At the station of Rhinstorf Colonel Russell now ascertained that fully thirty-five miles of wild and rugged country would have to be traversed ere he could reach Umkondo, where Cetewayo was reported to be in concealment. To add to the difficulties of proceeding further, night had fallen, the native guide, having lost heart, had deserted, and many of the horses had fallen lame by the roughness of the route from Fort George; thus Baker Russell came to the conclusion that to proceed further then would be rash, if not impossible.
Cetewayo still resisted all the terms offered him, acting under the influence of Dabulamanzi, who urged him to distrust the British, in the hope that if the fugitive died of despair in the forest of Ngome, he himself might succeed to the throne of the Zulus.
While on this patrol duty our Mounted Infantry came upon the remains of some of our fellows who had fallen after the attack on the Inhlobane Mountain in March and lain unburied for nearly six months, exposed to the weather and the Kaffir vultures.
CHAPTER XII.
AT THE 'RAG.'
We now turn to a very different scene and locality—to Regent Street, still deemed the architectural chef d'œuvre of the celebrated Mr. Nash, though it is all mere brick and plaster.
The London season was past and over, but one would hardly have thought so, as the broad pavements seemed still so crowded, and so many vehicles of every kind were passing in close lines along the thoroughfare from Waterloo Place to the Langham Hotel.
It was a bright sunny forenoon, and as Vivian Hammersley, now a convalescent, and in accurate morning mufti, looked on the well-dressed throng, the shops filled with everything the mind could desire or the world produce, and at the entire aspect of the well-swept street, he thought, after his recent experience of forest and donga, of rocky mountain and pathless karoo, that there was nothing like it in Europe for an idler—that it surpassed alike the Broadway of Uncle Sam and the Grand Boulevard of Paris.
Enjoying the situation and his surroundings to the fullest extent, he was walking slowly down towards where the colonnades stood of old, when suddenly he experienced something between an electric shock and a cold douche.
Both well mounted, a handsome fellow attired in excellent taste, with a tea rose and a green sprig in his lapel, and a graceful girl in a well-fitting dark blue habit, a dainty hat and short veil, ambled slowly past him—so slowly that he could observe them well—and in the latter he recognised Finella!