Thirty minutes! Only thirty minutes--the shadows had shifted but a fewinches on the grass, and yet now that it was done with it seemed likehalf a lifetime. Panting and begrimed with smoke and powder, we stoodlooking at each other and around us. The tents of the waggons wereripped to pieces, in our own I counted more than sixty spear cuts,and the trampled turf inside the laager was like the back of an angryporcupine, for from it we gathered nearly fourteen hundred heavyassegais. For the rest, the two men lay dead where they had fallen,their faces turned towards the sky, each of them pierced through by aspear, and out of our little number twelve others were wounded, thoughnone of them died of their wounds. Not a woman or a child was touched.
Outside the laager there was a sight to see, for there on the redgrass, some lying singly and some in heaps, were over four hundred Zulusoldiers, most of them dead, and how many wounded they carried away withthem I cannot tell.
Now we saw that the Kaffirs were collecting our cattle, and about twentymen under Potgieter saddled up and rode out to try and recapture them,since without oxen to draw the waggons we were helpless. Till sunsetthey followed them, killing many, but being so few they could notrecapture the cattle, and in the end were obliged to return emptyhanded. Ralph went with his party, and, because of an act of mercy whichhe did then it came about in the end that Suzanne was found and manylives were saved. So plenteously do our good deeds bear fruit, even inthis world.
Yes, you may have thought that this tale of the battle of Vetchkop wasonly put in here because it is one of the great experiences of an oldwoman's life. But it is not so; it has all to do with the story of Ralphand of my daughter Suzanne.