The day came. The burghers arrived in the customary picturesqueness of woollen shirts, round hats, rough coats, and leathern veldt-broeks. Dingaan, amiable to excess, insisted that they should accompany him to his kraal, and there make a formal leave-taking. They were requested to leave their arms outside as an earnest of good faith, and, with some suspicion, they acceded. Their reception was splendid. Their health was drunk, the calabash passed round, and then--then, at a given signal from the chief, the Zulu hordes rushed in, fully armed and raging. In less time than it takes to describe the deed, the defenceless company of Boer farmers were slaughtered in cold blood--slaughtered before they could lift even a fist in self-defence! This horrible act of treachery served to do away at one fell swoop with the whole Boer party. Their bones, piled in a heap without the kraal, alone remained to tell to their kindred the tale of their undoing. The Zulus then proceeded in their tens of thousands to attack the nearest encampment, and cut down all who came in their way. Men--women--children--they spared none. The tidings being carried to the outer encampments of the Boers, they prepared themselves for the worst. They and their gallant _vrows_, who fought with as cool and obstinate a courage as their husbands, resisted the onslaught staunchly and successfully; but they paid dearly for their boldness. Their cattle were demolished, and their numbers were miserably thinned. Some thought of retiring from Natal; some contemplated revenge. The pathetic state of the Boers attracted the sympathy of the Englishmen then in Natal, and they joined hands. Potgieter and Uys then commanded a force, and marched out on the enemy, but unfortunately fell into an ambush and were slain. Among the dead were the commandant Uys and his son. Then the Englishmen, not to be behindhand in the fray, came to the rescue. Though there were but seventeen of them, they went out accompanied by 1500 Hottentots to meet the enemy. They followed the retreating savages beyond the Tugela, when suddenly they found themselves face to face with a fierce multitude of 70,000 Zulus. A conflict of the most terrible kind ensued: a conflict the more terrible because at the same time so heroic and so hopeless. From this appalling fight only four Englishmen escaped. These had succeeded in cutting their way through the enemy; the rest had been surrounded, and died fighting valiantly, and were almost buried among the dead bodies of their antagonists. But this was not to be the finale of the Boer resistance to the wild Zulu. The above tragic engagement between the Englishmen and Zulus took place in April 1838. By December of the same year they had gathered themselves under the banner of their fine leader Andries Pretorius, a farmer from the district of Graff Reinet, and started forth again to meet the treacherous Dingaan, and pay him the debt they owed him.