'Tom,' said Sheldrake to his servant, 'tell the messman to give the sergeant a bottle of good wine; he'll need it to keep up his pecker after last night's work and with the work before us to-morrow.' Florian thanked the officer and retired; and he and Bob Edgehill shared the contents of the bottle, while the latter listened to his narration. 'You have grown to look very grave, Hammersley,' said Sheldrake; 'of what are you thinking so much?' 'Nothing.' 'Nothing?' 'Yes; the best way to get through life is _not_ to think at all,' replied Hammersley bitterly, for his thoughts were ever and always of Finella and that fatal evening in the shrubbery at Craigengowan, where he saw her lift up her face to Shafto, who kissed her as though he had been used to do so all his life. Colonel Glyn's column consisted of seven companies of his own regiment, the 24th, the Natal Mounted Police, a body of Volunteers, two 7-pounder Royal Artillery guns under Major Harness, and 1000 natives under Rupert Lonsdale, late of the 74th Highlanders. At half-past three on the morning of the 12th of January, the colonel, with four companies, some of the Natal Native Contingent, and the mounted men, left his camp to reconnoitre the country of Sirayo, which lay to the eastward of it. With his staff, Lord Chelmsford accompanied this party, which, after a few miles' march, reached a great donga, in a valley through which the Bashee River flows, and wherein herds of cattle were collected, and their lowing loaded the calm morning air, though they were all unseen, being concealed in the rocky krantzes or precipitous fissures of the ravine. A body of Zulus now appeared on the hills above, and Florian regarded them with intense interest, while the mounted men advanced against them, and his company, with the others, pushed in skirmishing order up the ravine where the cattle were known to be. He could see that these Zulu warriors were models of muscle and athletic activity, and nearly black-skinned rather than copper-coloured. They were dressed in feathers, with the tails of wild animals round their bodies, behind and before; their ornaments were massive rings formed of elephants' tusks, and their anklets were of brass or polished copper; they had large oval shields, rifles, and bundles or sheafs of assegais, their native deadly weapon, and they bounded from rock to rock before our skirmishers with the activity of tree-tigers. 'With the assegai,' says Sir Arthur Cunynghame, 'the Zulu cuts his food, he fights and does many useful things, and it is used as a surgical instrument. Carefully sharpening it, he uses it to bleed the human patient, and with it he inoculates his cow's tail. In the chase it is his spear, a deadly weapon in his hand, and ready instrument for skinning his game.'