Flashman And The Tiger

For one brief moment, as I cast a frantic eye behind me to pick out the quickest line of retreat to the Rorke’s Drift track, I absolutely thought it might be touch and go. You see, while we were most damnably trapped, without proper defences, in spite of the warnings old Paul Kruger had given to Chelmsford about laagering and trenching every night in Zulu country,[1] and while we were only a few hundred white soldiers and loyal niggers against the whole Zulu army—well, a few dozen Martini-Henrys, in the hands of men who know how to use ’em, can stop a whole lot of blacks with clubs and spears. I’d been with Campbell’s Highlanders at Balaclava, when they broke the Ruski cavalry with two volleys, and I still bore the scars of Little Big Horn, where Reno’s troopers held off half the Sioux nation (the other half were killing Custer and me just down the valley, but that’s another story).[See Flashman and the Redskins] Anyway, as I watched the 24th companies on the Isan’lwana slope, pouring their fire into the brown, and the artillery banging away for dear life, cutting great lanes in the impis, I thought, bigod, we’ll hold ’em yet. And we would have done, but the ammunition boxes hadn’t been broken out, and just as the great mass of Zulus, a bare furlong from our forward troops, seemed to be wavering and hanging back—why, the 24th were down to their last packets, and the yelling and cheering turned to desperate cries of:

"Ammunition, there! Bring the boxes, for God’s sake!"

Our fire slackened, the 24th took a step back, the Natal Kaffirs came pouring away from the left under the lee of the hill, flinging their arms aside as they ran, the order "Fix bayonets!" rang out from the ranks immediately to my front, and the Zulus regiments rallied and came bounding in in a great mad charge, the rain of throwing spears whistling ahead of them like hail, and the stabbing assegais coming out from behind the white shields as they tore into our disordered front line, the roar of "’Suthu! ’Suthu!" giving way to their hideous hissing "’S-jee! ’S-jee!" as the spears struck home.

Time for the lunch interval, thinks I; let’s be off. Once they were at close quarters, there wasn’t a hope, and by the look of it, through that hell of smoke and gunfire and fleeing men, with Kaffirs rushing past, and the gunners and wagon-men frantically trying to inspan and flee, the surviving remnants of the 24th weren’t going to hold that huge press of Zulus more than a matter of minutes.

Thus far in the battle, being only a well-meaning civilian, I’d made a tremendous show of trying to get the wagons to laager in a circle, so that we could make a stand if our forward troops gave way—it was the sensible thing to do, and it also kept me at a safe distance from the fighting. So I was well placed beside an inspanned cart when the dam burst, and the Nokenke regiment of Ketshwayo’s army (that’s who the historians tell me it was, anyway; I only know they were appalling bastards with leopard-skin head-dresses, screaming fit to chill your blood) came tearing up the hill.

I was into that wagon in a twinkling, bawling to the driver to go like blazes, and blasting away over the tailboard with an Adams six-shooter in each fist. I wish I’d a pound for every time I’ve looked out at a charging barbarian horde with my guts dissolving and prayers babbling out of me, but that one took the biscuit. They came racing in, huge black-limbed monsters with their six-foot shields up, eyes and teeth glaring over the top like spectres, the plumes tossing and those disgusting two-foot steel blades glittering and smoking with blood. I saw three men of the 24th, back to back, swinging their clubbed rifles, go down before the charge, and the Zulus barely broke stride as they ripped the corpses up with their assegais (to let the dead spirits out, don’t you know) and rushed on. I blazed away, weeping and swearing, thinking oh God, this is the end, and I’m sorry I’ve led such a misspent life, and don’t send me to Hell, whatever Dr Arnold says—and my hammer clicked down on an empty chamber just as the first Zulu vaulted over the side of the wagon, howling like a dervish.