There was nothing to be done, except wait for the morning.
At last it came, revealing a landscape blind with snow.

Such search as could be made told them nothing.

The oxen had gone, and their spoor was obliterated by the fresh-fallen flakes.

The White Man called a council of his Kaffir servants.

"What was to be done ?" he asked.
One said this thing, one that, but all agreed that they must wait to act until the snow melted.
"Or till we freeze, you whose mothers were fools!" said the White Man, who was in the worst of tempers, for had he not lost four hundred pounds' worth of oxen?
Then a Zulu spoke, who hitherto had remained silent.