Then I stretched out the handle of my assegai towards her.

She caught it with her left hand.
Already her feet were over the brink of the rapids, but I pulled and Koos pulled, and we brought her safe into the shadows, and from the shallows to the bank, and there she fell gasping.
Now when the soldiers on the other bank saw that we had crossed, they shouted threats at us, then ran away down the bank.
"Arise, Baleka!" I said: "they have gone to see a ford." "Ah, let me die!" she answered.
But I forced her to rise, and after awhile she got her breath again, and we walked on as fast as we could up the long rise.

For two hours we walked, or more, till at last we came to the crest of the rise, and there, far away, we saw a large kraal.
"Keep heart," I said.

"See, there is the kraal of Chaka." "Yes, brother," she answered, "but what waits us there?
Death is behind us and before us--we are in the middle of death." Presently we came to a path that ran to the kraal from the ford of the Umfolozi.

It was by it that the Impi had travelled.