The Witch's Head

by H. Rider Haggard

From the top of the neck they got a view of the camp, which now looked quiet and peaceful, with its white tents and its Union Jack fluttering as usual in the breeze.

“They must be all dead too,” said Ernest; “which way shall we go?”

Then it was that Mazooku’s knowledge of the country proved of the utmost service to them. He had been brought up at a kraal in the immediate neighbourhood, and knew every inch of the land. Avoiding the camp altogether, he led them to the left of the battle-field, and after two hours’ ride over rough country, brought them to a ford of the Bulialo which he was acquainted with, some miles below where the few survivors of the massacre struggled across the river, or were drowned in attempting to do so. Following this route they never saw a single Zulu, for these had all departed in the other direction, and were spared the horrors of the stampede and of “Fugitives’ Drift.”

At last they gained the farther side of the river, and were, comparatively speaking, safe on Natal ground.

They determined, after much anxious consultation, to make for the little fort at Helpmakaar, and had ridden about a mile or so towards it, when suddenly the Zulu’s quick ear caught the sound of distant firing to their right. It was their enemy, the Undi Corps, attacking Rorke’s Drift. Leaving Mazooku to hold the horses, Ernest and Jeremy dismounted, and climbed a solitary koppie or hill which just there cropped out from the surface of the plain. It was of an ironstone formation, and on the summit lay a huge flat slab of almost pure ore. On to this they climbed, and looked along the course of the river, but could see nothing. Rorke’s Drift was hidden by a rise in the ground.

All this time a dense thundercloud had been gathering in the direction of Helpmakaar, and was now, as is common before sunset in the South African summer season, travelling rapidly up against the wind, set in a faint rainbow as in a frame. The sun, on the other hand, was sinking towards the horizon, so that his golden beams, flying across a space of blue sky, impinged upon the black bosom of the cloud, and were reflected thence in sharp lights and broad shadows, flung like celestial spears and shields across the plains of Zululand. Isandhlwana’s Mountain was touched by one great ray which broke in glory upon his savage crest, and crowned him that day as king of death, but the battlefield over which he towered was draped in gloom. It was a glorious scene. Above, the wild expanse of sky broken up by flaming clouds, and tinted with hues such as might be reflected from the jewelled walls of heaven. Behind, the angry storm, set in its rainbow-frame like ebony in a ring of gold. In front, the rolling plain, where the tall grasses waved, the broad Bulialo flashing through it like a silver snake, the sun-kissed mountains, and the shadowed slopes.

It was a glorious scene. Nature in her most splendid mood flung all her colour-streamers loose across the earth and sky, and waved them wildly ere they vanished into night’s abyss. Life, in his most radiant ecstasy, blazed up in varied glory before he sank, like a lover, to sleep awhile in the arms of his eternal mistress—Death.

Ernest gazed upon it, and it sank into his heart, which, set to Nature’s tune, responded ever when her hands swept the chords of earth or heaven. It lifted him above the world, and thrilled him with indescribable emotion. His eyes wandered over the infinite space above, searching for the presence of a God; then they fell upon Isandhlwana, and marked the spot just where the shadows were deepest; where his comrades lay, and gazed upon the splendid sky with eyes that could not see; and at last his spirit gave way, and, weakened with emotion and long toil and abstinence, he burst into a paroxysm of grief.

“O Jeremy,” he sobbed, “they are all dead, all except you and I, and I feel a coward that I should still live to weep over them. When it was over, I should have let that Zulu kill me; but I was a coward, and I fought for my life. Had I but held my hand for a second, I should have gone with Alston and the others, Jeremy.”

“Come, come, old fellow, you did your best, and fought the corps like a brick. No man could have done more.”