The Boer, with his usual craft, had decided that the British Government should set him financially on his feet, which feet he meant promptly to use for running away from his responsibilities. Some declare that the policy of Sir T. Shepstone was premature, that he should have waited until the Boer had soaked further in the slough of insolvency into which he was fast sinking. But Sekukuni was threatening, and on the south-eastern frontier Cetchwayo, with a force some thirty thousand strong, was waiting his opportunity. The promise of the future was a general holocaust, in which Boer men, women, and children, farms and flocks would be annihilated. Sir T. Shepstone, had he been other than a Briton, might have stayed his hand and waited till the Boers were effectually swept away, but being a Briton he acted as such, doubtless arguing that, "As we under Heaven are supreme head, So, under him, that great supremacy, Where we do reign, we will alone uphold." THE WEB THICKENING It must be remembered that between the Zulus and the Boers no boundary line had ever been fixed, and that for over a dozen years the Zulu chiefs had repeatedly implored the British Governor in Natal for advice and help in their dealings with these aggressors. It had been part of the Dutch policy--if policy it may be called--to force the Zulu gradually to edge further and further from the rich pasture lands sloping eastward of the Drakensberg Mountains, and spreading to right and left into the north and west of Zululand. Little notice had been taken of their petitions, and the Zulus had determined to take the law into their own hands. Cetchwayo, therefore, when the news of our annexation of the Transvaal reached him, was like a wild beast baulked of its prey. He was anxious for an occasion for his young warriors "to wash their spears" in the gore of his enemies, and was naturally disappointed to find them under the protection of the white man. The Natal Government attempted to soothe him--to promote peace. He remained sullen and simmered. He vented his spleen by putting several young women to death for having refused to marry his soldiers. On being remonstrated with by the Natal Government, he expressed himself with engaging candour. His own words, without comment, describe the character with which we had to deal.