it. Among the pack mules which carried their equipment, two launching-troughs on limber wheels were now aimed directly at the advancing tribes. Two steel-cased rockets had been laid in place and two troopers were lighting the fuses by hand. The stillness of the plain was rent by a demonic shriek as the first of the projectiles shot from its launcher, trailing plumes of white smoke and sparks. High above the oncoming force, it went into an erratic spin, plunging harmlessly into the hillside beyond with a dull thump of explosive power and a slow drift of blackened smoke.
But the second shell flew low and straight, detonating in the mass of the tribes with terrible effect. A cheer went up from the rocket battery as the launchers were reloaded. The ranks of oncoming attackers hid the scene for a moment. But something had gone amiss. It seemed that the next missiles failed to ignite. Two rocketeers tried vainly to light the fuses, the rest turning to hold off the attack with rifles and service revolvers.
Almost before the danger was evident, the major and his bombardier and troopers vanished under a wave of bodies and spears. Several times the sun caught the tips of assegais held aloft in a powerful fist. There was a shout of victory from the pressing tribes, drawing back after conquest, a severed head dancing high on the shaft of a spear. Round the overturned limbers, the bodies of the nine soldiers lay torn and dishevelled.
With such a sight before them, not a single face from the camp was turned towards the fugitive as he swung away from the despatch party. Abruptly, he spurred forward to put the shelter of the col between him and the fighting. From the concealment that the tall grass offered, he now saw the dark wall of the impi turn towards the main defensive line of Pulleine’s men. At the isolated donga, where his riflemen lay behind whitened boulders, Durnford alone stood upright, his left sleeve pinned to his tunic, his right arm brandishing his sword as he shouted encouragement to his men.
At about two hundred yards, Durnford’s rifles opened fire, volleys aimed with a force and precision that might have equalled an artillery salvo. Twenty or thirty of the tribesmen went down, swarmed over by the mass which pressed on from behind them. At the foot of the plateau, the Royal Artillery battery loaded its guns again with case shot, lethal slugs of metal capable of bringing down attackers by the dozen.
Durnford’s forward line began a careful withdrawal to the main perimeter, in order to secure their flank. The riflemen of the 24th Foot covered their retreat with the same precise ear-stunning volleys, each of which caused the oncoming wave of the attack to halt and recoil a little, leaving a line of fallen warriors at its feet.
To those who had faced the ordeal of the Russian guns at the Alma or the bloody hand-to-hand carnage in the mist and mud of Inkerman, this skirmish at Isandhlwana had no more promised a proper battle than a rabbit-shoot or a battue of pheasants. The double-ranked companies of the 24th were so little concerned that men were chattering and laughing as they fired, pausing to reload from white blanco’d cartridge-pouches. Several officers walked up and down the line encouraging their men, voices carrying through the heat in the intervals of the crashing volleys. “Well done, Captain Pope’s company!… Good shooting, the 24th!”
The hunter dismounted behind the rocks on the lower slope of the col. He saw that the first ranks of the attacking tribesmen were closer to the camp perimeter now, though at a range of well over two hundred yards. A few of the veteran warriors set an example to the youths by dashing forward and launching their six-foot assegais, light spears that flew with a faint whoop! through the air. The steel points bedded deep in the earth, but no more than half the distance from the British perimeter.
Presently, the attacking line surged forward again with a rising murmur of voices, lapping the entire length of the defence. Again it drew back before the volley-fire of the imperial regiments, the battle hymn falling to a low howl. To the north, however, one horn of the impi was trying to encircle the flank of the 24th Foot, while case-shot from the seven-pounder guns of the Royal Artillery defending that sector filled the air with a hail of metal.