundered wagon.  Evidently from the marks upon the saddlery it had belonged to Captain Shepstone’s force of mounted natives.