CHAPTER X.
FLORIAN JOINS THE MOUNTED INFANTRY.
Vincent Hammersley, we have said, achieved, with a few others, his escape to the Natal side of the Buffalo River, and reached the village of Helpmakaar, situated about five miles therefrom, where two companies of the first battalion of his unfortunate regiment were posted, under the command of a field-officer, and where for a few days he found himself in comparative comfort, though he and his brother-officers had a crushing sense of sorrow and mortification for what had befallen their corps at Isandhlwana; for regiments were not then what they have become now, mere scratch battalions, without much cohesion in peace or war, but were happy, movable homes—one family, indeed—full of cameraderie, grand traditions, and old esprit de corps; and often at Helpmakaar was the surmise, which is ever in the minds of our soldiers at the scene of war, put in words, 'What will they think of this at home? What are folks in Britain saying about this?'
Hearing of Florian's arrival, kindly he sent for him to congratulate him on his escape, and the interview took place in what was termed the 'mess-tent' (an old tarpaulin stretched on poles), where, seeing his worn and wasted aspect, he insisted on his taking some refreshment before relating what he and several officers were anxious to hear—details of the gallant but fatal episode of Melville and Coghill, when they perished on the left bank of the Buffalo. They then heard his subsequent adventures and the story of his narrow escape.
'I should like to have seen you potting those three fellows on the open karroo,' said an officer.
'It was a mercy to me that they knew not how to sight their rifles, sir, or I should not have been here to-clay probably,' replied Florian modestly.
'By Jove!' said Hammersley, 'I can't think enough of your act in the mealie-field, polishing off the Zulu who had the rifle with the assegai of his companion, and so becoming master of the situation. There were courage and decision in the act—two valuable impulses, for indecision and weakness of character are at the bottom of half the failures of life. You can't go about thus, in your shirt-sleeves,' added Hammersley. 'I have an old guard-tunic in my baggage; it will be good enough to fight in, and is at your service.'
'Thanks, sir,' replied Florian, colouring; 'but how can I appear in an officer's tunic?'
'One may wear anything here,' said Hammersley, laughing. 'By Jove! you are sure to be an officer some day soon; but meantime you may rip off the badges.'
Florian was glad of the gift, as all the stores of every description had been captured at Isandhlwana.
Hammersley had seriously begun the apparently hopeless task of rooting Finella's image out of his heart.
'Flirts and coquettes,' he would think, 'I have met by dozens in society; but I could little have thought that the childlike, apparently straightforward and impulsive Finella would form such a deuced combination of both characters! And, not content by bestowing an engagement ring, I actually gave her—ass that I was!—a wedding one. Yet I am not sure that I would not do all the same folly over again. "Unstable as water—thou shalt not excel." So we have it in Genesis.'
A hundred times he asked of himself, how could she lure him into loving her and then deceive him so, and for such a cub as Shafto?—the bright, childlike, outspoken girl. The act seemed to belie her honest, fearless, and beautiful eyes—for honest, fearless, and sweet they were indeed. Oh! it was all like a bad dream, that sudden episode in the garden at Craigengowan. How much of that game had been going on before and since? This thought, when it occurred to him, seemed to turn his heart to stone or steel.
Hammersley was now, by his own request, appointed to the Mounted Infantry. His casual remark about the tunic had fired the sparks of ambition in Florian's heart; thus he might run great risks, face more peril, and thus win more honour.
He volunteered to join the same force, and was placed in Hammersley's troop, which was to form a part of the column to relieve Colonel Pearson's force, then isolated and blockaded by the Zulus at a place called Etschowe, where he had skilfully turned an old Norwegian mission-station into a fort.
Nearly on the summit of the Tyoe Mountains, more than two thousand feet in height, it stood amid a district of wonderful sylvan beauty. An open and hilly country lay on the south, bounded by the vast ranges of the Umkukusi Mountains; on the north the Umtalazi River rolled in blue and silver tints through the green and grassy karroo. On the westward lay the Hintza forest of dark primeval wood, and far away, nearly forty miles to the eastward, could be seen Port Durnford or the shore of the Indian Ocean.
But there the Colonel, whose force consisted chiefly of a battalion of his own regiment, the 3rd Buffs, six companies of the Lanarkshire, a naval brigade, some cavalry and artillery, found himself undergoing all the inconvenience of a blockade, with provisions and stores decreasing fast and of twelve messengers, whom he had sent to Lord Chelmsford asking instructions and succour, eleven had been slain on the way, so there was nothing for it but to fight to the last, and defend the fort till help came, or share the fate of those who fell at Isandhlwana.
Fort Tenedos (so called from her Majesty's ship of that name) was thirty miles distant from Etschowe, and formed the base from which Lord Chelmsford went to succour the latter place at the head of nearly 7,000 men of all arms.
