One more moment and they were there; another, and the moonlight showed them all.
For a long while--to Richard it seemed hours--Rachel said nothing; only stood still like the statue of a woman, staring at those cold faces that looked back at her through the unearthly moonlight. Indeed, it was Richard who spoke first, feeling that if he did not this dreadful silence would choke him or cause him to faint.
"The Zulus have murdered them," he said hoarsely, glancing at the dead Kaffir on the floor.
"No," she answered in a cold, small voice; "Ishmael, Ishmael!" and she pointed to something that lay at his feet.
Richard stooped and picked it up. It was a fly wisp of rhinoceros horn which the man had let fall when the Zulu's spear struck him.
"I know it," she went on; "he always carried it. He is the real murderer. The Zulus would not have dared," and she choked and was silent.
"Let me think," said Richard confusedly. "There is something in my mind. What is it? Oh! I know. If you are right that devil has not done this for nothing. He is somewhere near; he wants to take you"; and he ground his teeth at the thought, then added: "Rachel, we must get out of this and ride for Durban, at once--at once; the white people will protect you there."
"Who will bury my father and mother?" she asked in the same cold voice.
"I do not know, it does not matter, the living are more than the dead. I can return and see to it afterwards."
"You are right," she answered. Then she knelt down by the bed and lifting her beautiful, agonised face, put up some silent prayer. Next she rose and kissed first her father, then her mother, kissed their dead brows in a last farewell and turned to go. As she went her eyes fell upon the assegai that lay near to the dead Zulu. Stooping down, she took it and with it in her hand passed on to the stoep. Here her strength seemed to fail her, for she reeled against the wall, then with an effort flung herself into Richard's arms, moaning: "Only you left, Richard, only you. Oh! if you were taken from me also, what would become of me?"
A moment later she became aware that the stoep was swarming with men who seemed to arise out of the shadows. A voice said in the Kaffir tongue: "Seize that fellow and bind him."
Instantly, before he could do anything, before he could even turn, Richard was torn from her, struggling furiously, and thrown to the ground. Rachel sprang to the wall and stood with her back to it, raising the spear she held. It flashed into her mind that these were Zulus, and of Zulus she was not afraid.