'Flirts and coquettes,' he would think, 'I have met by dozens in society; but I could little have thought that the childlike, apparently straightforward and impulsive Finella would form such a deuced combination of both characters! And, not content by bestowing an engagement ring, I actually gave her--ass that I was!--a wedding one. Yet I am not sure that I would not do all the same folly over again. "Unstable as water--thou shalt not excel." So we have it in Genesis.' A hundred times he asked of himself, how could she lure him into loving her and then deceive him so, and for such a cub as Shafto?--the bright, childlike, outspoken girl. The act seemed to belie her honest, fearless, and beautiful eyes--for honest, fearless, and sweet they were indeed. Oh! it was all like a bad dream, that sudden episode in the garden at Craigengowan. How much of that game had been going on before and since? This thought, when it occurred to him, seemed to turn his heart to stone or steel. Hammersley was now, by his own request, appointed to the Mounted Infantry. His casual remark about the tunic had fired the sparks of ambition in Florian's heart; thus he might run great risks, face more peril, and thus win more honour. He volunteered to join the same force, and was placed in Hammersley's troop, which was to form a part of the column to relieve Colonel Pearson's force, then isolated and blockaded by the Zulus at a place called Etschowe, where he had skilfully turned an old Norwegian mission-station into a fort. Nearly on the summit of the Tyoe Mountains, more than two thousand feet in height, it stood amid a district of wonderful sylvan beauty. An open and hilly country lay on the south, bounded by the vast ranges of the Umkukusi Mountains; on the north the Umtalazi River rolled in blue and silver tints through the green and grassy karroo. On the westward lay the Hintza forest of dark primeval wood, and far away, nearly forty miles to the eastward, could be seen Port Durnford or the shore of the Indian Ocean. But there the Colonel, whose force consisted chiefly of a battalion of his own regiment, the 3rd Buffs, six companies of the Lanarkshire, a naval brigade, some cavalry and artillery, found himself undergoing all the inconvenience of a blockade, with provisions and stores decreasing fast and of twelve messengers, whom he had sent to Lord Chelmsford asking instructions and succour, eleven had been slain on the way, so there was nothing for it but to fight to the last, and defend the fort till help came, or share the fate of those who fell at Isandhlwana. Fort Tenedos (so called from her Majesty's ship of that name) was thirty miles distant from Etschowe, and formed the base from which Lord Chelmsford went to succour the latter place at the head of nearly 7,000 men of all arms.