spinning round the circle like a teetotum, and uttering all the time hideous and guttural sounds. All the warriors now remained silent, and crouched down, still keeping the circle intact, and kept time to the old savage's dance by monotonously beating the hard ground with their knobkerries. Again did the wretched prisoner, now almost worn out by cold, hunger, and thirst, believe that the torture was about to commence, and once more was he agreeably disappointed, for, stopping suddenly in the midst of his mad antics, the sorcerer flung himself violently at the feet of Umbelini, and breaking as he did so a necklace of human bones which he wore, pointed over his head towards the east, where the sun was now lighting up the hills and valleys towards Ulundi, in which direction, coming across one of the mountains some ten miles off, could be seen, so clear was the pure atmosphere, a huge and dusky column, marching with a cloud of skirmishers running along the terraces of the rocks lower down. These were evidently the advanced guard of the impi promised by Cetywayo to Umbelini for the destruction of Wood's kraal; and as the troops came nearer and more into the sunlight, the principal warriors round Umbelini executed a war-dance round the sorcerer and Grandier, who had now given up all hope. The savages yelled, leaped, threw themselves bodily into the air, and went through all the motions of savage conflict, gesticulating, threatening, pursuing, stabbing the fallen, and rehearsing, in fact, the performance they soon expected to go through at the expense of the British soldiers.