This was the turning point of the fight, for though after it one other Kaffir managed to get into the laager, where he was cut down, and two Boers, Nicholas Potgieter and Pieter Botha were killed by assegais thrown from without, from that moment the attack began to slacken.  In thirty minutes from the time that Celliers had fired the first shot, Moselikatse’s general, whose name was Kalipi, had given the order to retire, and his hosts drew off sullenly, for we had beaten them.

Thirty minutes!  Only thirty minutes—­the shadows had shifted but a few inches on the grass, and yet now that it was done with it seemed like half a lifetime.  Panting and begrimed with smoke and powder, we stood looking at each other and around us.  The tents of the waggons were ripped to pieces, in our own I counted more than sixty spear cuts, and the trampled turf inside the laager was like the back of an angry porcupine, for from it we gathered nearly fourteen hundred heavy assegais.  For the rest, the two men lay dead where they had fallen, their faces turned towards the sky, each of them pierced through by a spear, and out of our little number twelve others were wounded, though none of them died of their wounds.  Not a woman or a child was touched.

Outside the laager there was a sight to see, for there on the red grass, some lying singly and some in heaps, were over four hundred Zulu soldiers, most of them dead, and how many wounded they carried away with them I cannot tell.

Now we saw that the Kaffirs were collecting our cattle, and about twenty men under Potgieter saddled up and rode out to try and recapture them, since without oxen to draw the waggons we were helpless.  Till sunset they followed them, killing many, but being so few they could not recapture the cattle, and in the end were obliged to return empty handed.  Ralph went with his party, and, because of an act of mercy which he did then it came about in the end that Suzanne was found and many lives were saved.  So plenteously do our good deeds bear fruit, even in this world.

Yes, you may have thought that this tale of the battle of Vetchkop was only put in here because it is one of the great experiences of an old woman’s life.  But it is not so; it has all to do with the story of Ralph and of my daughter Suzanne.

CHAPTER XXVI

HOW GAASHA BROUGHT GOOD LUCK

When Ralph returned from pursuing the Zulus, as he drew near to the laager he lingered a little behind the others, for he was very weary of all this work of killing, also the flesh-wound that he had got from the Kaffir’s spear having stiffened pained him when his horse cantered.  There was no more danger now, for the savages were gone, leaving their path marked by the corpses of those who had been shot down by the Boers, or of men who had limped away wounded either to die upon the road or to be killed by their comrades because their case was hopeless.  Following this black trail of death backwards Ralph rode on, and when he was within a hundred yards of the waggons halted his horse to study the scene.  He thought that he would never see such another, although, in fact, that at the Blood River when we conquered the Zulu king, Dingaan, was even more strange and terrible.