So we went forward, Kambula and his soldiers walking or trotting at my side.
For four full days we journeyed thus, keeping, so far as I could judge, about twenty or thirty miles to the east of that road by which I had left Zululand before and re-entered it with Retief and his commission.
Evidently I was an object of great interest to the Zulus of the country through which we passed, perhaps because they knew me to be the sole survivor of all the white men who had gone up to visit the king.

They would come down in crowds from the kraals and stare at me almost with awe, as though I were a spirit and not a man.

Only, not one of them would say anything to me, probably because they had been forbidden to do so.

Indeed, if I spoke to any of them, invariably they turned and walked or ran out of hearing.
It was on the evening of the fourth day that Kambula and his soldiers received some news which seemed to excite them a great deal.

A messenger in a state of exhaustion, who had an injury to the fleshy part of his left arm, which looked to me as though it had been caused by a bullet, appeared out of the bush and said something of which, by straining my ears, I caught two words--"Great slaughter." Then Kambula laid his fingers on his lips as a signal for silence and led the man away, nor did I see or hear any more of him.