On a green plain below it a great mass of Zulus, sombre and dark, spotted with the grey of their oval shields, was seen hovering, the flash of an assegai-head sparkling out at times when the sun arose, and near them, enveloped in smoke and all sheeted with flame at once, were some kraals that had been set on fire by the Irregular Horse; so the scene, if beautiful, was also a stirring one. Above the vast mountain opposite, where the Upoko (a tributary of the great White Umvulosi, which flows towards the sea) was rolling in golden sheen between banks clothed with date palms, Kaffir plums, flowering acacias, and thornwood, the uprisen sun was shining in all his glory. The mountain was torn by ravines and studded with mimosa groups. On the left of the troops rose the vast Inhlatzatye, or mountain of greenstone, turned to crimson in the morning sun, its base clothed with lovely pasture, and twenty miles in its rear was known to be Ulundi, the great military kraal of Cetewayo, the chief object of the advance. In the immediate foreground was the force of cavalry, with all their white helmets and sword blades shining in the sun, the dark blue of the Lancers, and the sombre uniforms of the Irregular Horse, relieved and varied by the bright scarlet of the King's Dragoon Guards and the mimosa-coloured tunics of the Mounted Infantry. The sharp blare of the trumpets sounded 'the advance.' 'Buller's Horse to the left!' cried the officer of that name, digging spurs into his charger; 'Whalley's to the right! Frontier Light Horse and Hammersley's Mounted Infantry the centre!' Uncovering to the flanks, the formation was made at a canter, and the forward movement began. During the morning Florian had more than once (till his men required his attention) an unpleasant sense of the presence of two secret enemies on the ground, which made him look frequently to where the oddly costumed volunteer troopers were advancing, and before that day's fighting was quite over he had bitter cause to know that both _were_ in the field. The 1st King's Dragoon Guards had been quartered in the same barracks with the regiment to which these two deserters belonged, and, feeling themselves now in hourly expectation of recognition by some of them, the camp of the Second Division had become perilous for the two desperadoes, and on that day they had resolved to 'levant,' but not before effecting their villainous purpose, if possible. They knew well that by the rules of the service, at foreign stations, when there is no doubt as to the identity of a deserter, he is sent at once to his own corps to be dealt with there; moreover, they know that the fact of their serving with the Volunteer Horse constituted another crime--that of fraudulent enlistment; and neither had any desire to be tied to the wheel of a field-piece and flogged as an example to others, for that punishment had not been quite abandoned yet.