The morning of a new day was well in when Florian, lying among the tall, wavy reeds and feathery grass by the river-bank, awoke from a sleep that had been deep and heavy, induced by long exhaustion, toil, and over-tension of the nerves. Ere he started up, and as he was drifting back to consciousness, his thoughts had been, not of the awful slaughter from which he had escaped, but, strange to say, of Dulcie Carlyon, the object of his constant and most painful solicitude. His returning thoughts had been of the past and her. In fancy he saw her again, with her laughing dark blue eyes and her winning smile; he felt the pressure of her little hand, and heard the tones of her voice, so soft and winning, and saw her, not as he saw her last, in deep mourning, but in her favourite blue serge trimmed with white, and a smart sailor's hat girt with a blue yachting ribbon above her ruddy golden hair; then there came an ominous flapping of heavy wings, and he started up to find two enormous Kaffir vultures wheeling overhead in circles round him! On every side reigned profound silence, broken only by the lap-lapping of the Buffalo as it washed against rocks and boulders on its downward passage to the Indian Ocean. A few miles distant rose the rocky crest of fatal Isandhlwana, reddened to the colour of blood by the rising sun, and standing up clearly defined in outline against a sky of the deepest blue; and a shudder came over him as he looked at it, and thought of all that had happened, and of those who were lying unburied there. His sodden uniform was almost dried now by the heat of the sun, but he felt stiff and sore in every joint, and on rising from the earth he knew not which way to turn. He knew that two companies of the first battalion of his regiment were at Helpmakaar, with the regimental colour, and that one of the second battalion was posted at Rorke's Drift, under Lieutenant Bromhead, but of where these places lay he had not the least idea. He was defenceless too, for though he had his sword-bayonet he had lost his rifle when his horse was shot in the stream. He passed a hand across his brow as if to clear away his painful and anxious thoughts, and was making up his mind to follow the course of the river upward as being the most likely mode of reaching Rorke's Drift when a yell pierced his ears, and he found himself surrounded by some twenty black-skinned Zulus, with gleaming eyes and glistening teeth, all adorned with cow-tails, feathers, and armlets, and armed in their usual fashion--Zulus who had been resting close by him among the long reeds, weary, as it proved; after their night's conflict at Rorke's Drift and their repulse at that place. Florian's blood ran cold!