CHAPTER XVIII.
ON THE BANKS OF THE ITYOTYOSI.
It was bitterly cold in camp that night—one of the noctes ambrosianæ in Zululand, as Hammersley said laughingly; and on the morning of the 1st June, when the thin ice stood in the buckets inside the tents, the latter were struck, and the Second Division began its march from the Blood River towards the Itelezi Hill.
'My darling little Finella—may God love you and bless you!' was the morning prayer of Hammersley as he sprung on his horse, and the squadron of Mounted Infantry went cantering forward; prior to which, Florian, after fraternally sharing a ration biscuit with Tattoo—while the animal whinnied and rubbed his velvet nose against his cheek, as if thanking him therefor—kissed him quite as tenderly as Finella ever did Fern; for a genuine trooper has a true affection for his horse.
As the squadron rode on in advance of the column, Hammersley beckoned Florian to his side, and, as they trotted on together, he asked him many a kindly question about Dulcie Carlyon, of his past life and future hopes and wishes, betraying a genuine interest which touched Florian keenly.
In due time the Itelezi Hill, a long mass, the brown sides of which were scored by rocky ravines and woody kloofs, the lurking-places of many Zulus, who acted as spies along the border, was reached; and now, on the bank of the Ityotyosi River, at a short distance from the Natal frontier, a halt was made, and another temporary camp formed on ground selected by the Prince Imperial of France, who had previously examined it.
In advance of the whole force on the same morning, the Prince had ridden on with instructions to examine the nature of the ground through which the march would lie; and with an emotion of deep interest, for which he could not account, Florian saw him ride off at full speed, accompanied by Lieutenant Carey, of the 98th Regiment, the Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General, with six of Captain Bettington's European Horse; and pushing on over the open and pastoral country, the Prince and his party soon disappeared in the vicinity of the Itelezi Hill, which he reached about ten a.m.
On the same day Sir Evelyn Wood—with orders to keep one day's march in front of the Second Division—was reconnoitring in advance of his flying column, when the halt was made by the Ityotyosi River, where despatches from the rear overtook the staff, and a few minutes after, the General sent his orderly for Florian, whom he found carefully grooming and rubbing down Tattoo.
Though ignorant of having committed any faux pas, Florian's first idea was that he had fallen into a scrape, and with some trepidation of spirit and manner found himself before the General, who, wearing a braided patrol-jacket and a white helmet girt by a puggaree, was examining the country through a field-glass.
'Sergeant,' said he, holding forth his hand, 'I have to congratulate you.'
'On what, sir?' asked Florian.
'Your appointment to a second-lieutenancy in your regiment, as the reward of your disinterested bravery at Ginghilovo, and general conduct on all occasions. It is duly notified in the Gazette, and here is the letter of the Adjutant-General.'
Florian's breath was quite taken away by this intelligence. For a few moments he could scarcely realise the truth of what the general, with great kindness and interest of manner, had said to him. He felt like one in a dream, from which he might awaken to disappointment; and the white tents of the camp, the Ityotyosi that flowed beside them, the woods and distant hills, seemed to be careering round him, and it was only when after a little time he felt the firm grasp of Hammersley's hand, and heard the warm and hearty congratulations from him and other officers, that he felt himself now indeed to be one of them.
The first to accord him a 'a salute as Second Lieutenant' (a rank since then abolished) was Tom Tyrrell.
'Let me shake your hand for the last time, sir, as your comrade,' said he.
'Not for the last time, I hope, Tom,' replied Florian, whose thoughts were flashing home to Dulcie, and all she would feel and think and say.
An officer—he was already an officer! As his father—or he whom he had so long deemed his father—was before him. His foot was firmly planted on the ladder now, and with the thought of Dulcie's joy his own redoubled.
'Come to the mess tent,' said Hammersley. 'We must wet the commission and drink the health of the Queen after tiffin.'
For the first time on that auspicious afternoon Florian found himself among his equals, and the kindness with which they welcomed him to their circle made his affectionate and appreciative heart swell. Hammersley was President of the Mess Committee, and was a wonderful strategist in the matter of 'providing grub,' as he said.
