From a distance, the Reverend Francis Owen, his wife, their servant, Jane Williams, and a twelve-year-old boy, William Wood, watched, helpless and terrified, as a thousand Zulu warriors fell on seventy unarmed Boers and beat them with clubs. The dead and dying were dragged the eight hundred yards from the great kraal, the isigodlo, of King Dingane of the Zulus, to KwaMatiwane, the place of execution, where those who were still alive were clubbed to death. The bodies were left for the hyenas and the vultures and the jackals. The leader of the Boers, Piet Retief, was the last to be killed. His thirteen-year-old son, Cornelis, was one of the dead. The warriors moved on to where they were camped to find the women, children and servants. The helpless women, children and servants were clubbed and stabbed to death, and their bodies, too, were dragged to KwaMatiwane.
The hillock of KwaMatiwane ran with dark red blood. Venous blood. Rivulets of blood became streams, and the streams became rills. Further down the hill, the blood was finally reclaimed by the dry soil, leaving, for a while, only a damp trace, which faded fast.