CHAPTER V.
THE MASSACRE AT ISANDHLWANA.
'What the deuce is up?' cried Hammersley and other officers, as they came rushing out of their tents when the sound of firing was heard all along the crest of the hill on the left of the camp, as had been reported to Lord Chelmsford; and, soon after, the few Mounted Infantry under Colonel Durnford were seen falling back, pursued swiftly by Zulus, who, like a dark human wave, came rolling in thousands over the grim crest of the hill, throwing out dense clouds of skirmishers, whose close but desultory fire fringed all their front with smoke.
There was no occasion for drum to be beaten or bugle blown to summon the troops; in a moment all rushed to arms, and the companies were formed and 'told off' in hot and nervous haste.
The Zulus came on in very regular masses, eight deep, maintaining a steady fire till within assegai distance, when they ceased firing, and launched with aim unerring their deadly darts.
Our troops responded by a close and searching fire, under which the black-skinned savages fell in heaps, but their places were fearlessly taken by others.
The rocket battery had been captured by them in their swift advance, and every man of it perished in a moment with Colonel Russell.
Driven back by their furious rush and force, the cavalry gave way, and Captain Mostyn, with two companies of the noble 24th, was despatched at the double to the eastern neck of the hill of Isandhlwana, where the Zulus in vast force were pressing along to outflank the camp, and on this wing of theirs he at once opened a disastrous fire.
Near the Royal Artillery guns the other two companies of the 24th were extended in skirmishing order; this was about half-past twelve p.m., and, as the mighty semicircle—the horns of the Zulu army—closed on them, every officer and man felt that they were fighting for bare existence now, and only procrastinating the moment of extirpation.
The shock which Hammersley's heart had received by the supposed deception of Finella was still too terribly fresh to render him otherwise than desperate and reckless of life, and in the coming mêlée he fought like a tiger.
He longed to forget both it and her—to put death itself, as he had now put distance, between himself and the place where that cruel blow had descended upon him; thus he exposed himself with a temerity that astonished Sheldrake, Florian, and others.
D'Aquilar Pope's company of the 24th was thrown forward in extended order near the waggon track till his left touched the files of the right near the Artillery. Facing the north were the companies of Mostyn, Cavaye, and Hammersley, with two of the Native Contingent, all in extended order, and over them the guns threw shot and shell eastward. But all the alternative companies were without supports to feed the fighting line, unless we refer to some of the Native Contingent held as a kind of reserve.
The crest of that precipitous mountain in front of which our luckless troops were fighting with equal discipline and courage in the silent hush of desperation, is more than 4,500 feet high; but the camp upon, its eastern slope had been in no way prepared, as we have said, for defence by earthworks or otherwise.
'The tents,' we are told, 'were all standing, just as they had been left when the troops under Chelmsford and Glyn marched out that morning, and their occupants were chiefly officers' servants, bandsmen, clerks, and other non-combatants, who, until they were attacked, were unconscious of danger. Fifty waggons, which were to have gone back to the commissariat camp at Rorke's Drift, about six miles in the rear as the crow flies, had been drawn up the evening before in their lines on the neck between the track and the hill, and were still packed in the same position. All other waggons were in rear of the corps to which they were attached. The oxen having been collected for safety when the Zulus first came in sight, many of them were regularly yoked in.'
It was not until after one o'clock that our handful of gallant fellows on the slope of the hill fully realised the enormous strength of the advancing army, now ascertained to have been fourteen thousand men, under Dabulamanzi.
By that time the Zulus had fought to within two hundred yards of the Natal Contingent, which broke and fled, thus leaving a gap in the fighting line, and through that gap the Zulus—loading the air with a tempest of triumphant yells and shrieks—burst like a living sea, and in an instant all became hopeless confusion.
'Form company square,' cried Hammersley, brandishing his sword; 'fours deep, on the centre—close.'
But there was no time to close in or form rallying-squares, and never again would our poor lads 're-form company.'
Before Mostyn's and Cavaye's companies could close, or even fix their bayonets, they were destroyed to a man, shot down, assegaied, and disembowelled, while the shrieks and fiend-like yells of the Zulus began to grow louder as the rattle of the musketry grew less, and the swift game of death went on.
Hammersley's company, which had been on the extreme left, though unable to form square, succeeded in reaching, but in a shattered condition, a kind of terrace on the southern face of the hill, from whence, as the smoke cleared away, they could see the Zulus using their short, stabbing assegais with awful effect upon all they overtook below.
