CHAPTER XVIII.
AT THE BUFFALO RIVER.
The evening of the 10th January was closing in, and the blood-red African sun, through a blended haze of gold and pale green, red and fiery, seemed to linger like a monstrous crimson globe at the horizon, tinging with the same hues the Buffalo River as its broad waters flowed past the Itelizi Hill towards Rorke's Drift.
There a picquet of the Centre or Second column of infantry (of the army then advancing into Zululand), under Colonel Richard Glyn of the 24th Regiment, was posted for the night. The main body of the picquet, under Lieutenant Vincent Sheldrake, a smart young officer, was bivouacked among some mealies at a little distance from the bank of the river, along the margin of which his advanced sentinels were posted at proper distances apart, and there each man stood motionless as a statue, in his red tunic and white tropical helmet, with his rifle at the 'order,' and his eyes steadily fixed on that quarter in which the Zulu army was supposed to be hovering.
To reach the Buffalo River the various columns of Lord Chelmsford's army could not march by regular roads, as no such thing exists in Zululand, and the sole guides of our officers in selecting the line of advance through these savage regions were the grass-covered ruts left by the waggon-wheels of some occasional trader or sportsman in past times.
As the column had been halted for the night, at a considerable distance in rear of the outlying picquet, the men of the latter had their provisions with them ready cooked, and were now having their supper in a grassy donga or hollow. The earthen floor was their table, and Lieutenant Sheldrake, being more luxurious than the rest, had spread thereon as a cloth an old sheet of the Times; but the appetites of all were good, and their temperament cheery and hearty. Their rifles were piled, and they brewed their coffee over a blazing fire, the flame of which glowed on their sun-burned and beardless young faces, and a few Kaffirs squatted round their own fire, jabbered, gesticulated, and swallowed great mouthfuls of their favourite liquor 'scoff.'
Sheldrake was too ill or weary to attend closely to his own duties, and the moment the evening meal was over, he desired the sergeant of the picquet to 'go round the advanced sentries.'
The sergeant, a young and slender man, and who was no other than Florian, touched the barrel of his rifle and departed on his mission—to visit the sentinels in rotation by the river bank, and see that they were in communication with those of the picquets on the right and left.
The scenery around was savage and desolate; long feathery grass covered the veldt for miles upon miles. The chief features in it were some blue gum trees, and on a koppie, or little eminence, the deserted ruins of a Boer farm under the shadow of a clump of eucalyptus trees; and in the foreground were some bustards and blue Kaffir cranes by the river bank.
Short service and disease had given Florian rapid promotion; for our soldiers, if brave, had no longer the power of manly endurance of their predecessors under the old system. According to General Crealock, the extreme youth of our soldiers in South Africa rendered their powers for toil very small; while the Naval Brigade, composed of older men, had scarcely ever a man in hospital. The Zulu campaign was a very trying one; there were the nightly entrenchments, the picquet duty amid high grass, and the absence of all confidence that discipline and that long mutual knowledge of each other give in the ranks. He added most emphatically that our younger soldiers were unfit for European campaigning; that half the First Division were 'sick;' there were always some 200 weak lads in hospital, 'crawling about like sick flies,' and, like him, every officer was dead against the short-service system.
The face of our young sergeant was handsome as ever; but it was strangely altered since late events had come to pass. There was a haggard and worn look in the features, particularly in the eyes. The latter looked feverish and dim—their brightness less at times, while a shadow seemed below them.
Florian having, as he now deemed, no right to the name of Melfort, or even that of MacIan, had enlisted under the latter name, as that by which he had been known from infancy, lest he might make a false attestation. The name of Gyle he shrank from, even if it was his—which at times he doubted! His regiment was the brave old 24th, or Second Warwickshire, which had been raised in the eventful year 1689 by Sir Edward Dering, Bart, of Surrenden-Dering, head of one of the few undoubted Saxon families in England, and it was afterwards commanded in 1695 by Louis, Marquis de Puizar.
Second to none in the annals of war during the reigns of Anne and the early Georges, the 24th in later times served with valour at the first capture of the Cape of Good Hope, in the old Egyptian campaign, in the wars of Spain and India, and now they were once again to cover themselves with a somewhat clouded and desperate glory in conflict with the gallant Zulus.
Florian in his new career found himself occasionally among a somewhat mixed and rough lot—the raw, weedy soldiers of the new disastrous system—but there were many who were of a better type; and the thought of Dulcie Carlyon—the only friend he had in the world, the only human creature who loved him—kept him free from the temptations and evil habits of the former; and he strove to live a steady, pure, and brave life, that he might yet be worthy of her, and give her no cause to blush for him.
He got through his drilling as quickly as he could, and soon discovered that the sooner a soldier takes his place in the ranks the better for himself. He found that though many of his comrades were noisy, talkative, and quarrelsome, that the English soldier quicker than any other discovers and appreciates a gentleman. His officers soon learned to appreciate him too, and hence the rapidity with which he won his three chevrons, and Mr. Sheldrake felt that, young though he was, he could trust Florian to go round the sentinels.
