'Trot—gallop—charge!' sounded the trumpets; and with their horses' manes and the banneroles of their levelled lances streaming backward on the wind, the 17th rushed on, sweeping through the tall, brown stalks of the dead mealies, but found no Zulus there.
When clear of the mealies, Lowe ordered some of the Lancers to dismount and open fire with their carbines on those Zulus who were lurking on the hill-slope among some thorn-trees, and there many were shot down, and their half-devoured and festering remains were found by our soldiers in the subsequent August.
After punishing them severely, the cavalry were recalled, but not before there were some casualties among the Lancers, whose adjutant, Lieutenant Frith—a favourite officer—was shot through the heart, and brought to camp dead across the saddle of his charger.
From fastnesses that were quite inaccessible to horsemen, the Zulus, covered by an undergrowth of prickly thorns and plants with enormous brown spiky leaves, continued to fire heavily, wreathing all the hill-side in white smoke, streaked with jets of fire; while another portion of them, yelling and running with the swiftness of hares, lined the bed of the river and opened a sputtering fusilade in flank, rendering the whole position of our cavalry most perilous.
'Retire by alternate squadrons!' was now the order for the cavalry, and beautifully and steadily was the movement executed.
'Fours about—trot,' came the order in succession from the leaders of the even and odd squadrons.
A front was thus kept to the Zulus, but the hope to lure them from their fastnesses by a movement they had never seen before, and to have a chance of attacking them in the open, proved vain; and upon broken and steep ground, on which it would have been impossible for any cavalry force to assail them, they were seen swarming in vast black hordes round the flanks of the Euzangonyan Hill, and still maintaining a sputtering but distant though defiant fire, while the cavalry and other mounted men fell back towards their respective columns; and now it was that the calamitous outrage we have hinted at occurred.
When the cavalry began to fall back by alternate squadrons, it was remarked that two men of the Irregular Horse lingered at a considerable distance in the rear, still firing occasionally, as if they had not heard the sound of the trumpet to 'retire.'
'Those rash fools will get knocked on the head if they don't come back,' said Hammersley to Florian, as they were riding leisurely now at a little distance in rear of their men. 'They are nearly six hundred yards off. Well, we have not got even a scratch to-day,' he added, laughing, as he manipulated and proceeded to light a cigar; 'and now to get back to camp and have a deep drink of bitter beer. By Jove, I am thirsty as a bag of sand.'
'And I too,' said Florian.