Death on a Pale Horse - By Donald Thomas Page 0,13

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