Flashman And The Tiger

"Half of it, anyway," says I, guzzling away at a plate of salt and mealies the sergeant had given me. "Chelmsford himself’s off in the blue with Number 3 Column, and if he’s wise he’ll stay there. Ketshwayo’s army must be cayoodling round Rorke’s Drift by now, thousands of the brutes. There’s no hope that way—if it comes to that, I doubt if there’ll be anything white and living between Blood River and the Tugela by sunrise tomorrow."

"You don’t say," says he. "And you got away, eh? You’re not Army, though?"

"Not at the moment. I’m retired, but I imagine you’ve heard of me." I didn’t like his manner above half, with his slippery eyes and half-smile. "My name’s—"

"Silence!" He threw up a hand, and his head jerked round, listening. The sergeant and I held our breath, listening with him. I couldn’t hear a thing, beyond the noises of the kraal; the fire crackling, the soft shuffling of one of the nigger women, a baby crying in one of the huts. Just hot silence, in that baking sun, and then Moran says sharply to me:

"You came on that horse—how long did it take you?" "Two hours, perhaps—look here—"

"Inspan that wagon!" he barked at the sergeant. ’Look alive, now! Get that damned black driver—sharp’s the word! We’ll have ’em on top of us before we know it!" And before I could protest he had swung away and was running between the huts, jumping on to a great boulder, and looking back the way I had come, shading his eyes.

You don’t waste time arguing with a man who knows his business. I felt the hot prickle of fear down my spine as I helped the sergeant. get the beasts inspanned—they were horses, thank God; bullocks would have been useless if we were going to have to cut out as fast as Moran seemed to think we must. He jumped down from the rock and came striding back towards us, his head turning left and right to scan the ridges either side of the village, his hand twitching nervously at his right hip.

"Get those three wounded lying down! And get aboard your-selves—driver, start that rig moving!" He glanced at me, that sly grin turning the corner of his mouth. "I’d climb in, mister, if I were you. Unless my shikari’s instinct is playing me false, your black friends are closer than you think, and I don’t—"

Then it happened, and if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I’d not have believed it—and I knew Hickok in his prime, remember, before his eyesight went, and John Wesley Hardin, too.

The sergeant, in the act of climbing over the tailboard, let out a hell of a shriek; I glimpsed his face, red and staring, and his arm flung out to point, and then his eyes stared horribly, and he slumped down into the dust, with a throwing assegai between his shoulders, his limbs thrashing wildly. I turned, and there, not twenty yards away beyond Moran, standing on the boulder he’d just left and poised in the act of throwing, was a Zulu warrior. I could still tell you every detail of him (that’s what shock does to you)—the great black body behind the red and white shield, the calf-skin girdle, the white cow-tail garters, the ringed head with its nodding blue plume, even the little horn snuff-box swinging from his neck. It was a nightmare figure—and now there were two more, either side of him, leaping between the huts, screaming "’S-jee!" with their assegais raised to hurl at us.

Moran had spun on his heel at the sergeant’s scream, and I swear I never saw his right hand move. But the Remington was in his fist, and the boom-boom-boom of its triple explosion was almost like one echoing shot. The Zulu on the rock jerked upright, snatching at his face, and toppled backwards; the foremost of the two running towards us pitched headlong, with half his head blown away in a sudden bloody spray, and the third man stumbled crazily, dropping his shield and rolling over and over to finish a bare two yards from us, sprawled on his back. There was a hole where his right eye had been. And Moran’s pistol was back in his sash.

"Twins, by the look of ’em," says he. "Did you know the Zulus think they make the best scouts?[6] Well, don’t stand gawping, old fellow—there’ll be plenty of live ones on the scene presently. Mind the step!" And he was over the back of the moving wagon, with me tumbling breathlessly after him, shocked out of my wits by the speed and terror of it all. I’d say from the moment the sergeant fell to our jumping into the wagon had been a good five seconds—and in that time three men had died, thank God, and the man beside me was chuckling and pushing fresh shells into his revolver.