Each was at his post, and the attention of each increased as the gloom after sunset deepened, for none knew who or what might be approaching stealthily and unseen among the long wavy grass and mossy dongas that yawned amid the country in front.
'Hush, Bob!' said he to his comrade, Edgehill, whom he heard singing merrily to himself, 'you should be mute as a fish on outpost duty, and keep your ears open as well as your eyes. What have you got in your head, Bob, that makes you so silly? But, as the author of the "Red Rag" says, we soldiers have not much in our heads at any time, or we wouldn't go trying to stop cannon balls or bullets with them.'
'Right you are, Sergeant,' replied Bob, 'but I can't think what made you—a gentleman—enlist.'
'Because I was bound to be a soldier, I suppose. And you?'
'Through one I wish I never had seen?'
'Who was that?'
'The handsome young girl,
With her fringe in curl,
That worked a sewing-machine,'
—sung the irrepressible Bob; and Florian returned to report 'all right' to Mr. Sheldrake.
Though the actual cause of the Zulu war lies a little apart from our story, it may be necessary to mention that we invaded the country of Cetewayo after giving him a certain time, up to the 11th of January, to accept our ultimatum; to adopt an alternative for war, by delivering up certain of his subjects who had violated British territory, attacked a police-station, and committed many outrages,—among others, carrying off two women, one of whom they put to a barbarous death near the Buffalo River.
But instead of making any apology, or giving an indemnity, Cetewayo prepared to defend himself at the head of an enormous army of hardy Zulu warriors, all trained in a fashion of their own, divided into strong regiments, furnished with powerful shields of ox-hide, and armed with rifles, war clubs, and assegais—a name with which we are now so familiar. The shaft of this weapon averages five feet in length, with the diameter of an ordinary walking-stick, cut from the assegai tree, which is not unlike mahogany in its fibre, and furnished with a spear-head. Some are barbed, some double-barbed, and the tang of the blade is fitted—when red-hot—into the wood, not the latter into the blade, which is then secured by a thong of wet hide, and is so sharp that the Zulu can shave his head with it; and it is a weapon which they can launch with deadly and unerring skill.
The Zulu king, says Captain Lucas, was unable to sign his own name, 'and was as ignorant and as savage as our Norman kings,' and he thought no more of putting women, 'especially young girls, to death, than Bluff King Hal' himself; yet a little time after all this was to see him presented at Osborne, and to become the petted and fêted exile of Melbury Road, Kensington.
This night by the Buffalo River was Florian's first experience of outpost duty, and he felt—though not the responsible party—anxious, wakeful, and weary after a long and toilsome day's march.
He knew enough of military matters to be well aware that the importance of outposts, especially when dealing with a wily and savage enemy, could scarcely be exaggerated, for no force, when encamped in the field, can be deemed for a moment safe without them. Thus it was a maxim of Frederick the Great that it was pardonable to be defeated, but never to be surprised.
'I don't understand all this change that has come over my life,' thought he, as he stretched himself on the bare earth near the picquet fire; 'but I wonder if my father and mother can see and think of me where they are. Yet I sometimes feel,' he added, with a kind of boyish gush in his heart, 'as if they were near me and watching over me, so they must see and think too.'
Where was Dulcie, then, and what was she doing? How supporting herself, as she said she would have to do? Had she found friends, or, months ago, been trodden, with all her tender beauty, down in the mire of misfortune and adversity?
These were maddening thoughts for one so far away and so utterly powerless to help her as Florian felt himself, and rendered him at times more reckless of his own existence because it was useless to her.
The air around was heavy with the dewy fragrance of strange and tropical plants, and vast, spiky, and fan-shaped leaves cast their shadows over him as he strove to snatch the proverbial 'forty winks' before again going 'the rounds,' or posting the hourly reliefs, for they are always hourly when before an enemy.
And when our weary young soldier did sleep, he dreamt, not of the quick-coming strife, nor even of blue-eyed Dulcie, with her wealth of red golden hair, but, as the tender smile on his lips might have showed, of the time when his mother watched him in his little cot, with idolizing gaze, and when he, the now bronzed and moustached soldier, was a little child, with rings of soft dusky hair curling over his white forehead; when his cheeks had a rosy flush, and his tiny mouth a smile, and she fondly kissed the little hands that lay outside the snow-white coverlet her own deft fingers had made—the two wee hands that held his mother's heart between them—the heart that had long since mouldered by Revelstoke Church.
And so he slept and dreamed till roused by the inevitable cry of 'Sentry, go!' and, that duty over, as he composed himself to sleep again, with his knapsack under his head for a pillow, he thought as a soldier—
'To-day is ours. To-morrow never yet
On any human being rose or set!’