“There’s trouble brewing,” said Dawes, with a grave shake of the head as he watched the impis disappearing over a distant ridge. “Those chaps are bound for the disputed territory, and if they fall foul of the Boers it’ll start the war going in fine style. I don’t like the look of things at all. The sooner we get into Swaziland the better. The Zulu country’s just a trifle too disturbed.”
Note 1. This word, which properly applies to native beer, is used for any intoxicating liquor. In this instance it would mean spirits.
Chapter Eleven.
A New Terror.
Several months later than the events last recorded, a large trek might have been seen, wending its way southward along the rugged bush veldt lying beneath the Lebombo mountains, just outside the Zulu boundary.
It is evening, and the lustrous glow of the setting sun reddens the great precipices of the craggy range, tingeing with vivid gold the green roll of the bush. The lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep and goats are harmoniously mingled on the still and balmy air; and over and above this comes the rumble of the waggons and the occasional crack of a whip. A little duiker-buck springs from his form, to stand a moment, his soft eye dilating, the black tips of his tiny, horns pricked up as he listens, then darts away noiselessly into the scrub. Bright-plumaged birds flash screaming from the path as the unwonted tumult draws near, for not often are they alarmed in this wise, here in their bosky solitudes.
First come a number of cattle, the vari-coloured hides dappling the prevailing green and brown of the veldt; a mixed lot too, for among the small but compact Zulu breed, towering in elephantine proportions above them, is here and there the buffalo-like frame of a Boer trek-ox with its strongly pronounced hump and great branching horns. Cows with their calves, too, are there, and an occasional thrust and clash of horns and angry low betoken the collision of two or more quarrelsome beasts, whom the herd’s kerries, however, avail to pacify even if his voice suffices not. These travel leisurely, feeding as they go, and are in excellent condition. Some little way behind comes a flock of sheep and goats, also feeding as they go, and propelled by as travel-stained and dusty-looking a native as the one who herds the cattle aforesaid. The rear is brought up by two waggons, one behind the other, each drawn by a full span of sixteen oxen. The native driver of each, walking alongside, wields his whip languidly and lazily, and the leader is so tired that he can hardly put one foot before the other, for the day has been a sweltering hot one. Even the two horses fastened behind the last waggon have no elasticity in their step, as with drooping head they plod mechanically on, and the dust hangs in a cloud above the line of march.