Under the fire of the cannon, which had been throwing case-shot, the Zulus fell in groups rather than singly, and went down by hundreds; but as fast as their advanced files melted away, hordes of fresh savages came pouring up exultingly from the rear to feed the awful harvest of death; and, as they closed in, 'Limber up!' was the cry of Major Smith, the Artillery commanding officer; but the limber gunners failed to reach their seats, and, save a sergeant and eight, all perished under the assegai; and while in the act of spiking a gun, the Major was slain amid an awful mêlée and scene of carnage, where horse and foot, white man and black savage, were all struggling and fighting in a dense and maddened mass around the cannon-wheels.
Notwithstanding the manner in which he exposed himself, Hammersley, up to this time, found himself untouched; but his subaltern, poor Vincent Sheldrake, whose wounded sword-arm rendered him very helpless, was bleeding from several stabs and two bullet-wounds, which it was impossible to dress, yet he strove to save his servant Tom, who was lying in his last agony, and who, in gratitude, strove to accord him a military salute, and died in the attempt.
'Poor Vincent! you are covered with wounds!' said Hammersley.
'Ay; so many that my own mother—God bless her!—wouldn't know me; so many that if I was stripped of these bloody rags you would think I was tattooed. It is no crutch and toothpick business this!' replied Sheldrake, with a grim faint smile, as from weakness he fell forward on his hands and knees, and Florian stood over him with bayonet fixed and rifle at the charge.
At that moment an assegai flung by a Zulu finished the mortal career of Sheldrake. But Florian shot the former through the head, and the savage—a sable giant—made a kind of wild leap in the air and fell back on a gashed pile of the dead and the dying. It was Florian's last cartridge, and his rifle-barrel was hot from continued firing by this time.
All was over now!
Every man who could escape strove to make his way to the Buffalo River, but that proved impossible even for mounted men. Intersected by deep watercourses, encumbered by enormous boulders of granite, the ground was of such a nature that the fleet-footed Zulus, whose bare feet were hard as horses' hoofs, alone could traverse it, and the river, itself swift, deep, and unfordable, had banks almost everywhere jagged by rocks sharp and steep.
A few reached the stream, among them Vivian Hammersley, his heart swollen with rage and grief by the awful result of that bloody and disastrous day, by the destruction of his beloved regiment—the old 24th—for which he could not foresee the other destruction that 'the Wolseley Ring' would bring upon it and the entire British Army, and the loss by cruel deaths of all his brother-officers—the entire jolly mess-table. In that time of supreme agony of heart, we believe he almost forgot his quarrel with Finella Melfort, but found the track to Helpmakaar and Rorke's Drift, where a company of the 24th were posted under the gallant young Bromhead; but most of the fugitives were entirely ignorant of the district through which they wildly sought to make their escape, and thus were easily overtaken and slain by the Zulus; and so hot was the pursuit of these poor creatures, that even of those who strove to gain a point on the Buffalo, four miles from Isandhlwana, none but horsemen reached the river, and of these many were shot or drowned in attempting to cross it.
Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pulleine of the 24th, on perceiving all lost, and that the open camp was completely in the hands of the savages, called to Lieutenant Melville, and said,
'As senior lieutenant, you will take the colours, which must be saved at all risks, and make the best of your way from here!'
He shook warmly the hand of young Melville, who, as adjutant, was mounted, and then exclaimed to the few survivors:
'Men of the old 24th, here we are, and here we must fight it out!'
Then his gallant 'Warwickshires' threw themselves in a circle round him, and perished where they stood.
Melville galloped off with the colours, escorted by Lieutenant Coghill of the same corps, and by Florian, who was ordered to do so, as colour-sergeant, and who, luckily for himself, had found a strong horse. These three fugitives were closely pursued, and with great difficulty kept together till they reached the Buffalo River, the bank of which was speedily lined with Zulu pursuers armed with rifle and assegai.
Melville's horse was shot dead in the whirling stream, and the green-silk colours, heavy with gold-embroidered honours, slipped from his hands. Coghill, a brave young Irish officer, reached the Natal side untouched and in perfect safety; but on seeing his Scottish comrade clinging to a rock while seeking vainly to recover the lost colours, he went back to his assistance, and his horse was then shot, as was also that of Florian, who failed to get his right foot out of the stirrup, and was swept away with the dead animal down the stream.
The Zulus now continued a heavy fire, particularly on Melville, whose scarlet patrol jacket rendered him fatally conspicuous among the greenery by the river-side at that place. Two great boulders, six feet apart, lie there, and between them he and Coghill took their last stand, and fought, sword in hand, till overwhelmed. 'Here,' says Captain Parr in his narrative, 'we found them lying side by side, and buried them on the spot'—truly brothers in arms, in glory and in death.
