A BRUSH WITH THE ZULUS.
When Florian recovered consciousness the African sun was high in the
sky; but he lay still for a space in his leafy concealment, as he
knew not what time had elapsed since he had last seen his mounted
pursuers, or how far or how near they might be off.
Dried blood plastered all one side of his face, and blood was still
oozing from the wound in his temple. Over it he tied his
handkerchief, and with his white helmet off--as it was a conspicuous
object--he clambered to the edge of the donga and looked about him.
The vast extent of waste and open veldt spread around him, but no
living object was visible thereon. His pursuers must have ridden
forward or returned to Elandsbergen without searching the donga, and
thus he was, for the time at least, free from them.
In the distance he saw the Drakensberg range, and knew that his way
lay westward in the opposite direction. It is the name given to a
portion of the Ouathlamba Mountains, which form the boundary between
the Free States, Natal, and the land of the Basutos. They rise to a
height of nine thousand feet, and their topography is imperfectly
known.
Having assured himself that he was unwatched and unseen, Florian
quitted the donga, and, after an anxious search of an hour or more,
succeeded in striking upon the ruts or wheel-tracks that must lead,
he knew, to the camp at Rorke's Drift, beside the Buffalo River, and
then he steadily, though weary and somewhat faint, proceeded upon his
return journey.
How many miles he walked he knew not--there were no stones to mark
them; but evening was at hand, and he had traversed a district of
_ruggens_, as it is called there--a succession of many grassy
ridges--before an exclamation of supreme satisfaction escaped him,
when he saw the white bell-tents of Colonel Glyn's column, pitched on
the grassy veldt beside the winding stream, and, passing the advanced
sentinels, he lost no time in reporting himself to Sheldrake, and
relieving himself also of that unlucky gold which had so nearly cost
him his life.
Sheldrake sent instantly for Dr. Gallipott, a staff-surgeon, who
dressed Florian's hurt. In the bearing of the latter as he related
his late adventures Sheldrake was struck with a certain grave
simplicity or quiet dignity--an air of ease and perfect
self-possession--far above his present position.
'You are "not what you seem to be," as novels have it?' said the
young officer inquiringly.
'I am a soldier, sir, as my---- (father was before me, he was about
to say, but paused in confusion and substituted) 'as my fate decided
for me.'
Impressed by his whole story and the terrible risks and toil he had
undergone, young Sheldrake offered a substantial money reward to
Florian, who coloured painfully at the proposal, drew back, with just
the slightest air of hauteur, and declined it.
'You are somewhat of an enigma to me,' said the puzzled officer.
'Is there any news in camp, sir?'
'Only that we enter Zululand to-morrow, and a draft from home joined
us to-day under Captain Hammersley.'
Florian heard the name of Captain Hammersley without much concern,
save that he was one of the same corps. He little foresaw how much
their names and interests would be mingled in the future.
'Here he comes,' said Sheldrake, as the handsome officer in his fresh
uniform came lounging, cigar in mouth, into the tent, and Florian,
with a salute, withdrew. Ere he did so,
'Tom,' said Sheldrake to his servant, 'tell the messman to give the
sergeant a bottle of good wine; he'll need it to keep up his pecker
after last night's work and with the work before us to-morrow.'
Florian thanked the officer and retired; and he and Bob Edgehill
shared the contents of the bottle, while the latter listened to his
narration.
'You have grown to look very grave, Hammersley,' said Sheldrake; 'of
what are you thinking so much?'
'Nothing.'
'Nothing?'
'Yes; the best way to get through life is _not_ to think at all,'
replied Hammersley bitterly, for his thoughts were ever and always of
Finella and that fatal evening in the shrubbery at Craigengowan,
where he saw her lift up her face to Shafto, who kissed her as though
he had been used to do so all his life.
Colonel Glyn's column consisted of seven companies of his own
regiment, the 24th, the Natal Mounted Police, a body of Volunteers,
two 7-pounder Royal Artillery guns under Major Harness, and 1000
natives under Rupert Lonsdale, late of the 74th Highlanders.
