In front, with General Marshall and two other officers of the 17th Lancers, rode Captain Wyatt-Edgell, their eyes fixed on the donga, where the massacre--for it is difficult to give it another name--took place. Would the lifeless remains of one whose bright spirit was part of a widowed and stricken life, whose pure and Christian nature ennobled the profession of strife to which his heart was devoted, be left intact by the savages or mutilated by the instincts of their brutal superstition? Would the young, calm, and somewhat sad eyes so well remembered by each be torn or defaced by the vulture, or his still more repugnant rival the common aasvogel (gyps fulvus), and would that lithe and graceful form which used to lounge at evening into the homely bell-tent and interchange camp gossip and pleasant badinage with glad and devoted comrades--would all these be gone to human sight and ken? Were they to have the mournful and defeated joy of bearing those poor shorn relics back even one stage on the way to a broken-hearted mother's hearth; or had the wild dog and the eagle feasted upon all that once was the pride and the hope of Imperial Gaul? As they neared the horrible pit, for it was nothing more, where the boy so well loved by all had given his spirit to Him who gave it, they were startled and horror-stricken at the sight of some bearded vultures, hawks, falcons, and secretary-birds, which mounted on the wing from the long, dank grasses as the advance was made; and they shuddered at the thought of the ghoul-like banquet of which they might have partaken. But a deep and impassable kloof had to be crossed, and although time was of the greatest importance at that moment, General Marshall was too good a _sabreur_ to hazard the lives of the living without precaution, in order to recover the relics of the dead. Consequently, as it was quite possible that the foes might have discovered how valued was the life which had been so carelessly squandered, and that a large force might be hidden in other and neighbouring ambush, the usual simple but most effectual precautions were taken while the advance was continued. Vedettes were again thrown out, lance in sling and carbine on thigh. Oh! what a moment of pride for Drury-Lowe, for Boulderson, for Edgell, for Cooke, or for "Dick" Boyle (had he been there to see). Every trooper's eye gleamed with excitement, every thigh pressed the horse's flank, and every heart throbbed with unspeakable rapture at the thought that a chance might be gained to dash as an _enfant perdu_ at the Golgotha where the dead friends should be, even though the living enemies were waiting to wrap and twine them in their grim embrace. Twelve men were selected to ride to the right, left, and front, and report. They had orders to dash at once into the bush should a Zulu appear. To run away in the open before these people is not only madness, but almost certain death to those whose misfortune it is