CHAPTER IV.
EN ROUTE TO ULUNDI.
On the 19th of June the Second Division, the operations of which were now combined with those of Sir Evelyn Wood's Flying Column, resumed its march to the front after the failure of certain nude ambassadors from Cetewayo to arrange with Lord Chelmsford, who, on the 16th—three days before his march began—had received the most mortifying intelligence that he was to be superseded in command of the South African Field Force by 'the coming man,' Lieutenant-General Sir Garnet Wolseley, ere whose arrival took place, he hoped to end the war by one vigorous blow delivered at Ulundi.
The troops were all in the highest spirits—full of fine ardour, and longing to wipe out the stain cast upon them by the miserable fate of the Prince Imperial.
The first movement of the division was the ascent of the great and steep Ibabanango Mountain, and when that was accomplished, Sir Evelyn encamped on the left bank of the River Vemhlatuz, where open country stretched on the left flank towards where Fort Marshall was built, while the division encamped in his rear on ground where dwarf acacias grew, with tangled creepers, wild vines, and cane-like plants.
Service and exposure had now made deep the bronze of Florian's face and hands; but the former had matured its expression, and the fine manliness of it; a careless, not precisely a rackety life—but a camp life, with perils faced in the field—had made his features and bearing less boyish than they were when Dulcie bade him farewell at Revelstoke.
'A generous friendship no cold medium knows,' says Pope; thus, when active operations were resumed, Florian became painfully conscious how much he missed Hammersley at the head of the squadron, a charge that had now devolved upon himself; for Vivian's spirit of camaraderie and bonhomie, his manly, gentlemanly, and soldierly bearing in every way, with the little secret they had to share between them, even as with Dulcie and Finella at Craigengowan, formed an additional link.
When would they meet again? When would they greet each other, if ever, more? And while surmising thus he viewed with genuine regard the valuable ring bestowed on him by Hammersley, and patted with affection the fine charger with which he had also gifted him; but many more in the ranks of the old 24th missed Hammersley as well as Florian.
On the 20th occurred one of those skirmishes with the Zulus which were of daily occurrence.
Villiers, the young aide-de-camp, came with orders for the Irregulars, Buller's Horse, and Florian's little squadron of Mounted Infantry to reconnoitre the ground between two branches of the Umhlatoosi River, and for this purpose they quitted the camp as usual before dawn.
As they rode on in silence Florian's mind—for he was apt to get lost in thought—was dwelling on a legend he had heard, that the Zulu people were the descendants of certain shipwrecked seamen of a fleet which Pharaoh, King of Egypt, had sent to the Southern Sea, and that Zululand, some say Sofala, was the ancient Ophir, where forests of cedar and ebony grew, and gold, diamonds, and all manner of precious stones existed in certain geological strata.
As the Mounted Infantry rode on over ground where troops had never ridden before, herds of spiral-horned koodoos, of eland, of hartebeest and the striped zebra went scampering before them.
'What sport we might have here had we not other work in hand!' exclaimed an officer regretfully.
In two detachments they examined the hills on the flanks of the way which was to be the route of the division. Buller's Horse took those on the right; Florian's Infantry those on the left. The former soon unearthed some Zulus, who fired a ragged volley and then vanished over a steep crest, where it was impossible to pursue them.
Skirmishes of this kind went on almost hourly till the 26th, when Florian became involved in what seemed a fatal catastrophe. It had now become evident to the Zulus that these continued advances of the Second Division menaced the great Royal Kraal of Ulundi. Thus more and more of them were visible daily. Their opposition was growing, and they made resolute attempts to burn up all the tall feathery grass along the route; and being dry as hay, it readily caught fire, to the peril of ammunition in the pouches, boxes in the gun-limbers and store-waggons.
On the 24th Sir Evelyn Wood's column had reached a place called the Jackal Ridge, and encamped on its summit, while the tents of the division were pitched at its base in a district where the valleys were full of beautiful green bushes, where cotton trees and castor-oil plants grew in the wildest luxuriance, and the tall scarlet spikes and spear-like leaves were varied by the green of the spekboom and the melkbosh or spurge plants of various kinds.
From the camp of the Flying Column on the summit of the ridge a great kraal, supposed to be Ulundi, was seen in the distance, the kraal of which traders and native scouts had circulated the most fabulous descriptions.
