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 sta