At half-past three on the morning of the 12th of January, the
colonel, with four companies, some of the Natal Native Contingent,
and the mounted men, left his camp to reconnoitre the country of
Sirayo, which lay to the eastward of it. With his staff, Lord
Chelmsford accompanied this party, which, after a few miles' march,
reached a great donga, in a valley through which the Bashee River
flows, and wherein herds of cattle were collected, and their lowing
loaded the calm morning air, though they were all unseen, being
concealed in the rocky krantzes or precipitous fissures of the ravine.
A body of Zulus now appeared on the hills above, and Florian regarded
them with intense interest, while the mounted men advanced against
them, and his company, with the others, pushed in skirmishing order
up the ravine where the cattle were known to be.
He could see that these Zulu warriors were models of muscle and
athletic activity, and nearly black-skinned rather than
copper-coloured. They were dressed in feathers, with the tails of
wild animals round their bodies, behind and before; their ornaments
were massive rings formed of elephants' tusks, and their anklets were
of brass or polished copper; they had large oval shields, rifles, and
bundles or sheafs of assegais, their native deadly weapon, and they
bounded from rock to rock before our skirmishers with the activity of
tree-tigers.
'With the assegai,' says Sir Arthur Cunynghame, 'the Zulu cuts his
food, he fights and does many useful things, and it is used as a
surgical instrument. Carefully sharpening it, he uses it to bleed
the human patient, and with it he inoculates his cow's tail. In the
chase it is his spear, a deadly weapon in his hand, and ready
instrument for skinning his game.'
The orders of the main body of this reconnoitring force, which had
suddenly become an attacking one, were to ascend a hill on the left,
then to work round to the right rear of the enemy's position, and
assault and destroy a kraal belonging to the brother of Sirayo, whose
surrender the Government had demanded as one of the violators of the
British territory.
The moment the companies of the 24th got into motion a sharp fire was
opened on them by the Zulus, who were crouching behind bushes and
great stones, and on the Native Contingent which led the attack,
under Commandant Browne.
The latter had their own armament of assegais and shields, to which
the Government added Martini-Henrys or Enfields, but their
fighting-dress consisted of their own bare skins. Each company
generally was formed of a separate tribe, under its own chief, with a
nominal allowance of three British officers; but there were none of
minor rank, to lead sections, or so forth, as these natives could not
comprehend divided authority. They were pretty well drilled, and
many were skilled marksmen; but now many fell so fast under the fire
of the Zulus that every effort of their white officers was requisite
to get the others on.
Dying or dead, with the red blood oozing from their bullet-wounds,
rolling about and shrieking in agony, or lying still and lifeless,
they studded all the rocky ascent, while the survivors gradually
worked their way upward, planting in their fire wherever a dark head
or limb appeared; and when they came within a short distance of the
enemy's position, the men of the 24th prepared to carry it by a rush.
Hammersley's handsome face glowed under his white helmet, and his
dark eyes sparkled as he formed his company for attack on the march.
'From the right--four paces extend!'
Then the skirmishers swung away out at a steady double.
Florian was now for the first time under fire. He heard the ping of
the rifle-bullets as they whistled past him from the smoke-hidden
position of the Zulus, and he heard the splash of the lead as they
starred the rocks close by. Then came that tightening of the chest
and increase of the pulse which the chance of sudden death or a
deadly wound inspire, till after a time that emotion passed away, and
in its place came the genuine British bull-dog longing to grapple
with the foe.
The Zulus fired briskly and resolutely from their rocky eyries; and
while one party made a valiant stand at a cattle-kraal, another
nearly made the troops quail and recoil by hurling down huge
boulders, which they dislodged by powerful levers and sent thundering
and crashing from the summit of the hill till it was captured by the
bayonets of the 24th; they were put to flight in half an hour, and by
nine in the morning the whole affair was over, and Florian found he
had come unscathed through his baptism of fire; but Lieutenant
Sheldrake had his shoulder-arm lacerated by a launched assegai when
leading the left half-company.
Sirayo's kraal, which lay farther up the Bashee Valley, was burned
later in the day by mounted men under Colonel Baker Russell. Our
losses were only fourteen; those of the Zulus were great, including
the capture of a thousand cattle and sheep. All the women and
children captured were sent back to their kraals by order of Lord
Chelmsford, who, on the 17th of January, rode out to the fatal hill
of Isandhlwana, which he selected as the next halting-place of the
centre column, and which was eventually to prove well nigh its grave!