Dulcie Carlyon: A novel. Volume 2 by James Grant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XX.
 THE SKIRMISH AT EUZANGONYAN.

The transmission rearwards of the Prince's remains causing a day's delay in the advance of the division, Florian gladly availed himself of it to write to Dulcie a letter full of love and all the enthusiastic outpouring of his heart to one who was so far away; to express his astonishment on learning that she was an inmate of the same house with Shafto, their bête noir, of whom she was to beware, he added impressively.

He told of his military success—of all that might be in store for them yet; for Florian had, if small means at present, the vast riches of youth and hope to draw upon, especially in his brighter moments, and—if spared—his future promotion from the rank of second-lieutenant was now but a thing of time.

There had not been much brightness in his life latterly; but it was impossible for him not to admit that the dawn of a happier day had come, and that he had made substantial progress in his profession.

He told her—among many other things—of Vivian Hammersley's friendship and favour for himself, even when in the rank and file, and of his pride and gratitude therefor; of the change her letter to himself had made in Hammersley's views of Miss Melfort, for whom he sent an enclosure from the Captain, lest watchful eyes—perchance those of Shafto—might examine too closely the contents of the Craigengowan post-bag; and from old experience they knew what the man was capable of—not respecting even 'the property of H.M. Postmaster-General.'

For, now that Florian was an officer, his friend Hammersley, though proud as Lucifer and at times haughty to a degree, was, under the circumstances, not loth to avail himself of Dulcie's assistance in this matter, so necessary to his own happiness; so the two missives in one were despatched, and with an emotion of thankfulness that was deep and genuine, Florian dropped it into the regimental post-bag at the orderly-room tent, for conveyance with the mail to Durban.

The Second Division began its forward march on the 3rd of January, and encamped half a mile distant from the kraal near which the Prince Imperial had perished, while Sir Evelyn Wood's column, advancing by the left, proceeded along the further side of the Ityotyosi. Already the bad rations to which they were reduced—eight pounds of inferior oats and no hay—were telling severely on the horses of the 17th Lancers and Mounted Infantry.

On the 4th, when encamped on the bank of the Nondweni River, a cavalry patrol, under Redvers Duller, Hammersley, and others, had a narrow escape from being cut off by two thousand five hundred Zulus, of whom, on the following day, the entire cavalry column went forth in search.

When the whole mounted force was getting under arms, Hammersley threw away the end of a cigar before falling in, and said to Florian—

'Look here, old fellow, I have been thinking about you. I am not a millionnaire, you know, but I have enough and to spare. You have not, I presume—pardon me for saying so; but now that you are an officer, and must want many things, my cheque-book is at your disposal, if you wish to draw on old Chink the Paymaster.'

'A thousand thanks to you, Captain Hammersley,' replied Florian, his heart swelling and his colour deepening with gratitude; 'but I have no need to trespass on your kindness—I want nothing here; we are all pretty much alike in Zululand—officer and private, general and drum-boy.'

'Yes, by Jove! but in the time to come?'

'Thanks again, I say, dear Hammersley, but I am inclined to let to-morrow take care of to-morrow, especially while campaigning in Zululand.'

'Tiresome work I find that, with all my zeal for the service,' observed Hammersley, as the entire cavalry force moved off about four in the morning, when the sky and landscape were alike dark. 'We have much bodily endurance, and run enormous risks which the people at home don't understand or fully appreciate, because our antagonists are naked savages, though second to no men in the world for reckless valour; thus honour may be accorded to us but scantily and grudgingly, because they are savages and not civilised enemies, or, as some one says of the days of the Great Duke, when so many thousand men in red coats and blue breeches met and beat so many thousand men in blue coats and red breeches.'

General Marshall, with the King's Dragoon Guards and 17th Lancers, had reconnoitred the country in advance as far as the Upoko River, and there effected a junction with Buller's command on the same ground where the latter had escaped the ambuscade referred to.

On a green plain below it a great mass of Zulus, sombre and dark, spotted with the grey of their oval shields, was seen hovering, the flash of an assegai-head sparkling out at times when the sun arose, and near them, enveloped in smoke and all sheeted with flame at once, were some kraals that had been set on fire by the Irregular Horse; so the scene, if beautiful, was also a stirring one.

