Sirayo's kraal, which lay farther up the Bashee Valley, was burned later in the day by mounted men under Colonel Baker Russell. Our losses were only fourteen; those of the Zulus were great, including the capture of a thousand cattle and sheep. All the women and children captured were sent back to their kraals by order of Lord Chelmsford, who, on the 17th of January, rode out to the fatal hill of Isandhlwana, which he selected as the next halting-place of the centre column, and which was eventually to prove well nigh its grave! CHAPTER IV. THE CAMP. On the 20th of January the column began its march for the hill of Isandhlwana, through a country open and treeless. 'Where and how is Dulcie now?' was the ever-recurring thought of Florian as he tramped on in heavy marching order in rear of Hammersley's company. Oh, to be rich and free--rich enough, at least, to save her from that cold world upon which she was cast, and in which she must now be so lonely and desolate. But he was a soldier now, and serving face to face with death in a distant and savage land, and, so far as she was concerned, hope was nearly dead. 'My position seems a strangely involved one!' thought Florian, when he brooded over the changed positions of himself and Shafto; 'there is some mystery in it which has not yet been unravelled. Am I to be kept in this state of doubt and ignorance all my life--but that may be a short period as matters go now. _My father!_ Must I never more call or consider him I deemed to be so, by that name again!' Four companies of the 24th Regiment were left at Rorke's Drift when Colonel Glyn's column reached Isandhlwana, which means the Lion's Hill. Precipitous and abrupt to the westward, on the eastward it slopes down to the watercourse, and grassy spurs and ridges rise from it in every direction. The waggon track to Rorke's Drift passes over its western ridge, and groups of lesser hills, covered with masses of loose grey stones, rise in succession like waves of a sea in the direction of the stream called the Buffalo. When the column reached the hill and began to pitch their tents, the young soldiers of the 'new system' were sorely worn and weary--'pumped out,' as they phrased it. 'We may laugh at the old stiff stock and pipeclay school,' says a popular military writer, 'but it may be no laughing matter some day to find out that, together with the stock and pipeclay which could easily be spared, we have sacrificed the old _solidity_ which army reformers should have 'grappled to their souls with hooks of steel,' and painfully was that want of hardihood and foresight shown in the tragedy that was acted on the Hill of Isandhlwana. A long ridge, green and grassy, ran southward of the camp, and overlooked an extensive valley. Facing this ridge, and on the extreme left of the camp, were pitched the tents of the Natal Native Contingent. A space of three hundred yards intervened between this force and the next two regiments.