As he reached it, the voice of Cetywayo commanded him to stop.  “Stay,” he said, “I have a service for you, Nahoon, that shall drive out of your head these thoughts of wives and marriage.  You see this white man here; he is my guest, and would hunt buffalo and big game in the bush country.  I put him in your charge; take men with you, and see that he comes to no hurt.  So also that you bring him before me within a month, or your life shall answer for it.  Let him be here at my royal kraal in the first week 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 with or at least of seeing Nanea, the girl to whom he was affianced, who within a few weeks must be taken from him, and given over to the king.

A more eerie-looking spot than that where they were encamped Hadden had never seen.  Behind them lay a tract of land—­half-swamp and half-bush—­in which the buffalo were supposed to be hiding.  Beyond, in lonely grandeur, rose the mountain of Isandhlwana, while in front was an amphitheatre of the most gloomy forest, ringed round in the distance by sheer-sided hills.  Into this forest there ran a river which drained the swamp, placidly enough upon the level.  But it was not always level, for within three hundred yards of them it dashed suddenly over a precipice, of no great height but very steep, falling into a boiling rock-bound pool that the light of the sun never seemed to reach.