Death on a Pale Horse

Death on a Pale Horse - By Donald Thomas



PART I



The Documents in the Case





MEMORANDUM





From: Permanent Secretary for Cabinet Affairs

To: Provost Marshal General

Date and Source: Cabinet Office, 20 August 1894

Subject: The Narrative of Colonel Rawdon Moran, a paper dated February 1879

My Lord,

By dispensation of Her Majesty’s Privy Council, I enclose for your confidential information a copy of a report compiled for his criminal paymasters by Colonel Rawdon Moran.

Your records will confirm that this officer was never brought before any recognised civilian or military court. Yet he remains the one agent identified in a criminal conspiracy which to this day endeavours to undermine the British position in Southern Africa. The wealth of newly discovered gold fields and diamond mines in the Transvaal was to be his particular prize. An illegal arms traffic via the Congo Free State was to be the means to that end.

In his departure from the British Army, Colonel Moran had suffered a terrible injury at the hands of fellow officers. Who shall say that it was not deserved? He swore at the time that he would be revenged upon them and their comrades many times over. And who shall say that he was not?

The attached manuscript describes certain remarkable events in Zululand, South-East Africa, on 22 January 1879. It is a curious document, for he adopts a literary style. As a young man, Moran was a hunter of big game whose bag of Bengal tigers has never been exceeded. He was the author of his own tales of adventure. Such titles as Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas enjoyed a steady sale on his return to London. Yet he must have feared the consequences, if this account of treachery at Isandhlwana ever fell into the wrong hands. Therefore he writes his account as a detached observer or story-teller, rather than as one who was present and participating at the scene. In truth, Colonel Moran alone was the Hunter, the observer and the mysterious horseman of his own narration.

This report, made to his criminal associates, was found among the effects of one of them. Professor James Moriarty, a mathematical scholar and a suspect in several crimes, died in an unusual accident at the Reichenbach Falls some months ago. But for that accident, Moran’s account would be known only to those who presumably employed his services.

My disclosure of this document to yourself was sanctioned yesterday at a meeting of the Privy Council. As I am sure your lordship will be aware, only the Sovereign and one other member need be present for a meeting of the Council and for its decisions to be valid under the constitution. Her Majesty is insistent that the fewer people who know of this matter at present, the better.

Accordingly, Lord Rosebery, as Prime Minister, and I waited upon the Queen at Osborne House, Isle of Wight, yesterday evening.

Colonel Moran’s case may now be regarded as closed. However, in the interest of military intelligence, Council deemed it advisable that you should have sight of this narrative before it is filed for indefinite retention among the confidential State Papers. I hardly need add that you have not been authorised to communicate the contents of this document to any other person.

My courier, Sergeant Albert Gibbons of the Royal Marines Despatch Corps, will attend you while you read it, and will convey the paper to me again when you have done so.

I have the honour to remain, sir, your obedient servant,

William Mycroft Holmes, PC, KBE





STATE PAPERS





CRIMINAL RECORDS Moran 1879/3

DOCUMENT NOT TO BE REMOVED FROM THE FILE

The Narrative of Colonel Rawdon Moran

February 1879

A brown minullus hawk rode high and alone above the silence of the arid plain. Its wings drooped in an easy curve against a green flush of African dawn. Below it, the broad lowland marked by a dry river donga lay in shadow, while the early sky gathered reflected light. In the growing day, not a breath of dust stirred the wild grass and mimosa thorn. The bird shifted a little, an alignment of patient grace, as the dismounted horseman watched and listened.

The scene was everything that this hunter had expected. That morning, for the first time, a distant accompaniment to the wakening day rose from a ravine of the eastern hills. The sound drifted across the tall parched grass where the rider lay concealed. Its continuous humming was subdued but undulating, like a swarm of countless bees. Carried higher in the warmer air, it began to take on a human resonance, the prayer of warriors intoned before battle.

At that moment a yellow disc of sun began to break on the high ridges of the eastern plateau and the Malagata range. Seeking warmth, the brown hawk broke away and soared into the clearing sky. It had seen what the hunter in the grass could not. He lay and watched a little longer while new light from the eastern ridge splintered the shadows across a massive rock-face in the west, working down the slope.

The few European travellers who had seen the summit of this pale rock, rearing like a carved head from the neck of its col, had compared it to a silhouette of the Sphinx. But the warriors of Cetewayo knew nothing of sphinxes. It had been named for them by men whose trade was the slaughter of herds. Cow-Belly. Isandhlwana.

The sun had now risen clear of the eastern hills. Its cool light travelled quickly down the western slope of the col until the wide plain came into full view. At the foot of Isandhlwana, protected at the rear by the great rock itself, stretched the silent camp of an invading army. Lines of neat white bell-tents ran as trimly as the streets of a new-built town. Behind them, where the rocky ground sloped up to the col, row upon row of ox-drawn supply-wagons held food and drink for two thousand men. They also carried enough ammunition to kill every man and woman between the Buffalo River and the Cape.

To the left of this camp, four Royal Artillery bombardiers in dark tunics and caps kept watch over a battery of seven-pounder field-guns. Half a mile before them, in the open terrain of grass and thorn, the approach from the northern plateau was guarded by mounted vedettes of the Natal Volunteers in their black tunics, and by red-coated pickets of Her Majesty’s 24th Regiment of Foot, from the valleys of Wales.

The camp began to stir as the first white smoke rose from its field kitchens. Through his lenses, the hunter in the grass watched the first bearded infantrymen of the Volunteers forming a queue with their mess-tins for pressed beef, hardtack, and tea. As the sun’s warmth began to penetrate the cold air of the plain, a long mounted column was forming up by the main body of the tents. Sound carries far at such an hour and in such stillness. The shifting and snorting of horses, the clink of bridles, drifted through the clear air towards the eastern slopes.

“Walk march!”

The call rang out, repeated down the length of the column. In perfect order, this mounted patrol moved out across the brown pasture, withered by sun and wind, towards the Malagata foothills.

At the scarlet column’s head rode several men whose white helmets bore the gilt insignia of the British General Staff. The dismounted horseman in the grass recognised them all. Foremost was Lieutenant-General Lord Chelmsford of the Grenadier Guards, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army at the Cape. He sat tall and slim in the saddle, with the high-bridged nose of a born aristocrat. Chelmsford had led his troops in the Queen’s wars from the Crimea and Abyssinia to Bengal and the Punjab. Leaving the rest of his regiments in the safety of the camp, he now rode out at the head of his patrol to scout for an elusive enemy.

Among his subalterns and aides-de-camp, he was immediately followed by a tall languid dandy with a sneering drawl. The patient hunter also recognised this creature. He was one who spent his London furloughs as a gambler in Chelsea’s Cremorne pleasure gardens and as whoremaster in the Regent Street night-houses. His features profiled the spoilt beauty of a bankrupt Apollo.

In the small hours of darkness, the hunter had come and gone from his enemy’s camp, passing the sentries as easily as a shadow crossing the moon. Now lying hidden from their view at sunrise, he lacked the means to check his own appearance. He imagined it would suggest his last hours in the dying-room of a fever hospital. Despite the new warmth of morning, the sharp rat-like bite of the cold night had gnawed his bones. Sometimes he shivered until his teeth rattled like a zany’s. There were spasms in which the hands that held the field-glasses shook too hard to hold them steady and his eyes watered with the chill. In the last hour before dawn, it had seemed that day would never come.