'Vague stories of the wealth of the king went about,' says Captain Thomasson, adjutant of Buller's Irregular Cavalry. 'Splendid visions of loot in the shape of ivory, ostrich feathers, and diamonds filled the soldiers' eyes. Incredible stories of the amount of treasure taken at Isandhlwana were circulated. It is needless to say these golden visions were broken, not a man of the regulars being a sovereign the better for any loot taken. Some of the irregulars got small sums from deserted kraals. The amount taken altogether was small.... From here a good view of Ulundi can be seen—the sight we have waited six long months for. The delight one felt must have been similar to that which animated the ten thousand at the first sight of the sea. One was almost tempted to shout Ulundi! Ulundi! as they did Thalassa! Thalassa! From the same height we could see the sea in the far distance.'
Prior to attacking some kraals that were in front, on the 25th Sir Evelyn Wood's column pushed forward again, and crossed a stream by laying across it mattings of grass—a process that occupied fully seven hours—after which the Second Division followed.
Early on the morning of the 26th, the day we have referred to, Lord Chelmsford personally paraded a force to attack the enemy.
It consisted of two squadrons of the 17th Lancers, looking gay in their smart blue tunics, faced and broadly lapelled with white, their swallow-tailed banneroles fluttering out upon the wind; Buller's picturesque-looking Irregular Horse, Florian's Mounted Infantry, Major Bengough's wild-looking natives, with rifle, shield, and assegai, and two pieces of cannon.
The kraals to be attacked stood in a spacious valley, five miles distant from the camp, and a stern resistance was expected.
At a canter the horse and artillery took a circuitous route, and gained an eminence overlooking the kraals, which were speedily set on fire by shells, and, being of dry and inflammable material, were at once sheeted with red flame.
In each of these military kraals were two thousand five hundred huts, and the dark smoke from them ascended in separate columns of stupendous height into the clear and ambient African sky, and to avenge their destruction a great column of some thousands of Zulus, like a sombre, moving sea, studded with grey and glittering objects—bull-hide shields and assegai-blades—were seen advancing swiftly along the green and verdant valley.
'This will be no crutch-and-toothpick business!' exclaimed Villiers, the joyous young aide-de-camp, laughingly; 'here they come,' he added, looking through his field-glasses, 'led by a tearing swell, with cranes' pinions on his head, and no end of cows' tails at his waist, and a shield like a door, by Jove!'
The words had scarcely escaped him when his horse was shot under him, and he 'came a cropper,' as he phrased it, in doing so nearly swallowing his cigar.
But the Royal Artillery 9-pounders opened on them, plumping shell after shell into their dense dark masses, so they paused, wavered, faced about, and fled with the wildest precipitation, pursued by the fiery and active Redvers Buller, of the 60th Rifles (who had served in the China campaign of 1860, and with the Red River expedition under Sir Garnet Wolseley), at the head of his Irregular Horse, the Mounted Basutos, and Florian's Mounted Infantry.
On they went, over the maimed and torn, the dead and the dying, naked and bleeding. Many were shot and cut down on every side, and the casualties would have been more terrible but for the awful state of the atmosphere, which was steamy, hot, and laden with the overpowering fragrance of sheets of tropical flowers and plants that clothed the two faces of the valley.
In the hot pursuit, as Florian was taking his horse over a watercourse by a flying leap, there occurred to him one of those mishaps which, from one circumstance or another, few horsemen have not experienced. In mid-leap, the fiery animal was suddenly scared by a huge black aasvogel (a kind of vulture), that flew upward from among the dwarf bushes with a vicious croak, and caused it to swerve under him in the saddle, giving his whole frame a painful wrench that, without a wound or bruise, rendered him for the time incapable of riding a yard further, and with difficulty he dismounted.
What was to be done? Advance with the mounted men under Buller he could not, neither could he return rearward to the camp, now some eight miles distant, alone!
In a solitary hut of the nearest kraal—a hut that had escaped the conflagration of the rest—he was placed till the force could pick him up on its return. There Tom Tyrrell placed a cloak over him, loaded his revolver, and left him to continue the pursuit; while his charger—the gift of Hammersley—was meantime appropriated by Villiers, the staff officer.
Perfect rest made the acute pain he was enduring subside; but he still felt weak and worn, and there he lay alone, amid utter silence now, 'building castles in the air, with conversations in the clouds'—conversations with Dulcie, and castles for her to inhabit.
In the almost darkened hut, dome-shaped, and roofed with thatch and enormous leaves, and into which light came by the narrow wattle-framed door alone, he lay thinking of her, and the unpleasantness of her life at Craigengowan, and marvelled much what manner of place it was; for, till her letter came, he had scarcely heard of it before, he felt assured. He thought, too, of the chances—the problem of their meeting again—and that problem stared him in the face in the light like an unsolved question, or the game that one goes to bed leaving unfinished; but with him and with her it would be the most important move in the game of their young and at present, divided lives—the lives and loves of two who were bound up in each other, all the more that they had no one to care for in this world save each other.
