With yells of baffled rage the savages followed them so closely that Florian and another trooper named Tom Tyrrell, who covered the rear, had to face about and fire by turns, till the open ground on the other side was reached.
'A close shave that business,' said Tom breathlessly. 'I thought that in three minutes' time every man Jack of us would have been assegaied.'
Galloping out of range, Florian's party now rejoined that of Hammersley, who congratulated them on their escape, and they all rode together back to head-quarters. But these movements had alarmed the whole valley of the White Umvolosi.
On every hand, in quick succession, signal fires, formed of vast heaps of dried grass, blazed on the hill-tops; vast columns of black smoke shot upwards to the bright blue sky, and were repeated from summit to summit, showing that the whole country was actively alive with armed warriors, who in many places could be seen driving and goading their herds of cattle into rocky kloofs and all kinds of places inaccessible to horse and foot alike.
From the summit of the Zungen Nek a full view of the beautiful valley through which the Umvolosi rolls could be obtained, and near a place there, called Conference Hill, were seen, like a field of snow, the white tents of the Second Division shining in the bright, sunny light.
Twenty-three days it remained encamped there, and during that time a vast amount of useful information regarding the topography of the country in which the coming campaign would be, was furnished by the reports and sketches made by Colonel Buller, the Prince Imperial, by Hammersley, and even by Florian, who was a very clever draughtsman, and on many occasions was complimented by the staff in such terms as made his young heart swell in his breast.
But the sketches of none surpassed those of the handsome and unfortunate Prince, whose passion for information was boundless, and the questions he was wont to ask of all were searching in the extreme.
One day, when out on a reconnaisance, the Mounted Infantry were suddenly fired upon from a kraal, and in the conflict that ensued many were killed and wounded, especially of the enemy, who were completely routed.
The great and unfathomable mystery of death was close indeed to Florian on that day, and around him lay hundreds who had discovered it within an hour or less. He had narrowly escaped it by skilfully dodging a ponderous knobkerie flung at his head as the last dying effort of a warrior whose black and naked breast had been pierced by a bullet from Tom Tyrrell's rifle, and from which the crimson blood was welling as if from a squirt; and so close was the weapon to doing Florian a mortal mischief that it took the gilt spike close off the top of his helmet.
And now, on the very evening before the division broke up its camp and marched, occurred an event which proved to Florian, and to his favourite captain too, the chief one of the campaign.