Eight hundred against twenty thousand. What chance had they?
By noon the crescent of the Zulu army had enveloped the camp. Drawing closer and still closer in, the ringed warriors, the cream of Cetewayo’s fighting men, armed with assegai, knobkerry, and rifle, burst upon Durnford’s little company as they hastily tried to form a laager with the waggons. Durnford himself was in the thick of it, encouraging the troopers, placing a gun here and ordering a charge there. But it was all in vain.
Before the fierce fire of thousands of Zulu rifles, and before the host of assegais that hurtled through the air, the redcoats and the Basutos of the Native Contingent went down like corn under the sickle. They fought well, as desperate men will when driven to bay; but while they fired and reloaded and fired again behind them came the right horn of the overlapping Zulu army to strike at them in the rear. _That_, and not a panic-stricken flight, accounted for the many assegai wounds which were afterwards observed in the fallen men’s backs.
There were numerous deeds of valour performed that day, of which some account has come down to us from the Zulus themselves. The 24th, the South Wales Borderers, a regiment with a famous record, knew how to die, and officers and men accounted for many a dusky foe ere they themselves were borne down.
[Illustration: WITH THE FLAG … FIRMLY GRIPPED IN HIS HAND, MELVILL SPURRED HIS HORSE FOR THE RIVER.--_Page 173._]
We have a picture of little parties of them found lying with their fifty or sixty rounds of spent cartridges beside their dead bodies, to give colour to the Zulus’ story that they “could not make way against the soldiers until they ceased firing.” Then, and then only, could the deadly assegais finish their work, as the warriors leapt in with the fierce death-hiss.
And we have another picture given us of Captain Younghusband, of the same regiment, standing erect in an empty waggon with three privates, and keeping a crowd of the enemy at bay. The others fall at last, shot or assegaied by the Zulus who clamber up the sides, but the tall, soldierly figure holds the warriors off. Then, his last cartridge gone, he leaps down, sword in hand, to cut his way through to liberty if it be possible.