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It was only when he was well clear of the river, and relatively secure from pursuit he would judge, that he could make some attempt, however imperfect, to come to terms with the chaotic events of the last three hours. In that brief interval an army of upwards of two thousand men had been eliminated. Wiped from the face of the earth. Slaughtered piecemeal by a race of men he had thought of, up to that time, as subhuman, equating approximately with aboriginals. It was the shock of their vast superiority in field tactics, in mobility, in physique, stamina, and courage, that made the greatest impact on his mind, far greater, at that time, than his own miraculous escape. The heat had gone from the sun and the sky began to cloud over after he had put a mile or more between himself and the clearing, where Melville and Cogshill awaited death with a sangfroid that he did not find so awesome as the matchless hardihood of the humming savages, charging into a crossfire of Martini-Henry bullets and field-gun shells, overturning everything in their path, and running on, heedless of loot, to account for fugitives who had stampeded across the col south of the camp. Even a river in spate had not checked their onrush. They were back there now, spearing men like Melville and Cogshill, and after that, he supposed, they would sweep on to overwhelm the whole of Natal, utterly defenceless since the departure of Lord Chelmsford's widely separated columns. It was an astounding performance on the part of savages and a humiliation on the part of trained and disciplined Europeans that could never be expunged, and he wondered briefly what Cetywayo's triumph might mean in wider terms and whether, from this day on, the Cape itself was safe from the converging horns of those charging impis. Helpmakaar, a few miles inside Natal, was surely doomed, and so was the hospital and storehouse at Rorke's Drift, towards which he was supposed to be heading. Perhaps, warned of the Zulu's approach, Durban might be put in some kind of defence, but the mission station on the river, garrisoned by a single company of 2/24th, would be overwhelmed and squashed like a matchbox, so that there was surely no profit in risking one's life a second time to bring word to that fellow Cogshill had mentioned… what was his name? “Chown,” “Chartwell,” “Chart”?
The reflection checked him in his stumbling passage along the hillside and he sat down on a spur of rock, realising how utterly spent he was, and how many hours had elapsed since he had eaten or drunk. His mouth, dry with terror and exertion, was like a sandpit, and his limbs, now that he ceased to employ them, began to shake like those of a terrified child. Fleetingly, but with a kind of self-punishing relish, he reviewed his debut as a soldier and found, in the survey, a degree of shame that brought tears to his eyes. From the moment he bolted down from the plateau beyond the sandstone peak he had not shown a single spark of courage or enterprise, save the bare minimum required to save his hide. He had emptied his rifle haphazardly in the general direction of the enemy, had helped the terrified Basutos to break the lines of G Company on the edge of the perimeter, had fiddled about during the brief battle, and finally, at the first chance, grabbed somebody else's horse and fled for his life. It was no consolation to remind himself, as he did at once, that almost everybody else had behaved in precisely the same way once the Zulus were inside the camp, or that things had happened with such stunning speed and fatality that there had been no time to shape an alternative course. Examples of courage and self-sacrifice had not been entirely wanting on the lost field. There had been that chap Melville, encumbering himself with his regimental colours all the way to the river and beyond; there had been Cogshill, who had made good his landing but sacrificed his horse and chance of escape by riding back into the river to drag Melville from the flood. But above all there was the memory of the tall sergeant who had scrambled up on the waggon and remained there, ringed by savages, shooting down at his assailants as though he had been at target practice on an English range. His mind had recorded these things at the time, but they had done nothing at all to check his headlong flight. It occurred to him then that he might be the sole survivor of the rout. Perhaps, like General Johnny Cope, he would be the first man to carry the news of his own cowardice to Helpmakaar, so that the name of Swann would become as infamous in Africa as it was famous among the merchants of English shires. For a moment the naked prospect of this did battle with the residue of terror that had outlasted his dash for the river and self-respect won. He stood up, half resolved to retrace his steps and add his six revolver bullets to the tiny arsenal of Melville and Cogshill. Then he remembered the latter's laconic instructions—“My respects to Chard at the mission house. Get going, man… that's an order…” and a flicker of purpose stirred in him, so that he got up and ploughed on, picking his way among the outcrops and listening to the whistle of his own breath and the dolorous squelch of water in his boots.
He had been walking about an hour when he first saw them: a long, long line of blacks, moving along the bank at a steady, mile-consuming trot. Strung out, it seemed, for a mile or more, they headed upstream at roughly twice the speed he could expect to move over this kind of ground.
At first, catching his breath, he thought it was the entire Zulu army, but then, ducking swiftly between two upright stones, he estimated the force at about three thousand—an impi perhaps, and without the least doubt making for Rorke's Drift.
The sight, far from appalling him, did something to restore confidence in himself. For up here, three to four hundred feet above the level of the river, he had the edge on them, inasmuch as he could see without being seen, so long as he kept his head down. It occurred to him then that no other survivor, given that there were other survivors, would be as well placed to observe and report upon the arrival of at least one impi on Natal soil; understanding this, he made a long, careful scrutiny of the moving column, noting that less than one man in twenty carried a firearm and that most of them seemed older and scrawnier than the leaping young bucks that had overwhelmed the camp at Isandlwana.