Chelmsford’s reconnaissance raised a slow wake of dust in its progress to the farther hills. The camp had now lost its commander and most of its mounted troops for the rest of the day. Its position would be held until dusk by the general’s subordinate, Colonel Henry Pulleine, and his 24th Regiment of Foot.

The climbing sun burnt off the remaining drifts of morning mist. From its eastern ravine, the hunter heard that strange bee-like humming ebb and die, as if at the approach of the cavalry patrol.

With talons folded in its warm plumage, the observer’s quiet companion swooped and soared again. It hovered low above an isolated hill that stood in the centre of the plain between the eastern ridge and the camp at the foot of Isandhlwana. This splendid bird showed no fear of the man. A body lying prone in the tall grass of the slope could do it no harm.

Avoiding the sun’s reflection on the lenses of his field-glasses, the observer raised himself to inspect more fully the camp across the plain. He felt the dry flesh shrink on his face and the skin burn red on the points of his cheek-bones, under a ragged beard. The water-bottle beside him had been dry since the previous dusk, but he opened it from time to time and sucked at the cooler air of its interior, a substitute for water itself.

Then, stiff and ungainly, he stood up. It mattered nothing if they saw him now. With dawn and daylight, the time for suspicion was past. Twenty yards away, the dappled mare arched her neck and got slowly to her feet from the flattened grass. Everything was in place for the event that must follow, though the drama was not yet of his making. The period of his allotted patrol as a Natal Volunteer was not quite over, but he could move freely until the time came for his withdrawal through the camp itself. He had an hour in hand as he led the mare in an eastern semicircle to the near side of the ravine. There was silence now on all sides. By night, the perimeter guards were alert for a footfall or the brushing of grass. In the safety of daylight, no one below would pay him the least attention.

He worked his way carefully along the plateau until he could see the approach to the isolated Conical Kopje from east as well as west. Then, as he drew closer to the ravine, he heard again that strange, unaccountable buzzing. The mobilisation of a nation of bees. But still there was no movement to be seen on the plain below, nor on the ridges about him.

As he ambled to the east along the plateau, with the lazy progress of a Volunteer, his stony path ended presently at the sharp edge of the ravine, dropping five hundred feet to the level of the foothills. He walked the horse to the lip of this chasm. The sound of the hive grew louder until he stood behind chest-high scrub, where the ground sloped rapidly down. He looked through a gap in the branches into this narrow gorge and saw what he had known he was going to see.

A less-experienced observer might have thought that the sun and shade had played a trick upon his eyes. Where stretches of withered grass should have clothed the limestone slopes on either side of this declivity, the entire face of the ravine for a mile or more was dark and smooth, hung here and there with oval shields of animal hide. At several points, the sun caught polished metal. The humming that had echoed in the warmer air grew louder and more insistent. It was the warning of an army disturbed, of its warriors waking to the dawn of battle.

A stranger might have stood in admiration, for the carpet that covered the sides of the ravine was living and human. The massed battalions of a great Zulu battle force, perhaps ten thousand strong, lay or crouched in the concealment of this rift in the hills. Such was the flower of Cetewayo’s tribes, young men who had yet to earn the prize of a woman by dipping their spears in the blood of an enemy.

He stepped back cautiously for better concealment. Here and there the first ranks were rising slowly, stiff from rest but impatient for combat. Isandhlwana was to be the arena of the young men’s initiation. The washing of the spears. All their lives had been lived for this day.

Despite his own preparations and the care of his planning, a sudden fear at the sight of such numbers stung him like the shock of an icy plunge. But the lore of nature had taught him that there is no enduring courage without fear and its conquest. As he mounted the dappled horse, a last low-pitched humming was lost in the rustling of grass. The mighty army crouched together and quietly murmured its battle-cry.

“u-Suthu! u-Suthu!”

Putting spurs to the grey mare, its rider came jauntily down the slope like a returning scout, recrossed the plain, and passed through the outer picket-line into the 24th Foot’s quiet camp. No one barred his way. It was enough that he wore the dark serge patrol-jacket and cord breeches of the Volunteers, a wide-awake hat, broad-brimmed with a silk band. No Volunteer would choose to ride the veldt by darkness. Where else could a man in such clothes come from but a night patrol? The picket captain had checked the horsemen of a patrol out from the camp before dusk. Many a rider now passed through the forward line of the 24th Regiment of Foot with less notice taken of him than if he had been a stray dog from a deserted kraal.

For a moment more, the plain was silent. The first chant from the tribes had been too deep in the ravine to carry this far. The returning horseman dismounted, walked his horse past the headquarters tents, and tethered the mare to its rail. So far as the smartly uniformed imperial riflemen were concerned, he might not exist. Yet the plan he had proposed to his confederates was now unfolding as effortlessly as a flag in the wind.

He let his loitering footsteps carry him past the tent of Colonel Henry Pulleine of the 24th Foot. Pulleine was the only man with the rank to be camp-commander in Lord Chelmsford’s absence. His Natal Volunteers supplementing the regular infantry consisted of mercenaries, freebooters, and bounty-hunters. They were apt to be known for indiscipline and brutality. Their commanders despised a gentleman like Pulleine as instinctively as he deplored them. With a facetious irony, they called themselves “Pulleine’s Lambs.”

The flap of the colonel’s tent was open by this hour of the morning, revealing his stocky, moustached figure as he turned from a long mirror. He had been standing before it while his batman adjusted the scarlet tunic with its gold-fringed epaulettes. The servant executed a running backward bow and retrieved Henry Pulleine’s white pith helmet from its place on a chest of drawers. A sword hilt glittered like new silver as the colonel buckled on his white belt. Equipped for duty, he turned to the opening of the canvas.

Before walking forward, he had picked up several company reports laid on a trestle table by his adjutant. Now he put them down again. A blond giant in the regular scarlet and blue of the 24th Foot, his peaked cap clasped under his arm, had pushed before him.

“Sar’ Major Tindal, sir. Permission to report loss of mess equipment, sir!”

“Loss?” Pulleine glanced at him, not understanding. He turned back and looked down at the company commanders’ reports on his desk again but appeared to find no explanation there.

The anonymous horseman kept his inconspicuous distance from the conversation. He made a convincing play of piercing a further hole in his belt with an awl from his knapsack, maintaining a frown of concentration. It surprised him that they had noticed their loss already. Not a syllable of the words between the two men escaped him. Pulleine shook his head.

“Very well, sergeant-major. Loss of what?”

Tindal was quiet and confidential. Like many of his regiment, his voice retained the low lilt of his Welsh valley.

“Owain Glyndwr, sir. Missing from the mess-tent, sir.”

“Nonsense. What the devil would anyone want with him?”

As even the Natal Volunteers knew by now, Owain Glyndwr was a piece of regimental mythology, the mummified head of an Abyssinian sharpshooter, brought back as a trophy after the storming of Magdala in 1867. Pickled by the surgeon-major, it had become an object of veneration to younger officers in the boisterous aftermath of regimental guest-nights.