A few rough boards that went with the baggage formed the table, and at 'tiffin' that day the menu comprised vegetable soup, a sirloin of beef, an entrée or two, for a wonder, with plenty of brandy-pawnee and 'square-face;' and what the repast lacked in delicacy and splendour was amply made up by the general jollity and good humour that pervaded the board, though, for all they knew, another hour might find them face to face with the enemy.
Would either Hammersley or Florian be spared to write to the girl he loved?
In the case of Florian it seemed somewhat impossible, especially now, when he had—all unknown to himself—two secret and unscrupulous enemies on his trail, and intent on his destruction.
Meanwhile a terrible tragedy, that was to form a part of the world's history, was being acted not very far off from where that jocund circle sat round the board presided over by Hammersley.
Sir Evelyn Wood, we have said, was reconnoitring in advance of his column, which was then on the march from Munhla Hill towards the Ityotyosi River. Scattered in extended order among the growing undulations and watercourses, the Horse of Redvers Buller were scouting.
Rain had fallen during the night, but the sky of the afternoon was clear, bright, and without a cloud, from the far horizon to the zenith.
Following, but at a distance, the line taken by the Prince Imperial and his six reconnoitring troopers, General Wood, after issuing from a dense coppice of thorn trees, interspersed with graceful date palms and enormous feathery bamboo canes, came suddenly on a deep and smooth tributary of the Ityotyosi, and after contriving to ford it at a place where its banks were fringed by beautiful acacias and drooping palms with fan-shaped leaves, to his astonishment some mounted men appeared in his front, and all apparently fugitives.
With twelve of his troopers the fearless Buller, who had seen them also, now came galloping up and rode on with Sir Evelyn, and in rounding the base of a tall cliff they came suddenly upon Lieutenant Carey, of the 98th Foot, and four troopers of Bettington's Corps, all riding at a furious pace, their horses flecked with white foam, and with sides bloody by the goring spurs.
They reined up pale and breathlessly, and in another minute or two their terrible secret was told.
'Where is the Prince Imperial?' cried Sir Evelyn, as he rushed his horse over some fallen trees in his haste to meet the fugitives.
But Carey, who seemed as dead beat as his horse, was at first apparently incapable of replying.
'Speak, sir!' cried the General impetuously. 'What has happened?'
Still Carey seemed incapable of speech.
'Sir,' said one of the troopers, 'the Prince, I fear, is killed.'
The speaker was Private Le Toque, a Frenchman.
'Is that the case? Tell me instantly, sir!' resumed the General, with growing excitement.
'I fear it is so,' faltered Carey, in a low voice.
'Then what are you doing here, sir?'
A veil must be drawn over the rest of the interview, which was of a most painful character, wrote Major Ashe in his narrative of the occurrence.
A soldier—Tom Tyrrell, encouraged by the knowledge that his late comrade Florian was there—came rushing into the mess-tent, where Florian, with those who were now his brother-officers, was seated in happiness and jollity, bearing the terrible tidings, which spread through the camp like wildfire, and all who had horses mounted and rode forth to discover if they were true, and all spoke sternly and reprehensively of the luckless Lieutenant Carey, who eventually was tried by a court-martial, and died two years after in India, some said of a broken heart.
As Florian was one of the searchers for the slain Prince, the story of this latter's tragic death does not lie apart from ours.
It would seem, briefly, then, that the charger ridden by the Prince, when he left Lord Chelmsford's camp, and which in the end chiefly led to his death, was a clumsy and awkward animal, given to rearing and shying. After crossing the Ityotyosi, then swollen by the recent rains, the Prince and his party rode on through a district covered with grass-like rush, kreupelboom, and dwarf acacias.
The Prince, who from the time of his landing had always sought out any Frenchmen who might be among the local levies, and frequently gave them sovereigns, was riding with Le Toque by his side; and the latter, in the gaiety of his heart, and exhilarated by the beauty of the morning, sang more than one French song as they rode onward, such as—
'Eh gai, gai, gai, mon officier!'
