When all but drowned, Florian succeeded in disentangling his foot from the stirrup-iron, and struck out for the Natal side. A shrill yell from the other bank announced that he was not unseen; bullets ploughed the water into tiny white spouts about him, and many a long reedy dart was launched at him—but with prayer in his heart and prayer on his lips he struggled on, and reached the bank, where he lay still, worn breathless, incapable of further exertion, and weakened by his recent fall in the donga, after escaping from Elandsbergen; thus believing that all was over with him, the Zulus ceased firing, and went in search of congenial carnage elsewhere. And there, dying to all appearance, in a reedy swamp by the Buffalo river, the tall grass around him, bristling with launched assegais, lay Florian Melfort, the true heir of Fettercairn, friendless and alone.
* * * * *
No Briton survived in camp to see the complete end of the awful scene that was acted there! And of that scene no actual record exists. For a brief period—a very brief one—a hand to hand fight went on among, and even in, the tents, and the company of Captain Reginald Younghusband of the 24th alone appears to have made any organized resistance. Making a wild rally on a plateau below the crest of the hill, they fought till their last cartridges were expended, and then died, man by man, on the ground where they stood. The Zulus surged round and over them with tiger-like activity, frantic gestures, remorseless ferocity, and lust of blood, whirling and flinging their ponderous knobkeries, or war-clubs, one blow from which would suffice to brain a bullock.
Even the savage warriors who slew and mutilated them were filled with admiration at their courage, while tossing their own dead again and again on the bayonet-blades to bear down the hedge of steel. 'Ah, those red soldiers at Isandhlwana!' said the Zulus after; 'how few they were, and how they fought! They fell like stones—each man in his place.'
There is something pathetic in the description of the stand made by the last man (poor Bob Edgehill, of the 24th), as given in the Natal Times.
Keeping his face to the foe, he struggled towards the crest of the hill overlooking the camp, till he reached a small cavern in the rocks. Therein he crept, and with rifle and bayonet kept the Zulus at bay, while they, taking advantage of the cover some rocks and boulders afforded them, endeavoured by threes and fours to shoot him.
Bob—that rackety Warwickshire lad—was very wary. He did not fire hurriedly, but shot them down in succession, taking a steady and deliberate aim. At last his only remaining cartridge was dropped into the breech-block of his rifle; another Zulu fell, and then he was slain. This was about five in the evening, when the shadow of the hill of Isandhlwana was falling far eastward across the valley towards the ridge of Isipesi.
'We ransacked the camp,' said a Zulu prisoner afterwards, 'and took away everything we could find. We broke up the ammunition-boxes and took all the cartridges. We practised a great deal at our kraals with the rifles and ammunition. Lots of us had the same sort of rifle that the soldiers used, having bought them in our own country, but some who did not know how to use it had to be shown by those who did.'
Five entire companies of the 1st battalion of the 24th perished there, with ninety men of the 2nd battalion; 832 officers and men mutilated and disembowelled, in most instances stripped, lay there dead, shot in every position, amid gashed and gory horses, mules, and oxen, while 1400 oxen and £60,000 of commissariat supplies were carried off.
At ten minutes past six in the evening of that most fatal day Lord Chelmsford was joined by Colonel Glyn's force. A kind of column was formed, with the guns in the centre, with the companies of the 2nd battalion of the 24th on each flank, and when the sun had set, and its last light was lingering redly on the rocky scalp of Isandhlwana, this force was within two miles of the camp, where now alone the dead lay. The opaque outline of the adjacent hills was visible, with the dark figures of the Zulus pouring in thousands over them in the direction of Ulundi; and after shelling the neck of the Isandhlwana Hill—where it would seem none of the enemy were, for no response was made—the shattered force, crestfallen in spirit, heavy in heart, and after having marched thirty miles, and been without food for forty-eight hours, bivouacked among the corpses of their comrades.