Above the vast mountain opposite, where the Upoko (a tributary of the great White Umvulosi, which flows towards the sea) was rolling in golden sheen between banks clothed with date palms, Kaffir plums, flowering acacias, and thornwood, the uprisen sun was shining in all his glory. The mountain was torn by ravines and studded with mimosa groups. On the left of the troops rose the vast Inhlatzatye, or mountain of greenstone, turned to crimson in the morning sun, its base clothed with lovely pasture, and twenty miles in its rear was known to be Ulundi, the great military kraal of Cetewayo, the chief object of the advance.

In the immediate foreground was the force of cavalry, with all their white helmets and sword blades shining in the sun, the dark blue of the Lancers, and the sombre uniforms of the Irregular Horse, relieved and varied by the bright scarlet of the King's Dragoon Guards and the mimosa-coloured tunics of the Mounted Infantry.

The sharp blare of the trumpets sounded 'the advance.'

'Buller's Horse to the left!' cried the officer of that name, digging spurs into his charger; 'Whalley's to the right! Frontier Light Horse and Hammersley's Mounted Infantry the centre!'

Uncovering to the flanks, the formation was made at a canter, and the forward movement began. During the morning Florian had more than once (till his men required his attention) an unpleasant sense of the presence of two secret enemies on the ground, which made him look frequently to where the oddly costumed volunteer troopers were advancing, and before that day's fighting was quite over he had bitter cause to know that both were in the field.

The 1st King's Dragoon Guards had been quartered in the same barracks with the regiment to which these two deserters belonged, and, feeling themselves now in hourly expectation of recognition by some of them, the camp of the Second Division had become perilous for the two desperadoes, and on that day they had resolved to 'levant,' but not before effecting their villainous purpose, if possible.

They knew well that by the rules of the service, at foreign stations, when there is no doubt as to the identity of a deserter, he is sent at once to his own corps to be dealt with there; moreover, they know that the fact of their serving with the Volunteer Horse constituted another crime—that of fraudulent enlistment; and neither had any desire to be tied to the wheel of a field-piece and flogged as an example to others, for that punishment had not been quite abandoned yet.

While Colonel Buller's force was advancing, the Zulus had moved off by companies in singularly regular formation, and taken post in the rocky ravines at the base of the Euzangonyan Hill, which was covered with thick scrub and high feathery reeds, that swayed to and fro in the wind like a mighty cornfield.

After crossing the river, the Irregulars and Mounted Infantry at full speed advanced to within three hundred yards of the foe, and leaped from their saddles, with rifles unslung. The horses were then led forward out of fire, or nearly so, by every third file, told off for that purpose.

Kneeling and creeping forward by turns, the fighting line opened a steady fire upon the partly concealed Zulus, whose dark figures were half seen, half hidden amid the smoke that eddied along the slopes of the hill, and this continued till the watchful Buller, who was surveying the position through a field-glass from the summit of a knoll, discovered from a flank movement that the Zulus had a large force in reserve, and, in a wily manner, were luring his troops on to destruction.

He ordered his bugle to sound the 'retire' and the whole to recross the river, but not before several men were killed or wounded, with fifteen horses placed hors de combat; then the Queen's cavalry were ordered to advance to the attack with lance and sword.

In his saddle, Florian watched them advance in imposing order, led by that preux chevalier, Drury Lowe, the hero of Zurapore, where the pursuit and the destruction of Tantia Topee were achieved in the Indian war. When Buller's scouting horse, skilled marksmen even from the saddle, and mounted on cattle nimble as antelopes, had partly failed, he could scarcely hope to achieve much with his heavy Lancers and still heavier Dragoon Guardsmen; but sending a troop of the latter to guard against any chance of the Zulus creeping down the bed of the river, he led three troops of Lancers close to the margin, where the marigold figs grew in profusion, and the yellow Kaffir melons, large as 40-pound shot, were floating in the current; and splashing through, he deployed them on some open ground beyond, full of that fiery confidence that there is nothing in war which the genuine dragoon cannot achieve.

