Enter now, my lord Watcher-by-Night, for the road is steep and we must travel fast if we would reach the place where She-who-commands is camped in the ancient holy city, before the moon sinks behind the cliffs to-night." So having explained matters to Robertson and Umslopogaas, who announced that nothing would induce _him_ to be carried like an old woman, or a corpse upon a shield, and seen that the hurt Zulus were comfortably accommodated, Robertson and I got into our litters, which proved to be delightfully easy and restful.
Then when our gear was collected by the hook-nosed bearers to whom we were obliged to trust, though we kept with us our rifles and a certain amount of ammunition, we started.

First went a number of Billali's spearmen, then came the litters with the wounded alongside of which Umslopogaas and his three uninjured Zulus talked or trotted, then another litter containing Billali, then my own by which ran Hans, and Robertson's, and lastly the rest of the Amahagger and the relief bearers.
"I see now, Baas," said Hans, thrusting his head between my curtains, "that yonder Whitebeard cannot be your reverend father, the Predikant, after all." "Why not ?" I asked, though the fact was fairly obvious.
"Because, Baas, if he were, he would not have left Hans, of whom he always thought so well, to run in the sun like a dog, while he and others travel in carriages like great white ladies." "You had better save your breath instead of talking nonsense, Hans," I said, "since I believe that you have a long way to go." In fact, it proved to be a very long way indeed, especially as after we began to breast the mountain, we must travel slowly.

We started about ten o'clock in the morning, for the fight which after all did not take long--had, it will be remembered, begun shortly after dawn, and it was three in the afternoon before we reached the base of the towering cliff which I have mentioned.
Here, at the foot of a remarkable, isolated column of rock, on which I was destined to see a strange sight in the after days, we halted and ate of the remaining food which we had brought with us, while the Amahagger consumed their own, that seemed to consist largely of curdled milk, such as the Zulus call _maas_, and lumps of a kind of bread.
I noted that they were a very curious people who fed in silence and on whose handsome, solemn faces one never saw a smile.

Somehow it gave me the creeps to look at them.

Robertson was affected in the same way, for in one of the rare intervals of his abstraction he remarked that they were "no canny." Then he added, "Ask yon old wizard who might be one of the Bible prophets come to life--what those man-eating devils have done with my daughter." I did so, and Billali answered, "Say that they have taken her away to make a queen of her, since having rebelled against their own queen, they must have another who is white.
Say too that She-who-commands will wage war on them and perhaps win her back, unless they kill her first." "Ah!" Robertson repeated when I had translated, "unless they kill her first--or worse." Then he relapsed into his usual silence.
Presently we started on again, heading straight for what looked like a sheer wall of black rock a thousand feet or more in height, up a path so steep that Robertson and I got out and walked, or rather scrambled, in order to ease the bearers.