With that impi was the Umcityu regiment, three thousand five hundred strong.  At the first break of dawn the Induna in command of the Umcityu looked up from beneath the shelter of the black shield with which he had covered his body, and through the thick mist he saw a great man standing before him, clothed only in a moocha, a gaunt wild-eyed man who held a rough club in his hand.  When he was spoken to, the man made no answer; he only leaned upon his club looking from left to right along the dense array of innumerable shields.

“Who is this Silwana (wild creature)?” asked the Induna of his captains wondering.

The captains stared at the wanderer, and one of them replied, “This is Nahoon-ka-Zomba, it is the son of Zomba who not long ago held rank in this regiment of the Umcityu.  His betrothed, Nanea, daughter of Umgona, was killed together with her father by order of the Black One, and Nahoon went mad with grief at the sight of it, for the fire of Heaven entered his brain, and mad he has wandered ever since.”

“What would you here, Nahoon-ka-Zomba?” asked the Induna.

Then Nahoon spoke slowly.  “My regiment goes down to war against the white men; give me a shield and a spear, O Captain of the king, that I may fight with my regiment, for I seek a face in the battle.”

So they gave him a shield and a spear, for they dared not turn away one whose brain was alight with the fire of Heaven.

*****

When the sun was high that day, bullets began to fall among the ranks of the Umcityu.  Then the black-shielded, black-plumed Umcityu arose, company by company, and after them arose the whole vast Zulu army, breast and horns together, and swept down in silence upon the doomed British camp, a moving sheen of spears.  The bullets pattered on the shields, the shells tore long lines through their array, but they never halted or wavered.  Forward on either side shot out the horns of armed men, clasping the camp in an embrace of steel.  Then as these began to close, out burst the war cry of the Zulus, and with the roar of a torrent and the rush of a storm, with a sound like the humming of a billion bees, wave after wave the deep breast of the impi rolled down upon the white men.  With it went the black-shielded Umcityu and with them went Nahoon, the son of Zomba.  A bullet struck him in the side, glancing from his ribs, he did not heed; a white man fell from his horse before him, he did not stab, for he sought but one face in the battle.

He sought—­and at last he found.  There, among the waggons where the spears were busiest, there standing by his horse and firing rapidly was Black Heart, he who had given Nanea his betrothed to death.  Three soldiers stood between them, one of them Nahoon stabbed, and two he brushed aside; then he rushed straight at Hadden.

But the white man saw him come, and even through the mask of his madness he knew Nahoon again, and terror took hold of him.  Throwing away his empty rifle, for his ammunition was spent, he leaped upon his horse and drove his spurs into its flanks.  Away it went among the carnage, springing over the dead and bursting through the lines of shields, and after it came Nahoon, running long and low with head stretched forward and trailing spear, running as a hound runs when the buck is at view.