“The end of it was that after we had fed Lost with milk and meat, I and six of Zikali’s men started down the kloof, Lost going ahead of us and now and again running back and whining.  At the mouth of the kloof it led us over a hill and down into a bush-veld valley where the thorns grew very thick.  When we had gone along the valley for about two miles, one of the Kaffirs saw a Basuto pony still saddled, and caught it.  The dog went on past the pony to a tree that had been shattered by lightning, and there within a few yards of the tree we found you lying senseless, Allan, or, as I thought at first, dead, and by your side a Martini rifle of which the stock also seemed to have been broken by lightning.

“Well, we put you on a shield and carried you here, meeting no one, and that is all the story, Allan.”

He stopped and we stared at each other.  Then I called Lost and patted its head, and the dear beast licked my hand as though it understood that it was being thanked.

“A strange tale,” I said, “but God Almighty has put much wisdom into His creatures of which we know nothing.  Let us thank Him,” and in our hearts we did.

Thus was I rescued from death by the intelligence and fidelity of a four-footed creature.  Doubtless in my semi-conscious state that resulted from shock, weariness and sun-stroke, I had all the while headed sub-consciously and without any definite object for the Black Kloof.  When I was within a few miles of it I was stunned by the lightning which ran down the rifle to the ground, though not actually struck.  Then the dog, which had escaped, played its part, wandering about the country to find help for me, and so I was saved.

Now of the long months that followed I have little to tell.  They were not unhappy in their way, for week by week I felt myself growing stronger, though very slowly.  There was a path, steep, difficult and secret, which could be gained through one of the caves in the precipice, not that in which I slept.  This path ran up a water-cut kloof through a patch of thorns to a flat tableland that was part of the Ceza stronghold.  By it, when I had gained sufficient strength, sometimes we used to climb to the plateau, and there take exercise.  It was an agreeable change from the stifling atmosphere of the Black Kloof.  The days were very dull, for we were as much out of the world as though we had been marooned on a desert island.  Still from time to time we heard of the progress of the war through Nombe, for Zikali I saw but seldom.

She told of disasters to the English, of the death of a great young Chief who was deserted by his companions and died fighting bravely—­afterwards I discovered that this was the Prince Imperial of France—­of the advance of our armies, of defeats inflicted upon Cetewayo’s impis, and finally of the destruction of the Zulus on the battlefield of Ulundi, where they hurled themselves by thousands upon the British square,