The boy stands paralysed with affright. The Principle of Evil waves him on and on, even to the very hem of his garment; but a prayer rises to the sleeper’s lips; with a convulsive effort he speaks it forth aloud, and the spell is broken. The mortal is engaged with a mortal enemy. Those waving robes turn to a leopard-skin _kaross_, the glorious figure to an athletic savage, and the immortal beauty to the grinning, chattering lineaments of a hideous Kaffir. Charlie bounds at him like a tiger--they fight--they close--and he is locked in the desperate embrace of life or death with his ghastly foe. Charlie is undermost! His enemy’s eyes are starting from their sockets--his white teeth glare with cannibal-like ferocity--and his hand is on the boy’s throat with a grip of iron. One fearful wrench to get free--one last superhuman effort of despair, and.... Charlie wakes in the struggle!--wakes to find it all a dream; and the cold air, the chilling harbinger of dawn, stealing into the tent to refresh and invigorate the half-suffocated sleepers. He felt little inclination to resume his slumbers; his position had been a sufficiently uncomfortable one--his head having slipped from the pistol-holsters on which it had rested, and the clasp of his cloak-fastening at the throat having well-nigh strangled him in his sleep. The handsome lieutenant’s matter-of-fact yawn on waking would have dispelled more horrid dreams than Charlie’s, and the real business of the coming day soon chased from his mind all recollections of his imaginary struggle. Breakfast was like the supper of the preceding night--half-raw beef, eaten cold, and a whiff from a short pipe. Ere Charlie had finished his ration, dark though it was, the men had fallen in; the advanced guard had started; Ensign Harry had received his final instructions, and “Old Swipes” gave the word of command in a low, guarded tone--“Slope arms! By your left--Quick march!” Day dawned on a spirit-stirring scene. With the swinging, easy step of those accustomed to long and toilsome marches the detachment moved rapidly forward, now lessening its front as it arrived at some narrow defile, now “marking time” to allow of its rear coming up, without effort, into the proper place. Bronzed, bold faces theirs, with the bluff, good-humoured air of the English soldier, who takes warfare as it comes, with an oath and a jest. Reckless of strategy as of hardship, he neither knows nor cares what his enemy may be about, nor what dispositions may be made by his own officers. If his flank be turned he fights on with equal unconcern, “it is no business of his”; if his ammunition be exhausted he betakes himself to the bayonet, and swears “the beggars may take their change out of that!”