Sending the carabineer on to Helpmakaar, twelve miles away, where Major Spalding, the commandant of the post, had gone to fetch another company of the 24th Regiment, Chard proceeded with Adendorff to the mission-station. Here he found his brother-officer, Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead, who commanded the company of the 24th, then encamped close by, already engaged in putting the mission-house, or store-building as it may more properly be called, and the hospital in a state of defence. Barricades were being prepared, and loopholes made in the walls. Bromhead had a few minutes before received a similar message of alarm.
As quickly as possible the tents were struck, and all who were able were set to work to build up a wall of mealie-bags, about four feet high, from one corner of the stone cattle-kraal to the wall of the hospital building. This afforded a protection to the front of the post. The waggons, which all the morning had been unloading the stores they had brought from Helpmakaar, were called into requisition and made to form a barricade between the two buildings.
Everything that was possible was done to render the position safe against attack, but the proximity of a high hill (the Oscarberg), and a large patch of bushes which there was no time to cut down, gave an enemy a decided advantage.
Having seen that his directions were being carried out, Chard, who succeeded to the command in Major Spalding’s absence, went back to the drift to bring up the pontoon guard. To the honour of these brave fellows, a sergeant and six men, it is said that they offered to moor the boats in the stream and defend the ford as long as they could; but the lieutenant would not permit such a sacrifice. So the party went up the bank together to the station.
Half an hour had now elapsed. The next thing to be done was to send out scouts to watch for the Zulus, and some of Durnford’s Horse rode out on this duty. Their officer dashed back hastily soon after four to report that an impi was marching rapidly towards the drift, and further that his men were bolting along the road to Helpmakaar.
With the cowards went a detachment of the Natal Native Contingent, their “gallant” officer, Captain Stevenson, flying with them. This desertion so enraged the others that they fired a round after them, killing a European non-commissioned officer of the Native Contingent. The garrison was now sadly reduced, but there were no more desertions. Every man at the post was prepared to stand by it to the last.
The line of defence appearing to Chard to be too extended for his few defenders, he constructed an inner breastwork of—biscuit boxes! “We soon had completed,” he says in his brief report, “a wall of about two boxes high.” Behind this frail barrier was to be fought as fierce a fight as history has ever recorded.
At about twenty minutes past four the leading files of the Zulus hove in sight, and the garrison of Rorke’s Drift flew to their several stations. Some went to the rampart of mealie-bags, others to the windows of the store-building, and others to the hospital where there had been forty-five men when the alarm first came, but where only twenty-three now remained. Among those told off to guard the wounded were Privates Henry Hook, Robert Jones, William Jones, and John Williams, of whom more hereafter.
Following the few hundred Zulus who came leaping and dancing round the base of the hill came a host more, their ox-hide shields in different colours marking the regiments to which they belonged. In true Zulu fashion they tried to “rush” the place at once, but a heavy volley drove them back. Then they began to take up positions on the hillside, where many rocky ledges and caves afforded them vantage-points, while others dropped behind ant-hills and bushes, or sought cover in the two little outhouses of the hospital.
“From my loophole,” says Hook, “I saw the Zulus approaching in thousands. They began to fire, yelling as they did so, when they were five hundred or six hundred yards off. More than half of them had muskets or rifles. I began to fire when they were six hundred yards distant. I managed to clip several of them, for I had an excellent rifle, and was a ‘marksman.’”