“Not nonsense, sir,” said Tindal quickly. “He’s gone. And Dai Morgan do say someone was creeping about last night when Mr. Pope’s dogs did bark. Perhaps a native spy was out in the hills, sir.”

Pulleine looked up and scrutinised the sergeant-major a moment longer before replying.

“Sar’ Major! Inform Private Morgan and anyone else to whom it may apply that the purpose of this expedition is to repulse a Zulu invasion of the province of Natal. I will not have any officer or batman playing the fool at a time like this. If I hear more of this matter, or if I find that Private Morgan has laid his hands on an unauthorised rum-ration again, he and you will be visited as if by the Wrath of God. Is that plain?”

“Sir,” said Tindal smartly.

“Very well, sar’ major. Dismiss!”

Pulleine was still standing in the opening of the tent as the bugles blew “Column Call” and the regimental NCOs prepared to call the names of the men who had fallen in by companies. The colonel shouted across to one of his subalterns.

“Mr. Spencer!”

As he watched them casually, the hunter identified Spencer as the fair-skinned young captain who went everywhere with a pet terrier running at his heels. Spencer now crossed to the colonel’s tent and saluted self-consciously, the fair skin colouring a little under the trim line of his ginger moustaches.

“Mr. Spencer, as orderly officer last night, please explain to me this report of the removal of Owain Glyndwr from the guard-tent!”

“Sar’ Major Tindal is investigating it, sir. Someone seems to have taken the head from the mess trophy-case in the small hours of this morning.”

“I am aware of that, Mr. Spencer.” Pulleine rested his hand on his sword-hilt in the brightness of the African sun. “Be so good as to find the culprit, put him in close arrest, and bring him to me at defaulters’ parade tomorrow morning. Understood?”

Spencer hesitated. Unlike his brother captains, he seemed a diffident young man who took awkwardly to the self-assurance of professional soldiering.

“With respect, sir.”

“Well?” Pulleine released the hilt and adjusted the angle of the scabbard again.

“The men suspect an intruder in the camp last night, near ‘B’ Company lines.”

“The devil they do, Mr. Spencer! Then why, in God’s name, was something not done at the time?”

“Morgan reported a wide-brimmed hat. Whoever he was, he was close to the wagons and the guard-tents.”

“Mr. Spencer,” said Pulleine softly, “almost every Natal Volunteer wears a patrol-jacket and a wide-awake hat. How could one of them—or more—fail to be in the area? You must do better than that, sir.”

Spencer was not so easily defeated.

“Mr. Pope’s men saw something as well.”

“Mr. Pope is now out on picket-guard. You may speak to him when he’s relieved. Meantime, let me have no more cock-and-bull stories. This is regimental mischief, you may be sure of that. Find the culprit and put him in detention. I have no doubt that he can be named easily enough.”

Spencer saluted, called his terrier to heel, and marched back to the waiting lines of the parade square.

The hunter’s curiosity was satisfied. He promised the world that it had not seen the last of “Owain Glyndwr.” Across the camp ground, bugles finished blowing and the NCOs began to call the names of the men who had fallen in by companies. The sun rose higher in the burning-mirror of the sky, its heat shimmering distantly from the stone ridges that overlooked the plain on all sides.

Presently, a trail of dust drifted from the west, where the Buffalo River marked the frontier dividing Natal from Cetewayo’s Zulu Kingdom. Across this rough terrain moved a column of mounted detachments, a further company of infantry, and a rocket-battery with its strange launching-troughs drawn on limber wheels. The scarlet tunic’d foot-soldiers and the monocled cavalry officers in dark blue were preceded by a regimental band playing Men of Harlech in march time. The sun fired the silver instruments of the bandsmen, giving this support column of Durnford, the junior colonel, the air of a bank holiday carnival.

Among the horsemen, Durnford was easily picked out by the sleeve of his withered left arm pinned to his tunic. Presently he dismounted on the garrison ground at the centre of the camp and strode across to report his arrival to Pulleine. The patient onlooker waited until he saw Durnford leave Pulleine’s tent twenty minutes later, after a delayed breakfast of beef and porter. The horsemen of the column were formed up again for a sweep across the plain from west to east, to root out any forward positions of the tribes in the foothills.

Pulleine had every reason to feel confident. The battalions of the tribes carried no arms beyond their shields of animal skin stretched over light wooden frames and their metal-tipped spears or assegais. Looking about him, the colonel saw a park of British wagons holding half a million rounds of ammunition and enough of the latest quick-firing Martini-Henry rifles to equip two thousand infantry. There was a rocket-battery, and a Royal Artillery battery of seven-pounder guns, as well as the new continuous-firing Gatling guns mounted on limber wheels.

It was the rifles that would stop an attacking formation by a wall of timed-volleys. Even at five or six hundred yards, the aimed and coordinated fire of trained infantry using the Martini-Henry would be lethal to any assault.

Durnford’s horsemen were moving leisurely towards the eastern foothills. Now it was the senior man of the Natal Volunteers, Boss Strickland, who grinned and elbowed his way through a cheering mob of his men about the guard-tents. Their clothes were shabby by contrast with the spotless white-and-scarlet of the British regiments, but their self-confidence was at a peak.

The hunter moved aside and remained in earshot by unobtrusive attendance to his tethered mount. He could hear easily enough the loud argument that developed as Strickland entered the colonel’s tent. Pulleine had come to defend Natal, but Strickland and his friends had followed him for booty. These mercenaries were anxious to be off the leash and into the villages. Strickland’s tone was half a drawl and half a sneer. Pulleine’s reply was breathless with exasperation.

“Once and for all, Mr. Strickland! This camp is to be held securely until Lord Chelmsford returns. Then you may seek his leave to do as you please. Those are my orders—and your orders.”

“Supposing his lordship ain’t back this side of dark?”

“He will be.”

“Supposin’ he ain’t?”

Pulleine made no reply.

“All right.” Strickland had moved so that he was now almost blocking the tent-opening with his bulk. “Then supposing I was just to ride my men out. Shoot us in the back, would you?”

Pulleine swung round.

“I’ll do better than that, Mr. Strickland. I’ll court-martial you!”

Strickland laughed as if it was the best thing he had heard in months.

“No, you won’t, Pulleine. Not me. I ain’t one of your regimental flunkeys. Court-martial me? If you was to do that, my friend, you wouldn’t get back over the Buffalo River alive. There’s fifty men ’d see to that.”

Strickland showed the manner which had served him so well in the Durban markets and the diamond mining settlements of the Transvaal.

“I’ll tell you what though, Colonel. I’ll go half way with you. We’ll take a patrol along the north plateau presently. No further. From there, we can survey the front of the Conical Kopje and see the back of it. We’ll sit quietly there until Lord Chelmsford comes back safe. After that, we’ll press on. Not before.”

Pulleine hesitated, but Strickland gave him no respite.

“Give our fellows a square deal, Pulleine, or I shan’t be answerable for ’em. I daresay this stolen regimental mascot nonsense is up to one of them. I’ll give you that. But let them alone and there’s enough in a quick swoop to keep them happy for a month or two.”

Pulleine hesitated. Long years of military command had accustomed him to deference and dignity. Men of Strickland’s cut were beyond him. How far did his authority extend over this civilian riff-raff?

