Then at last the Zulu generals saw that the points of the horns had met behind the white men, and the moment was ripe. Abandoning its silence and slow advance, the breast of the impi raised the war-cry and charged, rolling down upon the red coats like a wave of steel. So swift and sudden was this last charge, that many of the soldiers had no time to fix bayonets. For a few moments the scattered companies held the impi back, and the black stream flowed round them, then it flowed over them, sweeping them along like human wreckage. In a minute the defence had become an utter rout. Some of the defenders formed themselves into groups and fought back to back till they fell where they stood, to be found weeks afterwards mere huddled heaps of bones. Hundreds of others fled for the waggon road, to find that the Undi regiment, passing round the Isandhlwana mountain, had occupied it already. Back they rolled from the hedge of Undi spears to fall upon the spears of the attacking regiments. One path of retreat alone remained, a dry and precipitous 'donga' or watercourse, and into this plunged a rabble of men, white and black, mules, horses, guns, and waggons.
Meanwhile the last act of the tragedy was being played on the field of death. With a humming sound such as might be made by millions of bees, the Zulu swarms fell upon those of the soldiers who remained alive, and, after a desperate resistance, stabbed them. Wherever the eye looked, men were falling and spears flashing in the sunshine, while the ear was filled with groans of the dying and the savage S'gee S'gee of the Zulu warriors as they passed their assegais through and through the bodies of the fallen. Many a deed of valour was done there as white men and black grappled in the death-struggle, but their bones alone remained to tell the tale of them. Shortly after the disaster, one of the survivors told the present writer of a duel which he witnessed between a Zulu and an officer of the 24th regiment. The officer having emptied his revolver, set his back against the wheel of a waggon and drew his sword. Then the Zulu came at him with his shield up, turning and springing from side to side as he advanced. Presently he lowered the shield, exposing his head, and the white man falling into the trap aimed a fierce blow at it. As it fell the shield was raised again, and the sword sank deep into its edge, remaining fixed in the tough ox-hide. This was what the Zulu desired; with a twist of his strong arm he wrenched the sword from his opponent's hand, and in another instant the unfortunate officer was down with an assegai through his breast.
In a few minutes it was done, all resistance had been overpowered, the wounded had been murdered—for the Zulu on the war-path has no mercy—and the dead mutilated and cut open to satisfy the horrible native superstition. Then those regiments that remained upon the field began the work of plunder. Most of the bodies they stripped naked, clothing themselves in the uniforms of the dead soldiers. They stabbed the poor oxen that remained fastened to the 'trek-tows' of the waggons, and they drank all the spirits that they could find, some of them, it is said, perishing through the accidental consumption of the medical stores. Then, when the sun grew low, they retreated, laden with plunder, taking with them the most of their dead, of whom there are believed to have been about fifteen hundred, for the Martinis did their work well, and our soldiers had not died unavenged.
All this while Lord Chelmsford and the division which he accompanied were in ignorance of what had happened within a few miles of them, though rumours had reached them that a Zulu force was threatening the camp. The first to discover the dreadful truth was Commandant Lonsdale of the Natal Native Contingent. This officer had been ill, and was returning to camp alone, a fact that shows how little anything serious was expected. He reached it about the middle of the afternoon, and there was nothing to reveal to the casual observer that more than three thousand human beings had perished there that day. The sun shone, on the white tents and on the ox waggons, around and about which groups of red-coated men were walking, sitting, and lying. It did not chance to occur to him that those who were moving were Zulus wearing the coats of English soldiers, and those lying down, soldiers whom the Zulus had killed. As Commandant Lonsdale rode, a gun was fired, and he heard a bullet whizz past his head. Looking in the direction of the sound, he saw a native with a smoking rifle in his hand, and concluding that it was one of the men under his command who had discharged his piece accidentally, he took no more notice of the matter. Forward he rode, till he was within ten yards of what had been the headquarter tents, when suddenly out of one of them there stalked a great Zulu, bearing in his hand a broad assegai from which blood was dripping. Then his intelligence awoke, and he understood. The camp was in the possession of the enemy, and those who lay here and there upon the grass like holiday makers in a London park on a Sunday in summer, were English soldiers indeed, not living but dead.
Turning his horse, Commandant Lonsdale fled as swiftly as it could carry him. More than a hundred rifle-shots were fired after him, but the Zulu marksmanship was poor, and he escaped untouched. A while afterwards, a solitary horseman met Lord Chelmsford and his staff returning: he saluted, and said, 'The camp is in the possession of the enemy, sir!' None who heard those words will forget them, and few men can have experienced a more terrible shock than that which fell upon the English general in this hour.
Slowly, and with all military precaution, Lord Chelmsford and his force moved onward, till at length, when darkness had fallen, they encamped beneath the fatal hill of Isandhlwana. Here, momentarily expecting to be attacked, they remained all night amid the wreck, the ruin, and the dead, but not till the following dawn did they learn the magnitude of the disaster that had overtaken our arms. Then they saw, and in silence marched from that fatal field, heading for Rorke's Drift, and leaving its mutilated dead to the vulture and the jackal.
Now let us follow the fate of the mob of fugitives, who, driven back from the waggon road by the Undi, plunged desperately into the donga near it, the sole avenue of retreat which had not been besieged by the foe, in the hope that they might escape the slaughter by following the friendly natives who were mixed up with them. How many entered on that terrible race for life is not known, but it is certain that very few won through. Indeed, it is said that, with the exception of some natives, no single man who was not mounted lived to pass the Buffalo River. For five miles or more they rode and ran over paths that a goat would have found it difficult to keep his footing on, while by them, and mixed up with them, went the destroying Zulus. Very soon the guns became fixed among the boulders, and one by one the artillerymen were assegaied. On went the survivors, hopeless yet hoping. Now a savage sprang on this man, and now on that; the assegai flashed up, a cry of agony echoed among the rocks, and a corpse fell heavily to the red earth. Still, those whom it pleased Providence to protect struggled forward, clinging to their horses' manes as they leaped from boulder to boulder, till at length they came to a cliff, beneath which the Buffalo rolled in flood. Down this cliff they slid and stumbled, few of them can tell how; then, driven to it by the pitiless spears, they plunged into the raging river. Many were drowned in its waters, some were shot in the stream, some were stabbed upon the banks, yet a few, clinging to the manes and tails of their horses, gained the opposite shore in safety.