Read Ebook: Dulcie Carlyon: A novel. Volume 2 (of 3) by Grant James

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Ebook has 996 lines and 43486 words, and 20 pages

The vast extent of waste and open veldt spread around him, but no living object was visible thereon. His pursuers must have ridden forward or returned to Elandsbergen without searching the donga, and thus he was, for the time at least, free from them.

In the distance he saw the Drakensberg range, and knew that his way lay westward in the opposite direction. It is the name given to a portion of the Ouathlamba Mountains, which form the boundary between the Free States, Natal, and the land of the Basutos. They rise to a height of nine thousand feet, and their topography is imperfectly known.

Having assured himself that he was unwatched and unseen, Florian quitted the donga, and, after an anxious search of an hour or more, succeeded in striking upon the ruts or wheel-tracks that must lead, he knew, to the camp at Rorke's Drift, beside the Buffalo River, and then he steadily, though weary and somewhat faint, proceeded upon his return journey.

Sheldrake sent instantly for Dr. Gallipott, a staff-surgeon, who dressed Florian's hurt. In the bearing of the latter as he related his late adventures Sheldrake was struck with a certain grave simplicity or quiet dignity--an air of ease and perfect self-possession--far above his present position.

'You are "not what you seem to be," as novels have it?' said the young officer inquiringly.

Impressed by his whole story and the terrible risks and toil he had undergone, young Sheldrake offered a substantial money reward to Florian, who coloured painfully at the proposal, drew back, with just the slightest air of hauteur, and declined it.

'You are somewhat of an enigma to me,' said the puzzled officer.

'Is there any news in camp, sir?'

'Only that we enter Zululand to-morrow, and a draft from home joined us to-day under Captain Hammersley.'

Florian heard the name of Captain Hammersley without much concern, save that he was one of the same corps. He little foresaw how much their names and interests would be mingled in the future.

'Here he comes,' said Sheldrake, as the handsome officer in his fresh uniform came lounging, cigar in mouth, into the tent, and Florian, with a salute, withdrew. Ere he did so,

'Tom,' said Sheldrake to his servant, 'tell the messman to give the sergeant a bottle of good wine; he'll need it to keep up his pecker after last night's work and with the work before us to-morrow.'

Florian thanked the officer and retired; and he and Bob Edgehill shared the contents of the bottle, while the latter listened to his narration.

'You have grown to look very grave, Hammersley,' said Sheldrake; 'of what are you thinking so much?'

'Nothing.'

'Nothing?'

Colonel Glyn's column consisted of seven companies of his own regiment, the 24th, the Natal Mounted Police, a body of Volunteers, two 7-pounder Royal Artillery guns under Major Harness, and 1000 natives under Rupert Lonsdale, late of the 74th Highlanders.

At half-past three on the morning of the 12th of January, the colonel, with four companies, some of the Natal Native Contingent, and the mounted men, left his camp to reconnoitre the country of Sirayo, which lay to the eastward of it. With his staff, Lord Chelmsford accompanied this party, which, after a few miles' march, reached a great donga, in a valley through which the Bashee River flows, and wherein herds of cattle were collected, and their lowing loaded the calm morning air, though they were all unseen, being concealed in the rocky krantzes or precipitous fissures of the ravine.

A body of Zulus now appeared on the hills above, and Florian regarded them with intense interest, while the mounted men advanced against them, and his company, with the others, pushed in skirmishing order up the ravine where the cattle were known to be.

He could see that these Zulu warriors were models of muscle and athletic activity, and nearly black-skinned rather than copper-coloured. They were dressed in feathers, with the tails of wild animals round their bodies, behind and before; their ornaments were massive rings formed of elephants' tusks, and their anklets were of brass or polished copper; they had large oval shields, rifles, and bundles or sheafs of assegais, their native deadly weapon, and they bounded from rock to rock before our skirmishers with the activity of tree-tigers.

'With the assegai,' says Sir Arthur Cunynghame, 'the Zulu cuts his food, he fights and does many useful things, and it is used as a surgical instrument. Carefully sharpening it, he uses it to bleed the human patient, and with it he inoculates his cow's tail. In the chase it is his spear, a deadly weapon in his hand, and ready instrument for skinning his game.'

The orders of the main body of this reconnoitring force, which had suddenly become an attacking one, were to ascend a hill on the left, then to work round to the right rear of the enemy's position, and assault and destroy a kraal belonging to the brother of Sirayo, whose surrender the Government had demanded as one of the violators of the British territory.

The moment the companies of the 24th got into motion a sharp fire was opened on them by the Zulus, who were crouching behind bushes and great stones, and on the Native Contingent which led the attack, under Commandant Browne.

The latter had their own armament of assegais and shields, to which the Government added Martini-Henrys or Enfields, but their fighting-dress consisted of their own bare skins. Each company generally was formed of a separate tribe, under its own chief, with a nominal allowance of three British officers; but there were none of minor rank, to lead sections, or so forth, as these natives could not comprehend divided authority. They were pretty well drilled, and many were skilled marksmen; but now many fell so fast under the fire of the Zulus that every effort of their white officers was requisite to get the others on.

Dying or dead, with the red blood oozing from their bullet-wounds, rolling about and shrieking in agony, or lying still and lifeless, they studded all the rocky ascent, while the survivors gradually worked their way upward, planting in their fire wherever a dark head or limb appeared; and when they came within a short distance of the enemy's position, the men of the 24th prepared to carry it by a rush.

Hammersley's handsome face glowed under his white helmet, and his dark eyes sparkled as he formed his company for attack on the march.

'From the right--four paces extend!'

Then the skirmishers swung away out at a steady double.