When all but drowned, Florian succeeded in disentangling his foot from the stirrup-iron, and struck out for the Natal side. A shrill yell from the other bank announced that he was not unseen; bullets ploughed the water into tiny white spouts about him, and many a long reedy dart was launched at him—but with prayer in his heart and prayer on his lips he struggled on, and reached the bank, where he lay still, worn breathless, incapable of further exertion, and weakened by his recent fall in the donga, after escaping from Elandsbergen; thus believing that all was over with him, the Zulus ceased firing, and went in search of congenial carnage elsewhere. And there, dying to all appearance, in a reedy swamp by the Buffalo river, the tall grass around him, bristling with launched assegais, lay Florian Melfort, the true heir of Fettercairn, friendless and alone.
* * * * *
No Briton survived in camp to see the complete end of the awful scene that was acted there! And of that scene no actual record exists. For a brief period—a very brief one—a hand to hand fight went on among, and even in, the tents, and the company of Captain Reginald Younghusband of the 24th alone appears to have made any organized resistance. Making a wild rally on a plateau below the crest of the hill, they fought till their last cartridges were expended, and then died, man by man, on the ground where they stood. The Zulus surged round and over them with tiger-like activity, frantic gestures, remorseless ferocity, and lust of blood, whirling and flinging their ponderous knobkeries, or war-clubs, one blow from which would suffice to brain a bullock.
Even the savage warriors who slew and mutilated them were filled with admiration at their courage, while tossing their own dead again and again on the bayonet-blades to bear down the hedge of steel. 'Ah, those red soldiers at Isandhlwana!' said the Zulus after; 'how few they were, and how they fought! They fell like stones—each man in his place.'
There is something pathetic in the description of the stand made by the last man (poor Bob Edgehill, of the 24th), as given in the Natal Times.
Keeping his face to the foe, he struggled towards the crest of the hill overlooking the camp, till he reached a small cavern in the rocks. Therein he crept, and with rifle and bayonet kept the Zulus at bay, while they, taking advantage of the cover some rocks and boulders afforded them, endeavoured by threes and fours to shoot him.
Bob—that rackety Warwickshire lad—was very wary. He did not fire hurriedly, but shot them down in succession, taking a steady and deliberate aim. At last his only remaining cartridge was dropped into the breech-block of his rifle; another Zulu fell, and then he was slain. This was about five in the evening, when the shadow of the hill of Isandhlwana was falling far eastward across the valley towards the ridge of Isipesi.
'We ransacked the camp,' said a Zulu prisoner afterwards, 'and took away everything we could find. We broke up the ammunition-boxes and took all the cartridges. We practised a great deal at our kraals with the rifles and ammunition. Lots of us had the same sort of rifle that the soldiers used, having bought them in our own country, but some who did not know how to use it had to be shown by those who did.'
Five entire companies of the 1st battalion of the 24th perished there, with ninety men of the 2nd battalion; 832 officers and men mutilated and disembowelled, in most instances stripped, lay there dead, shot in every position, amid gashed and gory horses, mules, and oxen, while 1400 oxen and £60,000 of commissariat supplies were carried off.
At ten minutes past six in the evening of that most fatal day Lord Chelmsford was joined by Colonel Glyn's force. A kind of column was formed, with the guns in the centre, with the companies of the 2nd battalion of the 24th on each flank, and when the sun had set, and its last light was lingering redly on the rocky scalp of Isandhlwana, this force was within two miles of the camp, where now alone the dead lay. The opaque outline of the adjacent hills was visible, with the dark figures of the Zulus pouring in thousands over them in the direction of Ulundi; and after shelling the neck of the Isandhlwana Hill—where it would seem none of the enemy were, for no response was made—the shattered force, crestfallen in spirit, heavy in heart, and after having marched thirty miles, and been without food for forty-eight hours, bivouacked among the corpses of their comrades.
When, five months after, the burial parties were sent to this awful place, great difficulty was experienced in finding the bodies, the tropical grass had grown so high, while the stench from the slaughtered horses and oxen was overpowering. Every conceivable article, with papers, letters, and photographs of the loved and the distant, were thickly strewn about. 'A strange and terrible calm seemed to reign in this solitude of death and nature. Grass had grown luxuriantly about the waggons, sprouting from the seed that had dropped from the loads, falling on soil fertilised by the blood of the gallant fallen. The skeletons of some rattled at the touch. In one place lay a body with a bayonet thrust to the socket between the jaws, transfixing the head a foot into the ground. Another lay under a waggon, covered by a tarpaulin, as if the wounded man had gone to sleep while his life-blood ebbed away. In one spot over fifty bodies were found, including those of three officers, and close by another group of about seventy; and, considering that they had been exposed for five months, they were in a singular state of preservation.'
Such is the miserable story of Isandhlwana.