Chapter XVIII: We Abandon Hope

I can give no adequate description of the horrors of the night which followed. Mercifully they were to some extent mitigated by sleep, for even in such a position as ours, wearied nature will sometimes assert itself. But I, at any rate, found it...

Chapter XI: We Give a Sign

For a long while—two hours, I should think—we sat there in silence, for we were too overwhelmed by the recollection of the horrors we had seen to talk. At last, just as we were thinking of turning in—for already there were faint streaks of...

Chapter X: The Witch-Hunt

On reaching our hut, I motioned to Infadoos to enter with us. ‘Now, Infadoos,’ I said, ‘we would speak with thee.’ ‘Let my lords say on.’ ‘It seems to us, Infadoos, that Twala, the king, is a cruel man.’ ‘It is so, my lords. Alas!...

Chapter XV: Good Falls Sick

After the fight was ended, Sir Henry and Good were carried into Twala’s hut, where I joined them. They were both utterly exhausted by exertion and loss of blood, and, indeed, my own condition was little better. I am very wiry, and can stand...

Chapter XIII: The Attack

Slowly, and without the slightest appearance of haste or excitement, the three columns crept on. When within about five hundred yards of us, the main or centre column halted at the root of a tongue of open plain which ran up into the hill,...

Chapter IV: An Elephant Hunt

Now I do not propose to narrate at full length all the incidents of our long journey up to Sitanda’s Kraal, near the junction of the Lukanga and Kalukwe Rivers, a journey of more than a thousand miles from Durban, the last three hundred...

Chapter XIX: Ignosi’s Farewell

Ten days from that eventful morning found us once more in our old quarters at Loo; and, strange to say, but little the worse for our terrible experience, except that my stubbly hair came out of that cave about three shades greyer than it...

Chapter XIV: The Last Stand of the Greys

In a few more minutes the regiments destined to carry out the flanking movements had tramped off in silence, keeping carefully under the lee of the rising ground in order to conceal the movement from the keen eyes of Twala’s scouts. Half an hour or...

Chapter XII: Before the Battle

Luckily for us, Infadoos and the chiefs knew all the pathways of the great town perfectly, so that notwithstanding the intense gloom we made fair progress. For an hour or more we journeyed on, till at length the eclipse began to pass, and that edge...

Chapter I: I Meet Sir Henry Curtis

It is a curious thing that at my age—fifty-five last birthday—I should find myself taking up a pen to try and write a history. I wonder what sort of a history it will be when I have done it, if I ever come to...