“Very well, Mr. Strickland. The northern plateau and no further. You will take the heliograph. You will respond to all signals flashed from this camp. In the event of a recall being sounded, you will return at once.”

Strickland pushed aside the tent flap, still grinning. Presently the bearded mercenaries of Pulleine’s Lambs rode two by two towards the north plateau, escorted by Captain Shepstone of Durnford’s mounted detail. They passed the forward line and a red-coated picket of the 24th Foot, commanded by Lieutenant Pope. Presently they caught up with a mounted vedette of the Natal Cavalry on the eastern slope.

Heat had stunned the plain into silence and stillness. At the western end of the camp, under the great rock itself, the lines between the tents were now almost deserted. Far out across the plain, the pickets and vedettes of the forward posts wilted in the glare. The rocket-battery with its trough-like launchers was almost level with the Conical Kopje as it approached the camp. On the eastern hills and the Malagata range to the south, there was still no sign of Lord Chelmsford’s column.

The mercenary riders of the Natal Volunteers had begun to pick their way leisurely through the fierce light that shone back from pale stone ridges. They were across the dry and broken course of the river donga, its boulders scattered along the plain from north to south.

Presently they were far enough forward to look down on the approaches to the Kopje. As they dismounted to wait for Chelmsford’s return, it was possible to see through field-glasses from the camp that Strickland, distinguished by the white band round his wide-awake hat, remained on his horse. Perhaps in the stillness he was puzzled by that strange, unaccountable buzzing of a vast army of bees.

Presently he could be seen dismounting cautiously and guiding his horse to the sharp edge of the ravine, where it dropped to the level of the lower hills. He walked alone to the lip of the rift, stood on the edge where the ground sloped away, and looked into the narrow gorge.

A moment later, he was seen with his foot in the stirrup, turning his horse about. He flung himself astride and spurred at full pelt upon the astonished patrol of Pulleine’s Lambs, stretched in the grass, talking and laughing.

The message, though out of earshot from the camp, was never in doubt.

“Ride for your lives! The tribes are in the ravine! Thousand on thousand of them! Ride for the camp or we shall all be lost!”

The puzzled vedettes on the camp perimeter saw through their glasses the Volunteers snatch at their bridles, jump for their stirrups, and gallop in wild retreat down the slope of the plateau. Still Cetewayo’s warriors lay low with perfect discipline while the British camp was quiet and unprepared for an assault. Something like a battle-cry now sounded thinly at this distance. Then the first ranks of the tribesmen rose silently into view along the ridge with their oval shields and assegais. At the two ends of their great line, the horns of the formation forming the Zulu impi were coming down towards either side of Pulleine’s men while the centre pinned the defenders down. Worse still for Pulleine, he was to be trapped with his back to the mountain.

Watching this across the quiet veldt, the horseman stood by his dappled mare and heard a sharp but distant crackling of rifles, like dry twigs in a fire. It seemed the best thing to be up and gone. As he mounted, Pulleine was in the opening of the tent again, tunic unbuttoned and a towel in his hands.

“Sar’ Major Tindal!”

“Firing on the north plateau, sir. Mr. Strickland and the mounted detail riding back!”

“Mr. Spencer!” Pulleine roared at his junior captain. “Sound the Alarm and the Fall-In. Keep your glasses on the north plateau and report!”

The colonel turned back into his tent, buckling his belt on, testing the angle of his scabbard and revolver holster. The onlooker knew what must happen next, as surely as if he had rehearsed it all himself. In a final glance, he saw that Pulleine’s eyes appeared set with anger, as surely as they would soon be stilled in death. The colonel was no doubt composing the phrases he would use when Strickland reappeared. Despite the injury that still seemed secretly to burn his flesh, the watching hunter felt no hatred, rather a cold satisfaction at what must happen. The dice had rolled. The outcome was no more to him now than the stars in their courses, the shining masters riveted in the sky. He untethered the dappled mare from the fence and led her away, glancing back from time to time.

Somewhere among the tents, a boy bugler of the regimental band sounded the Alarm and, after a moment’s pause, the Fall-In. The heat of noon rang with the shouts of NCOs, of troopers cursing as they buckled on their webbing while they ran. In a moment more, the air sounded to cries of “Company, A-ttention! Right dress!”

“Sir!” Spencer’s words carried as he ran towards the colonel’s tent, his voice steady but its pitch high, “enemy now in force on the north plateau! The ridge is thick with them!”

“Very well, Mr. Spencer. Companies to their positions on the perimeter. Where are Colonel Durnford and his troopers?”

“No sign, sir.”

“He may find himself cut off. He and Lord Chelmsford.” Pulleine’s face was still tense with anger. “I’ll be damned if I don’t have that fool Strickland court-martialled!”

But his tone of voice and the unease in his eyes suggested that he now thought himself the greater fool of the two. He took his field-glasses from their case again, glancing across to see that the companies of the 24th Foot were doubling forward to their positions. Then he strode off to survey the perimeter defences. Lieutenant Coghill, acting adjutant in the absence of Chelmsford’s party, caught him up.

Watching from the saddle, the hunter knew that the field-glasses would prove that Spencer had been right. For almost a mile along the edge of the northern plateau, the horizon-line had become a dark undulating mass of humanity. They had come from nowhere, as it seemed, for the night patrol had reported nothing. Metal tips of their razor-sharp assegais glittered in strong light, and at this distance the tawny-coloured animal skins covering their shields seemed to float on their bodies like debris on a tide.

At the nearer end of the plateau, Strickland’s men were still careering in panic towards the camp in a motley stampede, a retreat as undisciplined as a donkey-race. The rocket-battery would never limber up in time to withdraw. Though well-armed, it was about to be marooned in the centre of the plain. But Durnford’s mounted column was now riding back in good order from the eastern foothills. Its men began to dismount and take up a defensive line just forward of the main camp, where the boulders of the dry river donga offered good cover for the riflemen.

Pulleine’s voice still carried across the lines.

“I want Mr. Pope and his platoon brought in now! If the tribes attack down the slope, they’ll be on top of the pickets before we know where we are.”

Coghill saluted and rode away.

Strickland and his Volunteers were at last cantering across a flat stretch of plain towards the camp. Durnford’s riflemen were in place, making their forward line of defence among the rocks of the donga. The companies of the 24th and the other regiments still under Pulleine’s command formed a formidable double rampart across the approach to the camp perimeter. With its Martini-Henry breech-loaders, this red-coated infantry presented a constant wall of fire. The kneeling sections fired first and those standing behind fired over the first rank’s heads while those kneeling reloaded. The aim was sure, disciplined, and regular. Even at quarter of a mile, the effect of such volleys would make a shambles of the close-ranked battalions of the tribes.

By now, the rocket-battery was isolated. Its launching-troughs on their limber-wheels stood well ahead of the main defensive line. But the camp was secure beyond question. Indeed, at the sight of the double line of infantry, the tribal army at the plateau’s foot appeared to hesitate. The massed bodies swayed a little, side to side, while a hymn-like chant rose slow and mournful to the white heat of the sky.

“u-Suthu! u-Suthu!”

Sometimes the warriors would make a brief demonstration with shields and spears, beating the rhythm of a tattoo, only to withdraw. Whatever their chiefs promised, even this phalanx—a mile long and eight or ten men deep—faced slaughter at the hands of mechanised weaponry. The artillery battery was now trained on their approach.

