He was Commandant Lonsdale, the gallant leader of the Natal Contingent, who had gone so close to the camp that he had been fired on by what he thought were our own troops, but proved to be Zulus in the red tunics of the slain, the same figures whom the staff from the distant hill had seen through their field glasses moving among the snow-white tents.
Out of one of them he saw a Zulu come with a blood-dripping assegai in his hand. He then wheeled round his horse, and, escaping a shower of rifle-bullets, galloped on to warn Lord Chelmsford of the terrible trap into which he was about to fall. The first words he uttered were, 'My Lord, the camp is in possession of the enemy!'
Of the troops he had left there that morning nothing now remained but the dead, and that was nearly all of them.
The silence of death was there! And now we must note what had occurred in the absence of the General, of Colonel Glyn, and the main body of the second column.
CHAPTER V.
THE MASSACRE AT ISANDHLWANA.
'What the deuce is up?' cried Hammersley and other officers, as they came rushing out of their tents when the sound of firing was heard all along the crest of the hill on the left of the camp, as had been reported to Lord Chelmsford; and, soon after, the few Mounted Infantry under Colonel Durnford were seen falling back, pursued swiftly by Zulus, who, like a dark human wave, came rolling in thousands over the grim crest of the hill, throwing out dense clouds of skirmishers, whose close but desultory fire fringed all their front with smoke.
There was no occasion for drum to be beaten or bugle blown to summon the troops; in a moment all rushed to arms, and the companies were formed and 'told off' in hot and nervous haste.
The Zulus came on in very regular masses, eight deep, maintaining a steady fire till within assegai distance, when they ceased firing, and launched with aim unerring their deadly darts.
Our troops responded by a close and searching fire, under which the black-skinned savages fell in heaps, but their places were fearlessly taken by others.