Florian was now for the first time under fire. He heard the ping of the rifle-bullets as they whistled past him from the smoke-hidden position of the Zulus, and he heard the splash of the lead as they starred the rocks close by. Then came that tightening of the chest and increase of the pulse which the chance of sudden death or a deadly wound inspire, till after a time that emotion passed away, and in its place came the genuine British bull-dog longing to grapple with the foe.

The Zulus fired briskly and resolutely from their rocky eyries; and while one party made a valiant stand at a cattle-kraal, another nearly made the troops quail and recoil by hurling down huge boulders, which they dislodged by powerful levers and sent thundering and crashing from the summit of the hill till it was captured by the bayonets of the 24th; they were put to flight in half an hour, and by nine in the morning the whole affair was over, and Florian found he had come unscathed through his baptism of fire; but Lieutenant Sheldrake had his shoulder-arm lacerated by a launched assegai when leading the left half-company.

Sirayo's kraal, which lay farther up the Bashee Valley, was burned later in the day by mounted men under Colonel Baker Russell. Our losses were only fourteen; those of the Zulus were great, including the capture of a thousand cattle and sheep. All the women and children captured were sent back to their kraals by order of Lord Chelmsford, who, on the 17th of January, rode out to the fatal hill of Isandhlwana, which he selected as the next halting-place of the centre column, and which was eventually to prove well nigh its grave!

THE CAMP.

On the 20th of January the column began its march for the hill of Isandhlwana, through a country open and treeless.

'Where and how is Dulcie now?' was the ever-recurring thought of Florian as he tramped on in heavy marching order in rear of Hammersley's company. Oh, to be rich and free--rich enough, at least, to save her from that cold world upon which she was cast, and in which she must now be so lonely and desolate.

But he was a soldier now, and serving face to face with death in a distant and savage land, and, so far as she was concerned, hope was nearly dead.

Four companies of the 24th Regiment were left at Rorke's Drift when Colonel Glyn's column reached Isandhlwana, which means the Lion's Hill. Precipitous and abrupt to the westward, on the eastward it slopes down to the watercourse, and grassy spurs and ridges rise from it in every direction. The waggon track to Rorke's Drift passes over its western ridge, and groups of lesser hills, covered with masses of loose grey stones, rise in succession like waves of a sea in the direction of the stream called the Buffalo.

A long ridge, green and grassy, ran southward of the camp, and overlooked an extensive valley. Facing this ridge, and on the extreme left of the camp, were pitched the tents of the Natal Native Contingent. A space of three hundred yards intervened between this force and the next two regiments.

The British Infantry occupied the centre, and a little above their tents were those of Lord Chelmsford and the head-quarter staff. The mounted infantry and the artillery were on the right, lining the verge of the waggon track--road it could scarcely be called. The camp was therefore on a species of sloping plateau, overlooked by the crest of the hill, which rose in its rear, sheer as a wall of rock. The waggons of each corps were parked in its rear.

The camp looked lively and picturesque on the slope of the great green hill, the white tents in formal rows, with the red coats flitting in and out, and the smoke of fires ascending here and there, as the men proceeded to cook their rations.

Florian was detailed for out-piquet duty that night, for the Zulus were reported to be in force in the vicinity, and no one on that duty could close an eye or snatch a minute's repose. The circle of the outposts from the centre of the camp extended two thousand five hundred yards by day, lessened to one thousand four hundred by night, though the mounted videttes were further forward of course; but, by a most extraordinary oversight, no breastworks or other barriers were formed to protect the camp.

Before coming to the personal adventures of our friends in this story, we are compelled for a little space to follow that of the war.

Early on the morning of the following day, the mounted infantry and police, under Major Dartnell, proceeded to reconnoitre the mountainous ground in the direction of a fastness in the rocks known as Matyano's stronghold, while the Natal force, under Lonsdale, moved round the southern base of the Malakota Hill to examine the great dongas it overlooked.

Dartnell's party halted and bivouacked at some distance from the camp, to which he sent a note stating that he had a clear view over all the hills to the eastward, and the Zulus were clustering there in such numbers that he dared not attack them unless reinforced by three companies of the 24th next morning.

A force to aid him left the camp accordingly at daybreak, in light marching order, without knapsacks, greatcoats, or blankets, with one day's cooked provisions and seventy rounds per man; and with it went Lord Chelmsford.

These three detached parties so weakened the main body in camp that it consisted then of only thirty mounted infantry for videttes, eighty mounted volunteers and police, seventy men of the Royal Artillery, six companies of the 24th, including Hammersley's, and two of the Natal Native Contingent.

When these reconnoitring parties were far distant from Isandhlwana, the Zulus in sight of them were seen to be falling back, apparently retiring on what was afterwards found most fatally to be a skilfully preconceived plan; and, prior to making a general attack upon them, Lord Chelmsford and his staff made a halt for breakfast.

It was at that crisis that a messenger--no other than Sergeant Florian MacIan--came from the camp mounted, with tidings that the enemy were in sight on the left, and that the handful of mounted men had gone forth against them.

On this Lord Chelmsford ordered the Native Contingent to return at once to the hill of Isandhlwana.

Soon after shots were briskly exchanged with the enemy in front; a vast number were 'knocked over,' and some taken prisoners. One of the latter admitted to the staff, when questioned, that his King Cetewayo expected a large muster that day--some twenty-five thousand men at least.

It was noon now, and a suspicion that something might be wrong in the half-empty camp occurred to Lord Chelmsford and his staff, and this suspicion was confirmed, when the distant but deep hoarse boom of heavy guns came hurtling through the hot atmosphere.

'Do you hear that?' was the cry on all hands; 'there is fighting going on at the camp--we are attacked in the rear!'

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