Meanwhile one anxious hour followed another, and there came no sound of troops on the sward—no clatter of accoutrements to announce that the pursuing Horse were returning his way.
The Second Division and Wood's Flying Column had marched to a mountain called the Entonjaneni, and there formed a camp about twenty miles distant from Ulundi as the crow flies. Vast quantities of thorn-bushes grew on the left of it, and before it spread an open plain; and to this camp came nearly the last envoys of Cetewayo, bearing two elephants' tusks as a sign of amity, promising a herd of cattle, and so forth. The tusks were declined, and the original conditions insisted on. However, Lord Chelmsford agreed to delay his final advance till the evening of the 29th of June.
Buller's Horse and the other mounted men were returning slowly from their long pursuit, when they drew near the kraals so recently destroyed, and saw that one hut was burning still, and casting a lurid light against the evening sky. All thought this strange, as before the repulse of the Zulus in the valley the fire in every kraal was completely over, as there seemed nothing more left to burn.
Suddenly Tom Tyrrell cried out, in a voice of the keenest excitement:
'The hut in which we left our officer is in flames—the poor fellow will be burned to death!'
'Who?' exclaimed Villiers.
'Our poor officer—Lieutenant MacIan.'
'God! you don't say so!'
'See for yourself, sir.'
'It is too evidently as you say. Forward at a gallop!'
The flames were sinking fast when they reached the hut, now reduced to a smouldering heap of ashes, and the horrible odour of burned human flesh overpowered the perfume of the wild flowers, amid which the great bees were yet humming; and poking amid the hot débris with their lances, the men of the 17th found the charred remains of what had been evidently a human body; and though inured to war, to bloodshed, and daily human suffering, the soldiers looked blankly and inquiringly in each other's faces, pausing for orders, and wondering what was to be done now.
In the hut the luckless Florian had lain for a time on its clay-beaten floor listening for every sound. He had a natural fear of Zulus coming upon him suddenly and assegaiing him in cold blood—if indeed the blood of these fierce savages was ever cold till death seized them.
The idea was intolerable; and he writhed on the hard floor and hearkened intently with his ear placed close thereto.
Shots in the far distance announced that fighting was going on somewhere—that Redvers Buller, the unwearied, was 'at it again'—but told him nothing more. What if the advanced troops were defeated—had to fall back towards the Entonjaneni Mountain by some other route, and had to abandon him to his fate?
In war, of what value is one human life, save to the proprietor thereof?
Anon, amid these exciting and oppressive thoughts, he became conscious of a singular and awful odour pervading the place. He had knowledge enough of it by ample past experience to know that it came from the body of a dead Zulu. He peered about, and in a corner hitherto unnoticed, near a pile of fresh bull-hides, intended doubtless for conversion into long shields, partly covered by one, lay the corpse of a Zulu warrior, whose shaven head, with the military ring or fillet, and bare feet, with anklets of burnished copper, were visible.
Pah!
Such a companion as this proved too much for his nerves, and at all risks—the risk of being seen by scouting Zulus—he crawled out of the hut into the pure and grateful air of heaven, and contrived to reach a clump of dwarf mimosa-trees at a little distance on the slope of an eminence, and therein he lay to await the return of his comrades.
He had with him his water-bottle and a brandy-flask; and with the contents of these, a sandwich or two (from his haversack) made of tinned meat, and a ration of biscuit, he made a meal, as mid-day was now past, and, lighting a cigarette, strove to study the art of being patient.
As he lay there and smoked, numbers of insects, nameless to him—cicadas, huge moths and butterflies—huge in the tropics—buzzed and flitted about him; small birds, the gold and emerald cuckoo, sunbird and finch, with beautiful plumage, flitted from branch to branch overhead; a lizard or chameleon crawled along. Dazed by the heat, and under the influence of the latter, and perhaps of his cigarette, Florian dropped asleep.
From this he was startled by a trumpet sounding the advance, and was roused just in time to see the detachment consisting of the two Lancer Squadrons, the Mounted Infantry, Frontier Horse, and Bengough's Natives resuming their route to the camp, after investigating the ashes of the hut he had quitted, and which had no doubt caught fire from the hot embers of others blown against it by the wind.
But Florian's heart sank within him at the contemplation of what might have been had he slept on—had the trumpet not been sounded, and the troops had ridden away, leaving him helpless in that solitude.