d to his tent to
write letters, till, about twelve o'clock, a sergeant came to tell him
that firing was to be heard behind a hill in face of the camp. He
mounted a horse and rode up the slope, to find the company firing on a
line of Zulus eight hundred paces away to their front. This line was
about a thousand yards long, and shaped like a horn, tapering towards
the point. It advanced slowly, taking shelter with great skill behind
rocks, and opened a quite ineffective fire on the soldiers. Meanwhile
the two guns were shelling the Zulu centre with great effect, the shells
cutting lanes through their dense ranks, which closed up over the dead
in perfect discipline and silence. The attack was now general, all the
impi taking part in it except a reserve regiment that sat down upon the
ground taking snuff, and never came into action, and the Undi corps,
which moved off to the right with the object of passing round the north
side of the Isandhlwana hill.

On came the Zulus in silence, and ever as they came the two horns crept
further and further ahead of the black breast of their array. Hundreds
of them fell beneath the fire of the breech-loaders, but they did not
pause in their attack. Ammunition began to fail the soldiers, and orders
having reached them--too late--to concentrate on the camp, they retired
slowly to that position. Captain Essex also rode back, and assisted the
quartermaster of the 24th to place boxes of ammunition in a mule cart,
till presently the quartermaster was shot dead at his side. Now the
horns or nippers of the foe were beginning to close on the doomed camp,
and the friendly natives, who knew well what this meant, though as yet
the white men had not understood their danger, began to steal away by
twos and threes, and then, breaking into open rout, they rushed through
the camp, seeking the waggon road to Rorke's Drift.

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