And as they began to ascend a still nameless hill with a flat top, the Prince sang loudly 'Les deux Grenadiers,' an old Bonapartist ditty—Le Toque joining in the chorus of Beranger's chanson:—
'Vieux grenadiers suivons un vieux soldat,
Suivon un vieux soldat!
Suivon un vieux soldat!
Suivon un vieux soldat!'
On the summit of the koppie the party slackened their girths, while the Prince made a sketch of the landscape. 'We may here digress to say,' adds the Cape Argus, 'that the Prince's talent with pen and pencil, combined with his remarkable proficiency in military surveying (which so distinguished the first Napoleon), made his contributions to our knowledge of the country to be traversed of great value.'
Amid the heat and splendour of an African noon they now rode on to a deserted kraal, consisting of five beehive-shaped huts, near a dry donga, or old watercourse, where they unsaddled and knee-haltered their horses to graze, while the Prince and his companions chatted and smoked, all unaware that some forty armed Zulus were actually stalking them like deer, crawling stealthily and softly on their hands and knees through the long Tambookie grass and mealies, drawing their rifles and assegais after them.
About four o'clock Corporal Grub, of Bettington's Horse, got a glimpse of a Zulu, and warned the Prince of the circumstance.
'Saddle up at once!' said the latter; 'prepare to mount!'
The brief orders had scarcely left his lips when a volley from forty rifles crashed through the long Tambookie grass and waving reeds, which bent as if before a breeze, and then the ferocious lurkers rushed with flashing and glistening teeth, bloodshot, rolling eyes, and loud yells, upon the solitary party of eight men.
Terrified by the sudden tumult, all the horses swerved wildly round; a trooper named Rogers was shot dead with his left foot in the stirrup, and those who actually got into their saddles found it impossible to control their horses, so terrific were the yells, mingled with ragged shots, and they bore their riders across the open karoo and towards the deep and dangerous donga.
Prince Napoleon's horse, a difficult one to mount at all times, and sixteen hands high, resisted every attempt at remounting in its then state of terror; thus one by one the party rode or were borne away, while the unhappy Prince endeavoured to vault into his saddle.
'Mon Prince, dépêchez-vous, si'l vous plait!' cried his countryman trooper, Le Toque, as he rushed past, lying across but not in his saddle, and then the heir of France found himself alone—alone and face to face with more than forty merciless and pitiless savages!
Who can tell what may have flashed through the brave lad's mind in that moment of fierce excitement and supreme mental agony—what thoughts of France and Imperial glory—the glorious past, the dim future, and, more than all, no doubt, of the lonely mother, who was so soon to weep for him at Chiselhurst—to weep the tears that no condolence could quench!
When last seen by Le Toque, as the latter gave a backward and despairing glance, he was grasping a stirrup-leather in vain attempts to mount the maddened animal, which trod upon him, and broke away when the strap parted; and then, for a moment, the young Napoleon covered his face with his hands—deserted, abandoned to an awful death, which no Christian eye was then to see.
All the obloquy of this tragedy was now heaped upon Lieutenant Carey, a native of the south of England. It was dark night when he got to head-quarters, and at that time nothing could be done to ascertain the fate of the deserted one.
Scarcely a man slept in our camp by the Ityotyosi River, and after 'lights out' had been sounded by the bugles, the soldiers could talk of nothing else but the poor Prince Imperial.
'The news of his death,' wrote an officer who was in the camp, 'fell like a thunderbolt on all! At first it was regarded as one of those reports that so often went round. Bit by bit, however, it assumed a form. Even then people were incredulous, only half believing the dreadful tale. The two questions first asked were—What will they say at home? and, secondly, the poor Empress? All was wildest excitement, and brave men absolutely broke down under the blow. To them it looked a black and bitter disgrace. The chivalrous young Prince, repaying the hospitality shown him by England with his sword—entrusted to us by his widowed mother—to have been killed in a mere paltry reconnaissance! to have fallen without all his escort having been killed first! to lie there dead and alone! Many there were who would have given up life to have been lying with him, so that our British honour might have been kept sacred.’