Buller’s force reached Kambula camp at half-past seven at night. It had set in stormy, and torrents of rain were falling. Although he had been in the saddle for forty-eight hours, Colonel Buller, on hearing that a small party of the survivors had taken refuge in hiding ten miles away, collected a party of volunteers, and, taking led horses, set out to rescue them. This was effected; the fugitives were found to be seven in number, and returned with their rescuers safely to camp.
The boys had both escaped, two of Wetherby’s men, who accompanied Colonel Wood, taking them on their saddles behind them. The total loss was ten officers and seventy-eight men.
For the night the boys were handed over to the charge of one of the officers of the staff, but in the morning Colonel Wood sent for them, and they then told him the story of their adventures since the battle of Isandula, with which he was greatly interested. He said that he would at once have sent them to Utrecht, but that the camp would probably be attacked during the day.
The troops had been on the alert all night, expecting an attack. Before daylight Captain Raaff was sent out with twenty-five men to reconnoitre, and returned with one of Oham’s natives. This man had joined the Zulu army as it advanced, and was, fortunately for himself, not recognised by them as being one of Oham’s people. In the night he had slipped away. He reported the Zulus 20,000 strong, a great portion of them being armed with rifles.
Fortunately little preparation was necessary at Kambula. Nothing had been left to chance here, and there was therefore no fear of a repetition of the Isandula disaster. Each corps, each subdivision, each section, and each man had his place allotted to him, and had been told to be in that place at the sound of the bugle.
The little fort was in a strong position, laid out upon an elevated narrow reach of table-land. A precipice, inaccessible to a white man, guarded the right flank; on the left a succession of steep terraces had been utilised and carefully intrenched, each successive line commanding that below it. At one end there was a narrow slip of land swept by two 7-pounders. Immediately in the rear, upon an eminence 120 feet higher than the fort, was a small work, armed with two guns. The camp consisted of an outer defence of 100 waggons, and an inner one of fifty—the whole protected by earthworks and ditches.