The officers were doubtful about allowing him to go on so dangerous an errand, but after a little hesitation General Primrose wrote a note which Collis slipped into his pocket. Then, a rope having been brought, the gunner was lowered over the parapet into the ditch, about forty feet below. He was fired at by the enemy’s matchlock men as he slid down, but luckily they were too far off to aim accurately. Reaching the village safely, he delivered his message to General Dewberry, and, dodging the enemy, returned to clamber up the rope. While half way up the Afghans tried to “pot” him again, and this time a bullet came close enough to cut off the heel of his left boot. At the instance of General Nuttall and Colonel Burnet, General Roberts recommended the brave gunner for the V.C., and much to Collis’s surprise it was presented to him on July 28th, 1881. CHAPTER XX. ZULULAND.--THE DASH WITH THE COLOURS FROM ISANDHLANA. At the same time that the war in Afghanistan was being carried to a successful issue serious trouble was brewing in South Africa. The Zulus under Cetewayo, who had long been restless, now threatened to overrun Natal and the Transvaal, and precipitate a general revolt of the black races against the white. To go into the whole history of the quarrel would take too long, but it may be said that the grievances of the natives arose out of long-standing feuds between them and the Boers over the seizure of land. The immediate cause of the war was a dispute over a strip of territory extending along the left bank of the Tugela River into Zululand. To this piece of land the Zulus obstinately asserted their right, and their claim was upheld by a Commission which was appointed to inquire into the matter. After the annexation of the Transvaal by Great Britain in 1877 Sir Bartle Frere had been sent out to South Africa as High Commissioner, and unfortunately for everyone concerned he now strongly opposed the arbitrators’ award. Regarding Cetewayo as a dangerous enemy, as a cruel, savage monarch whose power it was necessary to curb, he withheld the award for several months, in the course of which time the Zulu king nursed an ever-growing resentment towards the British. In this interval Cetewayo, who set himself to follow in the steps of his uncle, the famous chief Dingaan, perpetrated many atrocities which showed him to be a bloodthirsty tyrant. When he was remonstrated with for his cruelties he insolently answered that the killing he had done was nothing to the killing he intended to do, a reply which was taken as a warning that the Zulus looked forward to “washing their spears” in the blood of white men.