Pulleine lowered his field-glasses as Coghill returned. The hunter glanced again as his mount rambled on inconspicuously. Chelmsford would be five miles to the south-east by now, following the Malagata range. Coghill had his despatch-book and pencil out. There was only one message to send, and the mounted hunter could echo every word.

“Return at once with all your force. Zulus advancing in force from the left front of the camp.”

The hunter had seen and guessed enough. With Strickland’s return, there were scores of men in uniforms identical to his, Natal Volunteers scattered throughout the camp. Once again, no one would pay him the least attention. It was all just as he had calculated. He saw that a mounted messenger and three escorts, one of them a black-coated guide, were making their way to the western perimeter by the foot of the col. He had only to follow at a distance, apparently bringing up the rear as one of the despatch riders. Best of all, Her Majesty’s infantry had been taught that he would not be worth challenging as though he were a British “regular.” The ruffians of the Volunteers did not count as true soldiers.

Behind him, he heard a single battle-cry of the human tide as it burst from its line on the plateau and surged in mass formation down the slope to the plain. Then it came on silently and in perfect order, the war-chant stilled. Glancing back, he saw that the individual warriors were almost distinguishable. Their advance spread and formed a human phalanx across the scorching grassland. Then Cetewayo’s young men broke into a slow rhythmic run, with all the professional precision of British regiments moving in double-time.

Despite the apparent security of Pulleine’s main position, the rocket-battery had delayed too long. Major Russell, his bombardier, and the eight troopers had chosen to make a fight of it. Among the pack mules which carried their equipment, two launching-troughs on limber wheels were now aimed directly at the advancing tribes. Two steel-cased rockets had been laid in place and two troopers were lighting the fuses by hand. The stillness of the plain was rent by a demonic shriek as the first of the projectiles shot from its launcher, trailing plumes of white smoke and sparks. High above the oncoming force, it went into an erratic spin, plunging harmlessly into the hillside beyond with a dull thump of explosive power and a slow drift of blackened smoke.

But the second shell flew low and straight, detonating in the mass of the tribes with terrible effect. A cheer went up from the rocket battery as the launchers were reloaded. The ranks of oncoming attackers hid the scene for a moment. But something had gone amiss. It seemed that the next missiles failed to ignite. Two rocketeers tried vainly to light the fuses, the rest turning to hold off the attack with rifles and service revolvers.

Almost before the danger was evident, the major and his bombardier and troopers vanished under a wave of bodies and spears. Several times the sun caught the tips of assegais held aloft in a powerful fist. There was a shout of victory from the pressing tribes, drawing back after conquest, a severed head dancing high on the shaft of a spear. Round the overturned limbers, the bodies of the nine soldiers lay torn and dishevelled.

With such a sight before them, not a single face from the camp was turned towards the fugitive as he swung away from the despatch party. Abruptly, he spurred forward to put the shelter of the col between him and the fighting. From the concealment that the tall grass offered, he now saw the dark wall of the impi turn towards the main defensive line of Pulleine’s men. At the isolated donga, where his riflemen lay behind whitened boulders, Durnford alone stood upright, his left sleeve pinned to his tunic, his right arm brandishing his sword as he shouted encouragement to his men.

At about two hundred yards, Durnford’s rifles opened fire, volleys aimed with a force and precision that might have equalled an artillery salvo. Twenty or thirty of the tribesmen went down, swarmed over by the mass which pressed on from behind them. At the foot of the plateau, the Royal Artillery battery loaded its guns again with case shot, lethal slugs of metal capable of bringing down attackers by the dozen.

Durnford’s forward line began a careful withdrawal to the main perimeter, in order to secure their flank. The riflemen of the 24th Foot covered their retreat with the same precise ear-stunning volleys, each of which caused the oncoming wave of the attack to halt and recoil a little, leaving a line of fallen warriors at its feet.

To those who had faced the ordeal of the Russian guns at the Alma or the bloody hand-to-hand carnage in the mist and mud of Inkerman, this skirmish at Isandhlwana had no more promised a proper battle than a rabbit-shoot or a battue of pheasants. The double-ranked companies of the 24th were so little concerned that men were chattering and laughing as they fired, pausing to reload from white blanco’d cartridge-pouches. Several officers walked up and down the line encouraging their men, voices carrying through the heat in the intervals of the crashing volleys. “Well done, Captain Pope’s company!… Good shooting, the 24th!”

The hunter dismounted behind the rocks on the lower slope of the col. He saw that the first ranks of the attacking tribesmen were closer to the camp perimeter now, though at a range of well over two hundred yards. A few of the veteran warriors set an example to the youths by dashing forward and launching their six-foot assegais, light spears that flew with a faint whoop! through the air. The steel points bedded deep in the earth, but no more than half the distance from the British perimeter.

Presently, the attacking line surged forward again with a rising murmur of voices, lapping the entire length of the defence. Again it drew back before the volley-fire of the imperial regiments, the battle hymn falling to a low howl. To the north, however, one horn of the impi was trying to encircle the flank of the 24th Foot, while case-shot from the seven-pounder guns of the Royal Artillery defending that sector filled the air with a hail of metal.

In the wagon-park, to the rear of Pulleine’s position, the cooks and quartermasters had come out, as if to watch a football game. The regimental band was formed up in the safety of this garrison ground. In battle, these musicians would serve as ammunition-bearers. The observer on the col turned his glasses upon this enclosure. That was where the engagement would be lost or won, but not yet.

Strickland and his Volunteers had fallen back to hold a line on the left. These were the sharp-shooters and harriers of the veldt. Recovered from their fright on the plateau, their steady carefully aimed fire brought down rank after rank of attackers. The great tribal phalanx wavered and, for a moment, the advance seemed to fall away again. But the experienced warriors had taught the new recruits well. The survivors of the Uve and Uncijo battalions had learnt to drop to their knees as the volleys were fired, but then rose again to launch their spears.

Even so, the Uvi battalion came to a halt, kept down by shots that sang and whipped overhead. Promised that the enemy’s bullets would slide off their skins without harming them, the young warriors were losing heart. Tales of white birds that flew above and dropped fire from the sky were proving true. Soon there might follow attacks by dogs and apes, clothed and carrying firearms on their shoulders, of which their elders spoke.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, the lull ended and the attack was resumed. Stung by its losses, the Uvi rose from the grass and flung its ranks upon the riflemen. The most powerful warriors were now in range with their assegais. Like a shaft from the sun, a six-foot spear flew with the speed of a hawk and sank into Strickland’s back as he turned to reload his rifle. His men would hear a sharp crack as the tip fractured his rib-cage. Pinned through the body, his face pressed to the earth, the gang-master of the markets and the mines was dead at once.

Here and there, the disciplined fire of Pulleine’s Lambs faltered as the spears flew among them. Two mercenaries were carrying Strickland’s body back to the regimental lines. The patient observer on the col heard the rifle fire on the northern perimeter die away. From time to time, red-coated infantry had grounded their weapons and were glancing round behind them. Presently the crackle of shots broke out again but now it was uneven and the delay had been costly. In the scrimmage, the attacking force had become so dense that it sometimes eclipsed the view of the action. To the south of the line, the tribesmen were still running forward at a steady trot, only to fall under the swarm of bullets. But to the north, more of them were pressing against the front line of the regiments.

