TOLD BY THE TOMBS
six men succeeded in reaching the Dutch settlement after a perilous journey of one hundred and seventeen days; and three sailors, seven lascars, and the two women servants were rescued, nearly two years later, by the first of several expeditions which were sent out at different times by the Dutch to search for any of the survivors.
With the rescue of these eighteen persons, the story of the wreck of the Grosvenor closed in contemporary records, but, as years passed on, again and yet again came strange rumours of English women being seen in Kaffir kraals, dressed in Kaffir fashion, and refusing to leave their savage surroundings, on the plea that they had become contented mothers of families, and were no longer willing or able to return to their old lives. During the Kaffir war of 1835, a curious incident partly raised the veil of doubt and mystery which enwrapped the fate of the lost lady-passengers. A tribe of native warriors offered their services as "brothers" to the English against their own countrymen, the Kaffirs, saying that their tribe, which numbered six hundred souls, were descendants of the English ladies who had been wrecked in the Grosvenor fifty-three years before, and now, at this day, that tribe stands out distinct from its fellows. And when men visit the rugged coast of Zululand,
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