Hammersley's little troop was with the vanguard of the leading division, which was composed of a strong naval brigade, with two Gatlings, or 'barrel-organs,' as the sailors called them, 900 Argyleshire Highlanders, 580 of the Lanarkshire and Buffs, 350 Mounted Infantry, and a local contingent; and another column, similarly constituted, under Colonel Pemberton of the 60th Rifles. 'I am glad to have you on this duty with me,' said Hammersley, as the Mounted Infantry rode off in the dark hours of the morning, 'to feel the way,' en route to the Tugela River.
'I thank you, sir,' replied Florian; 'and am proud to be still under your orders. I only wish that Mr. Sheldrake were with us too.'
'Poor Sheldrake is lying yet unburied with all the rest!'
'With what solicitude,' thought Hammersley, smiling in the dark, 'he used to caress his almost invisible moustache! This Mounted Infantry service is rather desperate work,' he said aloud. 'Why did you volunteer for it?'
'To win honour and rank, if I can. But you, sir?'
'To forget—if possible—to forget!' was the somewhat enigmatical reply of Hammersley. Then, after a long pause, he said somewhat irrelevantly, 'My instinct told me from the first that you are a gentleman, though a sergeant in my company.'
'Yes, I am a gentleman,' replied Florian; 'I have passed through a school of adversity to you unknown, Captain Hammersley.
'Sorry to hear it—poor fellow.'
'And yet, sir, if I may venture to make the remark, from some things I have heard you say, you seem to be at warfare with the world.'
'In one sense, at least, I am embittered against it,' said Hammersley, and urged, he knew not by what emotion, unless that impulse which inspires men at times to make strange confidences, he added, 'I have learned the truth of what an author says, "That a woman can smile in a man's face and breathe vows of fidelity in his ear, each one of which is black as her own heart." This is the reason I volunteered for this rough work. Have you learned that too?'
'No, sir, thank Heaven!'
'As yet you are lucky; some day you may be undeceived.'
The noise made by the convoy, two miles and a half long, descending towards the river, could now be heard in the rear. It consisted of 113 waggons, each drawn by twelve oxen; fifty strongly wheeled Scottish carts; and about fifty mules all laden.
Every man carried in his spare and expansion pouches 200 rounds of ball-cartridge.
As the sun rose, the appearance of the long column, with the convoy, descending towards the river, and leaving the forests behind, was impressive and imposing. Brightness, colour, sound, and action, all were there.
Like a river of shining steel, the keen bayonets seemed to flash and ripple in the sunshine; the red coats and white helmets came out in strong relief against the background of green; the pipes of the Highlanders, and the drums and fifes of the other corps, loaded the calm moist morning air with sounds, in which others blended—the neighing of chargers, the lowing of the team-oxen, the rumble and clatter of many wheels, the yells and other unearthly cries of the Kaffir drivers.
Rain had fallen heavily of late; and the Tugela, at the point at which the column crossed, was six hundred yards in breadth. The mounted infantry were first over, and rode in extended order—scouting—each man with his loaded rifle planted by the butt on his right thigh. Florian was mounted on a horse which he named Tattoo—as it was a grey having many dark spots and curious stripes—a nag he soon learned to love as a great pet indeed. The country around was open; thus with the sharp activity of the scouting force on one hand and the partial absence of wood or scrub on the other, the Zulus had few or no opportunities for surprise or ambush, and the relieving column had achieved half the distance to be traversed before any great difficulties occurred.
Each night, on halting, an entrenched camp or laager was formed, with a shelter built twenty yards distant outside, and the strictest silence was enjoined after the last bugles had sounded. On the march the column was joined by the 57th 'Regiment,' the 'Old Die Hards' of Peninsular fame, whom they received with hearty cheers.
Some Zulus in their simple war array were visible on the 1st of April; and during the night many red signal-fires were seen to flash up on the hills to the north, thus indicating the gathering of a great force, and these continued to blaze, though the rain fell heavily, wetting every man in the laager to the skin, as the column was without tents.
It was a night of anxiety, gloom, and suffering. In fitful gleams, between masses of black and flying cloud, the weird, white moon shone out at times; but no sound reached the alert advanced sentinels, save the melancholy howl of the jackal or the hoarse croak of the Kaffir vulture expectant of its coming feast.
The trumpets sounded at dawn on the 2nd of April. The mounted infantry sprang into their saddles and galloped forth to reconnoitre, while the troops unpiled and stood to their arms, though no one knew where the wily and stealthy Zulus were. Captain Percy Barrow, of the 19th Hussars, had reconnoitred on the previous day eight miles to the north-east, as far as Wamoquendo, and could see nothing of them, and on the morning Hammersley with his troop had ridden as far in a westerly direction with the same success, and yet ere the day closed the desperate battle of Ginghilovo was fought.