Pulleine had been given his command of the 24th Foot because he was one of few experienced in such warfare. Had the hunter been in his position, he too would believe that he need only hold firm for a little longer before the warriors must have thrown the last of their weapons. Each man carried five or six. Then the Zulu line must fall back—or die.

From the col, the precision glasses easily covered the wagon-park and the ammunition carriers, immediately below and on the nearer edge of the camp. In this tented space, the wagons were now surrounded by a jostling swarm of bandsmen with their blue caps held out, drummer boys and buglers who acted as runners to re-supply the infantry during the action. Anyone but the observer on the col might have wondered why they were not already running to and fro to feed the cartridge pouches of the regimental lines.

At the centre of the impatient musicians stood a score of oblong roughly made wooden crates that might need two men to lift them by their rope handles. Each was stamped in black with the crow’s-foot insignia and initials of the War Department. They were of a conventional cargo pattern, crude but strong, with tight copper bands holding the lids down. Steel screws, rusted into place, had been sunk through each band. Inside the crates, there was a weatherproof lining of silver foil to protect the rows of waxed-paper cartridge packets, keeping out damp and preventing an accidental spark from the friction of metal against metal. Each packet, when torn open, would yield a cache of calibre .450 cartridges for the breech-loading Martini-Henry rifles.

Scanning the line through his field-glasses, the hunter made out that something had gone badly wrong with the Royal Artillery battery, forward of the perimeter on the northern flank. He was not surprised at this, though it was something of a bonus, a tribute to the incompetence of whoever had left the gunners there. Perhaps it was simply that Cetewayo’s inexperienced young warriors had learnt the lesson of the battle more quickly then anyone had expected. By their movements, it was plain that they knew that lesson now.

After a shell had been fired, the iron monster that belched fire and smoke was powerless against them for almost a minute while it was loaded again. At the moment of its discharge, they had only to drop flat on the earth in the long dry grass until the flight of the thunderbolt passed over them. The weapon that fired it was then at their mercy, as they rose to their knees, to their feet, and surged forward again with spears poised to take their revenge.

Each time the artillery gunners reloaded, the officers of the beleaguered battery were striving to keep the tribes at bay with revolvers and swords. But during these pauses, the weight of numbers had begun to tell. In this reversal of fortune, the artillerymen were also in danger of being overwhelmed, cut off in the path of a continuing advance.

The only recourse was to save the guns, and the order was given. In a rapid manoeuvre, the teams struggled to get their field pieces to their horse-drawn limbers and then back within the camp perimeter. The dark-uniformed crews at each of the seven-pounders began hauling them away. Training and discipline accomplished this in less than half a minute. On the right, the 1st Battalion of the 24th Foot, on Pulleine’s order, opened a covering rifle fire on the tribesmen as they swarmed round the retreating gunners. Drivers whipped up the horses while guncrews jumped for a seat on the limbers. A spear, launched at short range, pierced an artilleryman’s back even as he snatched for a hand-hold. At a distance, his cry was audible but brief.

The limber wheels lurched and jolted forward over uneven ground, their crews and passengers hacking at the heads and hands of the tribesmen following them. Elsewhere, the last of the gunners ran alongside the vehicles, the warriors close behind them.

A retreat by British artillery in the face of the tribes was a reverse, but it was not yet the rout that the hunter had envisaged. His glasses showed him Colonel Pulleine striding back to his tent, then pausing. He was looking up at the skyline, the hills above the plain. What could he hope to see there, in the white glare of noon? Perhaps Lord Chelmsford’s column returning. But as he looked to left and right, he would sense a growing stillness across the field of battle. And in that stillness the colonel would know, as the quiet observer had known for many hours, that he and his entire force were doomed to die.

To the south, on the right of the position, the red lines of the infantry were still holding firm, for the attack had been lighter. On the left, where the artillerymen had found refuge, the crackling volleys of the rifles sputtered and died. The forward ranks were almost face to face with the enemy. A metallic rattle and scraping followed the chilling command that echoed down the lines of white helmets and scarlet tunics from officers and NCOs:

“Company—Fix bayonets!”

Pulleine must have wondered how it could have come to this. Perhaps he might guess. More likely, he would die and never know the reason. With the precision of a guards regiment on a drill square, the endangered platoons and companies had drawn bayonets in unison, counting three as the steel flickered bright in the sun, then clipping them in a single movement to the hot barrels of the rifles.

With a howl of expectant triumph, Cetewayo’s warriors flung down their shields, raised their fine-honed assegais in powerful fists, and rushed upon the redcoat line. The bayonets of the 24th held them for an instant. But as each rifleman sank his blade under the breastbone of an assailant, a new wave of the warriors broke over his position. Before the bayonets could be withdrawn, the first riflemen were cut down by the Uvi and Umcijo.

The 24th infantry pulled back, leaving dead and wounded on the rough grass over which the line of the advance swept forward. The Natal Cavalry, fighting on foot, though entirely unprepared for hand-to-hand combat, was the next in danger of being cut off as the 24th fell back. But many of these dismounted riders turned, found their horses, and galloped for safety in the hills. Another gap in the northern flank was now undefended. The remaining artillery pieces stood forlorn and isolated in the wake of the advance.

The watching horseman again turned his field-glasses to the wagon-park below him. The orderly queue of blue-uniformed bandsmen had become a rabble of musicians, cooks, batmen, grooms, and orderlies. The tailboard of every ammunition wagon was down and a dozen of the heavy wooden boxes with their rope handles stood in two lines. Quartermaster Bloomfield was struggling with a powerful turn-screw to twist the thread of one of the steel bolts, sunken and rusted into the oblong boxes, holding the copper bands and heavy lids in place. There was a shout across the yard.

“The turn-screw drivers are too narrow! They’re not Boxer calibre!”

“They surely must be! They were checked!”

“God help us, we have been given the wrong calibre for .450 ammunition crates!”

Another shout rang back.

“Then the boxes must be broken open, Mr. Bloomfield! A mallet or rifle butt! Nothing metal. There must not be a spark! Make a start! Some of these packets are to be carried half a mile to forward companies.”

This reply had come from a supply officer, whom the onlooker identified as Lieutenant Smith-Dorrien. His disorganised queues of bandsmen and supernumeraries now scattered and began to attack the abandoned boxes. At the far end of the transport-park, there was a sound of hooves. Captain Bonham and two corporals of the Newcastle Mounted Infantry appeared at a gallop. Bonham swung round to face the supply officer, his voice carrying through the warm air.

“Mr. Smith-Dorrien! Captain Wardell’s compliments. H Company’s ammunition is exhausted. The 24th must abandon their present position and fall back almost to this point unless you can give our runners cartridges to carry back this minute. If you cannot do it, let us have the boxes and we will break them open!”

Smith-Dorrien straightened up.

“No, Captain Bonham! There must be order. There cannot be order if the boxes are taken away! Some companies will have too many cartridges and others too few.”

“H Company has none at all, sir! If we fall back, the northern flank cannot hold out! The artillery has been routed. My message is a command from Colonel Pulleine, sir. It is not a request!”