Their heads, he noticed, were ringed. He remembered something a Boer had told him about this ring signifying maturity and old blood on spears carried by men who had gained their battle experience ten or twenty years ago in wars with the Matabele and other tribes. He watched the tail of the long procession disappear round a wide bend in the river and its head reappear a minute later some way inland, as though another encircling movement, of the kind he had observed when he saw the first impi in motion, was already in progress, with Rorke's Drift as the target of the centre or “chest” of the formation.
He knew his duty then and was resolved to do it, even at the risk of his worthless life. It would be to keep the column under observation, to overlook its attack from the high ground further south, then strike out the moment dusk fell for Helpmakaar. Only by doing this could he hope to outbid General Cope and at least bring information of some importance to Helpmakaar. But before he set off, moving at an angle of forty-five degrees to the river, he spared a moment to clean his revolver, ejecting the cartridges and drying each chamber and the hammer with shreds of cloth torn from the lapel of his tunic, now as dry as tinder where it did not touch his skin.
The first shots came about an hour later, when he had covered, perhaps, four miles on his new route, and they seemed to come from the northeast so that he changed direction again, moving swiftly but carefully in case the Zulus had thrown out flank guards. It wanted no more than an hour to sunset then and the sky in the east was already appreciably darker than overhead. The going was a little easier here, drystone terraces, almost free of scrub, rising to a summit that he judged was the height overlooking the mission station on the Natal side of the Buffalo. He even recalled the name on the map—“Oscarberg”; the Oscarberg Heights, or the Oscarberg Terrace, and it was ideally situated for his plan. From its elevation he could look right down on the mission house and any Zulus occupying its lower slopes would necessarily have their backs to him. Then the sound of firing began again, increasing in intensity until it became almost continuous, and he abandoned his cautious approach and broke into a run, scrambling from ridge to rid
ge until he gained the summit and flopped, gasping, in a patch of scrub that sprouted from a spider of small crevices that formed a shallow cave. Inching forward on his belly, he moved towards the rim of the little crater and what he saw, peering down, astonished him as much as or more than his initial glimpse of the squatting army in the dongas behind the plateau.
Rorke's Drift was already beleaguered but it seemed to be giving a far better account of itself than the camp at Isandlwana, for the nearest Zulus were pinned down on three sides of the string of buildings. The men down there seemed to have anticipated attack, for they had converted what he remembered as a huddle of shacks and half-built kraals into a tiny, improvised fortress, buttressed with a rampart of biscuit boxes and mealie bags and strengthened, in the section facing him, by two laagered waggons. The regularly spaced flashes from the mission itself, and from the storehouse further east, told him that both buildings had been loopholed and whoever had improvised the fortification had clearly made provision for a last stand, for the compound was subdivided by another wall of biscuit boxes, and a tiny citadel of mealie bags had been erected inside the eastern section behind the storehouse, adjoining the smaller of the two kraals. He knew that the mission was being used as a sick bay and that two days ago there had been no more than a dozen or so men detained there, but he had no means of knowing the strength of the garrison, except by trying to count the flashes, or estimating the number of men moving about inside the compound. There could hardly be more than a couple of hundred, he would say, and that made the odds around fifteen to one—too heavy he would have thought, despite the obvious advantage to men firing from behind shoulder-high ramparts.
Almost at once he had an opportunity of gauging the garrison's chances of survival, for within minutes of his arrival at the summit of the terrace the Zulus advanced in waves against the mission house; once again he heard that unearthly humming sound that seemed to do duty for a battle cry so that the crackle of musketry seemed insignificant. Yet a surprising number of Zulus fell, the nearest less than fifty yards from the breastworks, and soon the survivors retired, falling back among the scrub and the station ovens that offered cover within close range of the buildings.
He was watching them gather there, massing for a renewed attack, when he became aware of a slight movement immediately below him, on a lower spur of the terrace; looking down, he saw a small group of Zulus armed with flintlocks preparing to snipe at the garrison from the elevation overlooking the buildings. Their presence alarmed him. From up here, notwithstanding the antiquity of the weapons they brandished, redcoats inside the compound were easy targets and some of them, manning the far wall, had their backs to the riflemen. He could not watch them for more than a moment, however, for soon, as the humming rose in pitch, his attention was riveted to the new assault: hundreds of leaping figures running directly on to the rifles of the garrison, and sometimes coming to grips with the defenders over the rampart of bags and boxes.
He could judge now the terrible inequality of the struggle. The redcoats, no more than a few dozen of them, were evenly spaced along the walls, whereas the Zulus seemed without number, and were reckless of life in their attempts to clamber over the obstructions and spill into the compound. Prodigies of valour were performed down there, the attackers reaching over the barriers and grasping at the jabbing bayonets with their bare hands. He saw Zulus using the dead as footholds and one warrior, erect on the barricade, grab a bayonet and wrench it from its socket before he was shot down at pointblank range.
