The exception was that about her hung a great necklace of gold ornaments from which were suspended pendants also of gold representing the rayed disc of the sun in rude but bold and striking workmanship.

I went to her and having cut the straps, since I could not stop to untie their knots, lifted the veil.

Beneath it was Inez sure enough, and Inez living, for her breast rose and fell as she breathed, but Inez senseless.  Her eyes were wide open, yet she was quite senseless.  Probably she had been drugged, or perhaps some of the sights of horror which she saw, had taken away her mind.  I confess that I was glad that this was so, who otherwise must have told her the dreadful story of her father’s end.

We bore her out and away from that horrible place, apparently quite unhurt, and laid her under the shadow of a tree till a litter could be procured.  I could do no more who knew not how to treat her state, and had no spirits with me to pour down her throat.

This was the end of our long pursuit, and thus we rescued Inez, whom the Zulus called the Lady Sad-Eyes.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SPELL

Of our return to Kor I need say nothing, except that in due course we reached that interesting ruin.  The journey was chiefly remarkable for one thing, that on this occasion, I imagine for the first and last time in his life, Umslopogaas consented to be carried in a litter, at least for part of the way.  He was, as I have said, unwounded, for the axe of his mighty foe had never once so much as touched his skin.  What he suffered from was shock, a kind of collapse, since, although few would have thought it, this great and utterly fearless warrior was at bottom a nervous, highly-strung man.

It is only the nervous that climb the highest points of anything, and this is true of fights as of all others.  That fearful fray with Rezu had been a great strain on the Zulu.  As he put it himself, “the wizard had sucked the strength” out of him, especially when he found that owing to his armour he could not harm him in front, and owing to his cunning could not get at him behind.  Then it was that he conceived the desperate expedient of leaping over his head and smiting backwards as he leapt, a trick, he told me, that he had once played years before when he was young, in order to break a shield ring and reach one who stood in its centre.

In this great leap over Rezu’s head Umslopogaas knew that he must succeed, or be slain, which in turn would mean my death and that of the others.  For this reason he faced the shame of seeming to fly in order to gain the higher ground, whence alone he could gather the speed necessary to such a terrific spring.

Well, he made it and thereby conquered, and this was the end, but as he said, it had left him, “weak as a snake when it crawls out of its hole into the sun after the long winter sleep.”