“Then open them here! Your mounted men may ride back with enough packages in your saddle-bags to carry on. It will be quicker than carrying heavy boxes such a distance!”

This concession was a signal for general disorder. The supernumeraries and infantry runners pushed forward in a scrum to drag the remaining boxes over the tailboards of the wagons. The scene was one of looting. Despite Smith-Dorrien’s warning of metal striking a spark on metal, a bayonet flashed as it stabbed down to prise a thick wooden lid from the carcase of a heavy box. Elsewhere, iron hammers were being used to smash in the lids and sides.

There was a cry of relief as several lids sprang loose under the pressure of bayonets. A crowd surged round the quartermaster in possession of a broken box. The metal foil was ripped back. Caps or helmets were held out as wax-paper was torn and the brass cartridges tipped out in a stream. From the col, the view stretched far beyond the enclosure of the wagon-park. It needed no field-glasses to show that the amounts of ammunition would be too little and too late. Captain Bonham and his corporals raised dust as they turned and galloped off with the first consignments.

The warriors had broken the line to the south, where Durnford’s surrounded position had now been overwhelmed. The tribesmen were in among the first tents. A well-aimed spear brought Bonham from the saddle. As the captain fell into the path of the next rider, his corporal’s horse reared and threw him at the feet of his killers. Only the second corporal charged his way through. The bandsmen carrying the first heavy box got no further. From the hill, it was plain that the horns of the Zulu impi had almost closed round the rear of the British position. If Pulleine was still alive, he surely knew the end had come.

Unaware of the extent of the disaster, two men in the dark tunics of quartermasters were shouting at each other. Officers joined in. Smith-Dorrien had broken open a new box. He was tipping cartridges into twenty or thirty helmets and haversacks held out for him. Bloomfield shouted from a nearby wagon, “For heaven’s sake, don’t take those, man! They belong to our battalion. It’s all we have left!”

“Hang it all!” the young subaltern called back. “You don’t want a requisition order at a time like this, do you?”

With the first breach, the line which had held against the impi’s weight began to fragment. Its men now found the attackers at their backs and feared they would be cut off. The 24th Foot, with Pulleine still alive and assuming direct command, drew back in a semblance of orderly retreat. The men at either end of the line fell away first and fought to the end among the tents of the company lines. Pulleine tried to keep the main body intact, ordering them back to the lower slope of Isandhlwana. Beyond the wagons, the boulders and low ridges might afford a defensive line.

As they withdrew, the men snatched ammunition pouches from the bodies of the fallen. Ironically, now that the camp was being overrun, the survivors found cartridges enough to supply themselves. Their tactic must surely be to defend a position among the rocks of the lower slope, saving ammunition, holding this makeshift redoubt until Lord Chelmsford’s return with the mounted column. Yet even that defensive line was soon being infiltrated by the warriors of the tribes.

The last stage of the battle was one of universal confusion. Infantrymen were fighting in isolated groups. Back to back, in shrinking squares, the riflemen fought on with bullets and then with rifle-butts and bayonets, falling one by one. Among the tents and wagons, the British and the Zulu warriors carried on a random struggle of individual encounters. The watching horseman saw a sailor of the Naval Brigade, wounded in the leg, fighting madly with his cutlass against the encroaching warriors, his back to a wagon-wheel. One dead tribesman lay across his feet, another at his side. A moment later, a third who had crawled under the wagon pierced him through the body from behind.

There was a glimpse of Pulleine in the chaos, looking about him for his company commanders. Captain Pope and a dozen men still contested the thrust of the advance. His men fought with fixed bayonets, clubbing with rifle-butts until an assegai stabbed Pope through the breast. Still on his feet, he tried vainly to pull the shaft from his body while the powerful arms of the advancing tribes bore him down.

On the far side of the wagon-park, Captain Younghusband and the remnants of C Company had turned one of the wagons over in preparation for a last stand behind its shelter. Younghusband was passing down the line of survivors, shaking hands with each in a solemn farewell. A moment later, the warriors had swarmed over the shattered wagon, bringing down the captain and the last of his platoons.

The time had come for the horseman to draw a little further up the col, beyond the point that any reconnaissance by the tribes might reach in the wake of their victory. He had scouted the ground two nights before and knew the path that would take him higher while keeping out of immediate view. Not that those engaged in the dreadful hand-to-hand combat below would have much time to survey the hills above them. He led the dappled mare quietly, glancing down from time to time as opportunity gave him an aerial view of what was taking place.

Durnford and a dozen or so of his troopers held out briefly at the foot of the col. Their ammunition spent, they thrust and repelled the black battalions for a while with their bayonets. Then the leaders of the Uvi and Umcijo, splendid in their head-feathers and leopard pelts, seized the bodies of their own dead and bore them like a battle-ram onto the bayonet blades. Before they could free their weapons, Durnford and his men were overwhelmed.

Pulleine again trained his field-glasses on the ridges, no doubt in a dwindling hope of seeing Chelmsford’s column riding hard to the rescue. He saw nothing but a deserted horizon of rock against the blanched heat of the sky. Had the colonel known where to look, he might have glimpsed a messenger of fate standing by a dappled mare.

Pulleine was not that witness’s personal enemy. Had there been means of paying tribute to a fallen foe, the hunter might have availed himself of it. As it was, the scene below confirmed that the commander of the camp knew hope was gone and that he must nerve himself for what remained. Pulleine could not see, as the watcher on the col could see, that even in the wagon-park Quartermaster Sergeant Bloomfield was dead, sprawling on the tail-board of an ammunition wagon. A drummer-boy of the 24th had been slaughtered and left dangling by his heels from a wagon shaft.

Alone among the doomed survivors, Colonel Pulleine had a purpose to fulfil. In a few hours, Chelmsford’s column would return and the debris of defeat must be sifted. The past half hour had seen a disaster without equal in British imperial rule. Two thousand men, armed with the latest rifles, field-guns, a rocket battery, and Gatling guns had been wiped out by barefoot tribes with spears and shields. Pulleine must surely have sworn to himself that the world should know the reason.

As the hunter watched from his refuge, Pulleine, bareheaded and with his tunic open at the top, drew his revolver and moved cautiously towards the guard-tent. Even among death and tumult, parts of the camp were still untouched by battle as the tribes swept through. The guard-tent was one of them. The last of the subalterns, Lieutenant Teignmouth Melvill, was standing by it, distributing the final packets of cartridges to half a dozen riflemen prepared to make a dash for the river.

Pulleine would not join them, having a more important duty to perform. But first, as though Chelmsford might still appear on the ridge, the colonel used the grace allowed him to look slowly for a last time along the skyline. At some distance, the hunter now revealed himself. He mounted, edged the mare forward into full view and came to the salute. Pulleine stopped and, whatever he may have seen in his last bewildered moments, the two men looked directly at each other. The colonel handed his field glasses to the young officer beside him and gestured at the hillside.

When they had inflicted their injury upon him, it was the mark of hellfire. Now he gave them back text for text, speaking as Pulleine’s field-glasses swept across the rocky slope once more. The grey mare pricked her ears up at her rider’s voice.

“And I looked, and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death. And Hell followed with him!”