The struggle seemed to go on a long time, half-obscured in trailers of smoke, the din rising as a continuous clamour; but then, once again, the Zulus fell back, and he saw a few wounded inside the compound being carried away to the mealie bag citadel adjoining the smaller kraal. He thought, wretchedly, “Next time they’ll do it… I’ll sit here and see every white man down there slaughtered… If the Zulus had the least sense they’d wait until dusk…”
He was wrong, however. Seemingly they did not possess that much patience, or were maddened by their losses, for soon a new attack developed, this time against the barricaded doors and windows of the hospital where the dead already lay one upon the other. The leading Zulus, now using their dead as shields, penetrated to the porch where they were mown down in dozens by the concentrated fire of the defenders. The sun was a red crescent on the ridge before the attack eased off, and he saw that someone inside the compound was organising a withdrawal from that section of the defences and attempting to concentrate the garrison into the smaller area behind the storehouse.
Then, with a soft puff, the hospital roof took fire from a flung torch and a line of violet and scarlet flame began to lick its way along the length of the reed thatch, the smoke rising in a great grey spiral. The glow of the flames cast a lurid light on the embattled rectangle, playing on the buttons, badges, and rifle barrels of the defenders and over behind the oven ditch, where the Zulus were rallying opposite the laagered waggons, on the blades of their assegais and the metal ornaments they wore.
The scene was so absorbing that he completely forgot his own involvement in it, only remembering it when he heard a scatter of shots from immediately below and isolating them in his mind from the sharp, decisive crack of the Martini-Henrys the defenders were using. The snipers he had seen there were at work, using the lull to pick off figures moving about in the compound or standing to at the breastworks. Three Borderers fell as he watched and were carried away by their comrades, but most of the shots went high, passing over the enclosure walls to raise little spurts of dust in the trampled ground beyond.
He had to make a decision then, whether to risk all in an attempt to extricate himself, crawl out of range, and start out for Helpmakaar with the news that the Zulus were this side of the river in force, or stay hidden above the mission house and witness the final overrunning of the defences and the massacre of every man in the garrison. For he could not see how the defenders could hope to hold on through the night and reasoned that if he left now he might manage to find his way down on to the plain in the last glimmer of daylight, making a wide sweep to avoid running into stray Zulus at the foot of the terraces.
He had almost decided to take this course when a fresh spatter of shots rang out from the rocks and one seemed to come from very close at hand. He pulled himself forward an inch or so and was just able to see the barrel of an antique sporting gun, of the kind Boer hunters must have used a generation ago. He is familiarity with firearms told him that up here, firing heavy slugs from a greatly depressed angle, the marksman had a fair chance of hitting someone and ought to be silenced if that was at all possible, notwithstanding the terrible risk of betraying his own position.
He drew back and began to work his way round the larger of the rock buttresses that screened him, moving with extreme caution and taking the greatest care not to dislodge small fragments of rock that would alert the sniper immediately below. Presently he could see him clearly, a warrior in his late forties or early fifties, with a red ostrich plume fixed to his headband and, cradled in his shoulder, a wide-barrelled sporting gun of the type hunters still used in the coastal belt above Durban. At that moment, yet another attack developed below, the tireless Zulus swarming out of cover and moving, in obedience to what looked like a concerted plan, on the hospital from which the sick and wounded were still being evacuated in the light of the flames. The renewed uproar gave him the cover he needed and he raised his revolver, steadying it against a small spur of rock and firing from a range of about twelve yards.
The bullet must have struck the sniper in the temple, killing him instantly. He uttered no sound and made no movement beyond a single convulsive jerk. His museum piece clattered down, alerting another man posted below, but the fellow, after a casual upward glance, turned back to watch the fight, so that Alex made up his mind to try and account for him while the attack lasted. He rose half upright in the rapidly fading light and worked his way round the vertical stone and between two rounded boulders, delibe
rately sealing his mind against the hellish uproar coming from the direction of the hospital, where the Zulus had at last made a lodgement and were scrambling through the shattered door and windows.
It was fortunate that the sniper's attention was riveted on the battle. Had it not been, he must have heard movement among the loose shale on his immediate right. As it was, he rose excitedly to his knees when a shower of soaring sparks rose as a result of the storming party's rampage through the hospital, and Alex was able to shoot him at leisure, the impact of the bullet pitching him forward and over the flat stone he was using as an elbow rest. He went on down, head over heels, for twenty yards or more before his body became lodged in a crevice, and as he fell two other snipers rose out from the line of rocks below and began to scramble down to the barricade, evidently satisfied that the post was now enveloped and on the point of falling.
He loosed off two random shots at them but almost certainly missed, for by now his attention was deflected by the garrison's unhurried withdrawal behind the reserve defences bisecting the compound, and by the maddened rush of the Zulus from the western door of the burning building into the open ground beyond. Here they were cut down in swathes and only a few reached the line of biscuit boxes before the attack faltered and shredded away. In less than five minutes from the tumble of the second sniper, the space between the small kraal and the blazing hospital was empty of living Zulus, apart from the odd one or two who were trying to drag themselves out of range.
Theirs Was The Kingdom Page 7
