Chapter Thirty Six.
The Underground Chamber.
Sirayo’s leadership had prevailed. He attacked the main body of the enemy before sunrise, and the young warriors of the Rock, fired by his ferocious courage, had withstood the desperate rush of the Zulus until Chanda’s regiment came up on the trail of the second detachment, when the enemy, terribly thinned, took the path to the mountain wisely left open for them.
Before the fight Sirayo had taken the long throwing assegai from Inyami and snapped the haft across his knee within three feet of the blade.
“Do ye likewise,” he said to the regiment, “and you will fight the Zulus hand-to-hand with their own weapons, for it is by their short assegais they have conquered.”
The young warriors obeyed, and for the first time they went into a fight without hurling their spears.
After the great fight, which left the ground about a lonely rock of strange shape strewn with dead and dying, the women flocked to the scene, to attend to the wounded, and Sirayo, with the remnant of his band, marched to the ruins. As they neared the place, the men broke out with their song of victory—a deep-throated roar tossed to the mountain—and the warriors about the ruins formed up to meet them, whistling shrilly and drumming on their shields, while the boy-chief stood before the ranks, his black eyes glittering.
“Bayate!” they thundered. “Great is Sirayo, the big black bull, the swooping eagle!”
The air vibrated to their shouts, and the warriors of the Rock, with the marks of battle on them, gave an answering shout, and proclaimed Sirayo as their chief.