The morning of a new day was well in when Florian, lying among the tall, wavy reeds and feathery grass by the river-bank, awoke from a sleep that had been deep and heavy, induced by long exhaustion, toil, and over-tension of the nerves. Ere he started up, and as he was drifting back to consciousness, his thoughts had been, not of the awful slaughter from which he had escaped, but, strange to say, of Dulcie Carlyon, the object of his constant and most painful solicitude.
His returning thoughts had been of the past and her. In fancy he saw her again, with her laughing dark blue eyes and her winning smile; he felt the pressure of her little hand, and heard the tones of her voice, so soft and winning, and saw her, not as he saw her last, in deep mourning, but in her favourite blue serge trimmed with white, and a smart sailor's hat girt with a blue yachting ribbon above her ruddy golden hair; then there came an ominous flapping of heavy wings, and he started up to find two enormous Kaffir vultures wheeling overhead in circles round him!
On every side reigned profound silence, broken only by the lap-lapping of the Buffalo as it washed against rocks and boulders on its downward passage to the Indian Ocean. A few miles distant rose the rocky crest of fatal Isandhlwana, reddened to the colour of blood by the rising sun, and standing up clearly defined in outline against a sky of the deepest blue; and a shudder came over him as he looked at it, and thought of all that had happened, and of those who were lying unburied there.
His sodden uniform was almost dried now by the heat of the sun, but he felt stiff and sore in every joint, and on rising from the earth he knew not which way to turn. He knew that two companies of the first battalion of his regiment were at Helpmakaar, with the regimental colour, and that one of the second battalion was posted at Rorke's Drift, under Lieutenant Bromhead, but of where these places lay he had not the least idea. He was defenceless too, for though he had his sword-bayonet he had lost his rifle when his horse was shot in the stream.
He passed a hand across his brow as if to clear away his painful and anxious thoughts, and was making up his mind to follow the course of the river upward as being the most likely mode of reaching Rorke's Drift when a yell pierced his ears, and he found himself surrounded by some twenty black-skinned Zulus, with gleaming eyes and glistening teeth, all adorned with cow-tails, feathers, and armlets, and armed in their usual fashion—Zulus who had been resting close by him among the long reeds, weary, as it proved; after their night's conflict at Rorke's Drift and their repulse at that place.
Florian's blood ran cold!
Already he seemed to feel their keen assegais piercing his body and quivering in his flesh. However, to his astonishment, these savages, acting under the orders of their leader, did nothing worse then than strip him of his belts and tunic, and, strange enough, examined him to see if he was wounded anywhere.
He then understood their leader to say—for he had picked up a few words of their not unmusical language—that they would give him as a present to Cetewayo.
Their leader proved to be one of the sons of Sirayo—one of the original causes of the war, and has been described as a model Zulu warrior, lithe, muscular, and without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his handsome limbs; one who could launch an assegai with unerring aim, and spring like a tiger to close quarters with knife or knobkerie—the same warrior who lay long a prisoner in the gaol of Pietermaritzburg after the war was over.
They dragged Florian across the river at a kind of ford, and partly took him back the way he had come from Isandhlwana, and awful were the sights he saw upon it—the dead bodies of comrades, all frightfully gashed and mutilated, with here and there a wounded horse, which, after partially recovering from its first agony, was cropping, or had cropped, the grass around in a limited circle, which showed the weakness caused by loss of blood; and Florian, with a prayerful heart, marvelled that his savage captors spared him, as they assegaied these helpless animals in pure wantonness and lust of cruelty.