“These fellows fight desperately,” said George to Hardy, who had arrived an hour or two previously, as, aided by him and Vander Heyden, he drove back half a dozen Zulus, who had forced themselves half over the wall of mealie-bags; “yonder big fellow actually clutched the barrel of my musket as I fired it into him, and, though he was mortally wounded, attempted to tear it from me. If his strength hadn’t failed him pretty quickly, he’d have got it, too!”
“Well, the fighting has gone on for four or five hours,” said Redgy, who was close by, “and they have not gained an inch yet.”
“Ay, but if they were to gain an inch, it would be all up with us,” said Hardy. “Put those mealie-bags back again, Wilhelm. That last rush nearly had them down.”
“Look out, here is another lot coming!” shouted George, as he indistinctly caught sight of a dark mass advancing towards them. A moment afterwards a dozen blacks vaulted nimbly on to the parapet, but were instantly hurled back by a volley of musketry, which carried death among the assailants. Three only had made their entrance good. George shot one with his revolver, Hardy bayoneted a second, and Vander Heyden, clubbing his rifle, brained the third, all falling dead within the enclosure.
“Safe once more!” exclaimed Hardy; “but how long is this to go on?”
At this moment a shout was raised that the enemy were forcing their way into the hospital, and the sick must be moved, or they would fall into the hands of the savages. With the utmost difficulty this task was accomplished, the soldiers fighting from room to room, and guarding the doors by turns, while their sick comrades were carried out under the very eyes of a crowd of swarthy savages, pressing on them with brandished weapons and yells of fury. Presently the hospital was set on fire, and the flames, rising high and catching the thatch, lit up the terrible scene with a lurid splendour. It guided the bullets of the defenders, who continued to pour volley after volley into the midst of the dense array of their assailants, heaping the ground everywhere round the entrenchments with their corpses.
Who can relate the achievements, who can recount the horrors, of that long night of trial? It was like a succession of hideous dreams, from which the sleepers were continually being awakened, only to renew them in sleep again. About midnight the little garrison, forced back on every side by overwhelming numbers, had to retire within an inner circle, formed, like the outer one, by mealie-sacks; and here the same scenes were, hour after hour, renewed in endless succession—of black warriors pouring in to the attack, and being driven back by volleys of musketry and charges with the bayonet.
At last the dawn broke. The Zulu fire ceased, and the dense array of the enemy was seen retiring over the heights by which they had approached. The garrison, diminished still further by the casualties of the night, stood triumphant in their citadel. The scene which the rising sun revealed was one of the most terrible and striking on which the eye of man has ever rested. There were the handful of defenders, with their faces blackened with powder or clotted blood, their uniforms ragged with bullet-marks and charred by fire, leaning exhausted against the walls, or stretched on the ground; and all round the camp the bodies of the assailants, scattered singly here and there, or piled on heaps upon one another, in some places six and seven deep. There they lay, in every conceivable attitude of repose or agony, some struck with sudden and almost painless death, others torn by gaping wounds or forced into hideous contortions by acute and protracted torture.
“What a night it has been, Vander Heyden!” exclaimed George, as he leaned on the stalwart Dutchman’s arm, giddy with exhaustion. “A hundred times over I have given myself up for lost. I can hardly believe that it is over, and we are safe! It was like a horrible nightmare!—those interminable black faces and whirling spears and ferocious shouts! I think I shall never cease to hear them!”
“It has indeed been a tremendous struggle,” said the Dutchman. “Ha! what is that shout? They are not returning to the attack, are they, Mr Bromhead?” he continued, addressing that officer, as, grim with dust and blood, he passed them on his way to the flagstaff.