Hook in his account recollects particularly one Zulu whom he “clipped” at four hundred yards while running from one ant-hill to another. The warrior made a complete somersault and fell dead. Another Zulu who sheltered himself behind an ant-hill gave Hook some trouble, for the Gloucester man had to sight his rifle three times ere he got his enemy’s range. The Zulu never showed his head round the heap again, and when Hook went round to look at him after the fight was over he found the warrior lying there with a bullet hole in his skull.
The hospital was the first building to receive the attack, but at the outer wall of defence a fierce hand-to-hand struggle soon ensued. Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead were fighting hard at the front, the latter being conspicuous in many a bayonet charge at the dark-skinned figures that climbed again and again over the mealie-bags. Prominent, too, in repelling the Zulus at this position was one Corporal Schiess, a Swiss, who left the hospital to join in the fight, and distinguished himself by creeping along a wall to shoot a Zulu who was firing from the end.
At last it was recognised that the defenders could not hope to hold this rampart long. They fell back accordingly behind the inner defence of biscuit boxes, after two hours of fighting.
We may leave them there for a little time while we take note of what is happening at the hospital. Here the gallant six defenders have been quickly reduced to four, two of the number having been killed out on the verandah. Four men to get the patients safely out of the building which the Zulus have rendered untenable by firing the thatch!
Hook and John Williams come to the front first with William and Robert Jones (the last two not being related, by the way). As the Zulus burst in the outer doors the two Jones guard these entrances with their bayonets, their cartridges being expended. It is quick work; stabbing and thrusting until the pile of corpses in the doorway itself helps to check the rush. This gives time for Hook and Williams to carry the patients from the first room to an inner one.
There are four apartments to be gone through before the sick men can be carried out to the shelter of the barricade, for the inner rooms do not communicate directly with the outside. Holes have to be made in the partitions, and the poor sufferers passed through these in turn.
Driven back and back, Hook finds himself suddenly in a room where there are several patients. Then a wounded man comes in with a bullet hole in his arm which has to be bound up. A minute later John Williams appears—John Williams who has just seen his brother Joseph hauled out and assegaied before his eyes, and who is now a still more dangerous man to deal with.
Williams breaks a hole in the partition with his bayonet, and whilst he does this Hook takes his stand at the door. A few moments later the rush comes. There is a fierce hammering at the door, it gives way, and the sturdy Gloucester private drops the first man to enter. Shooting and lunging with his bayonet, he soon accounts for four or five. Assegais fly past, but only one touches him, inflicting a scalp wound. One Zulu seizes his rifle and tries to drag it away, but while they are tussling Hook slips in a cartridge, pulls the trigger, and another body is added to the heap at his feet.
Every now and then a Zulu makes a rush to get through, for the narrow entrance admits one man only at a time; but none pass the grim figure on guard there. And when all the patients have been got out save one who has a broken leg, Hook makes a jump for the hole himself, and gets through, dragging the last wounded man after him—“in doing which,” he says, “I broke his leg again!”
From this last room a window opens out on to the biscuit-box defences. The patients are quickly passed out to willing hands below, the while Hook with his reddened bayonet stands by the hole in the wall to see that no Zulu follows. Then, still sticking to his particular charge, he drags him out and takes up a position behind the barricade to do some more useful work there before the morning dawns. Of the twenty-three wounded who were in the hospital twenty have been saved. The remaining three are believed to have wandered back, delirious from fever, into the rooms that had been cleared.