'By Jove!' exclaimed Hammersley, 'but it is sad to see these splendid Lancers going in for this kind of work. It is hopeless for them to charge such a position, and attempt, at the lance's point, to ferret these savages out of their holes and dongas.'

From the Euzangonyan Hill the Zulus were now firing heavily, but as their rifles were all wrongly sighted—if sighted at all—their bullets went high into the air. Between these and Lowe spread a mealie-field, which he believed to be full of other Zulus, and resolved to let all who might be lurking there feel what the point of a lance is, he rode straight at it.

'Trot—gallop—charge!' sounded the trumpets; and with their horses' manes and the banneroles of their levelled lances streaming backward on the wind, the 17th rushed on, sweeping through the tall, brown stalks of the dead mealies, but found no Zulus there.

When clear of the mealies, Lowe ordered some of the Lancers to dismount and open fire with their carbines on those Zulus who were lurking on the hill-slope among some thorn-trees, and there many were shot down, and their half-devoured and festering remains were found by our soldiers in the subsequent August.

After punishing them severely, the cavalry were recalled, but not before there were some casualties among the Lancers, whose adjutant, Lieutenant Frith—a favourite officer—was shot through the heart, and brought to camp dead across the saddle of his charger.

From fastnesses that were quite inaccessible to horsemen, the Zulus, covered by an undergrowth of prickly thorns and plants with enormous brown spiky leaves, continued to fire heavily, wreathing all the hill-side in white smoke, streaked with jets of fire; while another portion of them, yelling and running with the swiftness of hares, lined the bed of the river and opened a sputtering fusilade in flank, rendering the whole position of our cavalry most perilous.

'Retire by alternate squadrons!' was now the order for the cavalry, and beautifully and steadily was the movement executed.

'Fours about—trot,' came the order in succession from the leaders of the even and odd squadrons.

A front was thus kept to the Zulus, but the hope to lure them from their fastnesses by a movement they had never seen before, and to have a chance of attacking them in the open, proved vain; and upon broken and steep ground, on which it would have been impossible for any cavalry force to assail them, they were seen swarming in vast black hordes round the flanks of the Euzangonyan Hill, and still maintaining a sputtering but distant though defiant fire, while the cavalry and other mounted men fell back towards their respective columns; and now it was that the calamitous outrage we have hinted at occurred.

When the cavalry began to fall back by alternate squadrons, it was remarked that two men of the Irregular Horse lingered at a considerable distance in the rear, still firing occasionally, as if they had not heard the sound of the trumpet to 'retire.'

'Those rash fools will get knocked on the head if they don't come back,' said Hammersley to Florian, as they were riding leisurely now at a little distance in rear of their men. 'They are nearly six hundred yards off. Well, we have not got even a scratch to-day,' he added, laughing, as he manipulated and proceeded to light a cigar; 'and now to get back to camp and have a deep drink of bitter beer. By Jove, I am thirsty as a bag of sand.'

'And I too,' said Florian.

Again the 'retire' was sounded, now by two trumpeters together, but without avail apparently.

At that moment two rifle-shots came upon the speakers, delivered by the very men in question, and then they were seen to gallop at full speed, not after the retreating column, but at an angle towards the north-west, on perceiving that their shots had taken fatal effect; for Hammersley, struck by one, fell from his saddle on his face, and rolled over apparently in mortal agony, while Florian felt Tattoo give a kind of writhing bound under him and nearly topple over on his forehead till recovered by the use of spur and bridle-bit. Florian at once dismounted, for the horse was seriously wounded; but he could only give a despairing glance at his friend, if he meant to act decisively and avenge him.

'These scoundrels are deserters doubly—I know; follow me, men, we have not a moment to lose!' cried Florian, in a voice husky with rage, grief, and excitement, as he leaped upon poor Hammersley's horse; and with a section of four men, one of whom was Tom Tyrrell, he spurred after them at full speed, without waiting for orders given or permission accorded.

If he was to act at all, there was no time for either.

He never doubted for a moment that they were Josh Jarrett and Dick of the Droogveldt, who were boldly attempting to escape in the face of the column after failing to shoot himself, and who had now fully thousand yards start of him and his pursuing party.

END OF VOL. II.