In his mind, Pulleine echoed him as his adjutant handed back the glasses.

“What do you see, Mr. Melvill? What do you see, sir? Do you not see death, Mr. Melvill? Death on a pale horse!”

A moment later, he knew that Pulleine was giving the last order of a British commander defeated in battle, when hope was gone and his men lay dead about him. The regimental colours of the 24th Foot were safe at Helpmakaar, but the flag bearing the Queen’s Colour and the regiment’s insignia, embossed in gold on the Union Jack, was now brought from the guard-tent, still rolled and cased in its cylindrical sheath. It was the symbol of the regiment’s battle honours at Talavera and in the Peninsula, Cape Town, and Chillianwallah, Wellington’s wars and the Queen’s imperial conquests.

Pulleine was handing the cased flag to the pale lieutenant. The watching horseman echoed in his mind the words he would have used in the colonel’s place.

“Take my horse from the lines, Mr. Melvill. Save the colours, if you can. Ride out across the saddle of Isandhlwana. Make for the Buffalo River and a crossing to the camp at Rorke’s Drift. God speed!”

Whatever the exchange, the two men shook hands. Melvill saluted and doubled away to untie the colonel’s horse. Through the stench of death and cordite in his throat, Pulleine came unharmed to his own tent and disappeared from view. Even if he heard the feet of his pursuers, the thought of what he must do might still hold his fear in check.

When the victors had withdrawn from the camp with their booty, the horseman on the col would ride down to see for himself what had happened in that tent. In the meantime, he had only to wait. He watched from above as several of the tribesmen approached the regimental lines. Whatever Pulleine had to do would be done by now. Before his enemies could enter, he appeared briefly in the opening of the canvas flap, his revolver in his hand. The warriors hesitated at the sight of the gun. Pulleine fired and the first man sank to his knees. The others drew back behind a further tent, trusting to its shelter. But there were no more shots. Pulleine’s revolver was no doubt empty and only his sword remained. The tribesmen rose and moved forward.

It was several hours before the battalions of Cetewayo withdrew.

From above and at a distance, the looted camp presented a curious sight. Here and there a red-coated figure moved about the wagon-park or in the company lines. Over the tented army the British flag on its staff stirred perceptibly in the slight breeze of the coming dusk. Everything appeared to be in good order, as if the lines were quiet but a few of the men were moving about. If Chelmsford’s column had been anxious at the despatches from Pulleine or had heard the sound of cannon fire from Isandhlwana, seven or eight miles off, they would be reassured by their first distant sight. If it was Chelmsford’s decision to extend his reconnaissance until twilight, he might feel vindicated.

So far as his riders could see at a distance, there would not be a Zulu anywhere near the camp. The first suggestion of disorder would probably be the sight of figures in red tunics, apparently from the native regiments, running from the tents of the officers’ compound with bottles, dressing-mirrors, and ceremonial swords. There might even be an exchange of shots before the looters and their trophies disappeared into the dusk. Only when the column reached the perimeter would they have a full sight of the bodies from two armies, concealed at a distance by tall grass.

Unbelieving at first, they would see men whom they had taken leave of that morning now lying open-eyed in death. For all of them, it would be their first experience of a British defeat. What they saw around them would seem like the end of a world. On the garrison ground at the centre of the camp, a reconnaissance would reveal the heads of a dozen of Pulleine’s officers set on the ground in a ritual circle, staring blindly outwards across the darkening veldt.

During his own reconnaissance, the hunter had found boxes and sacks of stores broken in the grass. Flour and biscuits, tea and sugar, oats and mealies had been scattered on the earth. The wagon-park was a tableau of confusion. Some of the vehicles had been overturned, others thrown out in all directions. Some of the horses had been killed and some of the oxen lay dead beside the carts. A few were still alive, standing upright in the yoke as if yet awaiting the commands of their drovers. The horseman who had watched the drama had no quarrel with these beasts. He unharnessed them and set them loose to take their chance.

It would be beyond the capacity of Lord Chelmsford’s patrol to bury so many dead. Stone cairns must be erected over the worst horrors for decency’s sake, but no more. To make even a temporary camp here would be unthinkable. Therefore, as Chelmsford knew, he could only gather as much evidence of the disaster as quickly as possible and then retire to Rorke’s Drift. To search the tents of the officers’ compound for papers and messages would be a priority. There might be some last signal to explain what had happened at Isandhlwana in those dreadful hours.

The hunter’s reconnaissance centred on the wagon-park and the guard tent of Colonel Pulleine. Only a far greater prize would compel a man to explore the rest of the charnel-house the camp had become. In the wagon-park it was not necessary to replace every one of the useless ammunition turn-screws with the originals which he had removed during the previous night. Just enough of those originals must be found there to obscure the criminal cause of the catastrophe for the time being.

Pulleine’s tent was the final scene of the hunter’s revenge. A scattering of glass fragments on the carpet; a smell of gin. The colonel had fallen after a struggle in his outer tent or day-quarters, where his body lay. Having fired the last chambers of his revolver, he must have fought with his sword until he was impaled twice in the back—through the tent wall. The blows had thrown him forward across the rosewood desk.

In this case, the looters had been too preoccupied at first to attack the body. The drawers of the desk had been wrenched out and smashed. A silver locket lying on the carpet had been overlooked by the victors. It held a woman’s picture, probably a woman who had been young ten years before, with a background of summer trees.

No doubt the colonel had spent his final moments at the desk, writing a last testament as his killers closed in—giving as many details of the disaster as possible for the benefit of Lord Chelmsford. Such pages lay under the desk-blotter in an envelope addressed to the Commander-in-Chief at the Cape. The looters had paid no attention to it, and the hunter found the pages intact.

It would have been imprudent to preserve such a testament in any form. At the same time, the least sign of smoke or flame might attract attention. It was enough for the hunter to tear the pages into irregular fragments, crumpling each in his hands as he rode away and, at a distance, scattering the pieces to the breeze of a warm African dusk.

At the ruins of the guard tent, he had also allowed one concession to vanity. Before mounting his horse, he drew a plain card from his pocket. He wrote five words upon it, as though it had been a carte de visite, and tossed it into the ruined canvas structure. It did not even matter if the words were never found, so long as they had been uttered. The author had set a title to his masterpiece of devastation. Death on a Pale Horse. Let the gods of battle decide whether it should ever be read—and what the world would make of it.

Riding towards the eastern ridge, he dismounted on the slope where the tall grass had been flattened by his grey horse that morning. At the foot of a thorn-bush, the pale earth was scraped into a mound that might have been a substantial ant-hill. Scattering the crumbs of soil, he uncovered an object wrapped in sacking, something the size of a football or a child’s tin drum. He had been well paid and he had kept his bargain. Those who doubted him should face the dead stare of Owain Glyndwr’s one remaining eye.

He looked around him once more. There was no sign of scavengers in the camp nor of Lord Chelmsford’s column as the sky began to cloud over. To the superstitious, it might seem curious that a night wind had begun to moan by daylight in the singing-thorn, like an anthem for the fallen warriors of two armies who lay in such numbers on every side. Yet between its gusts, the silence of the darkening veldt was so profound that it was possible to hear a single tribesman singing somewhere on the kopje, drunk on the liquor of the defeated.