You don’t think twice at such moments; you truly don’t. I had one glimpse that still stays in my memory—of that rock-strewn slope, covered with charging Zulus spearing the last knots of defenders; of men screaming and falling; of a sergeant of the 24th rolling on the ground locked with a black warrior, while the others paused to watch; of a bullock lumbering past, bellowing, with an assegai in its flank; of bloody corpses, red-coated or black-skinned, sprawled among the dusty ruin of broken carts, ration boxes, and fallen equipment; of hate-filled black faces and polished black bodies—all that in a split second, and then I went over the side of that cart in a flying dive on to the gun that was racketing past, clutching frantically at the hot metal, almost slipping down between barrel and wheel, but somehow managing to stay aboard as it tore onwards, bouncing left and right, towards the little saddle of ground that runs from Isan’lwana hill.
How I survived the next minute I don’t know. I clung to the gun, keeping low, hearing a spear glance clanging from the metal; a club caught me a blow on the shoulder, but I stuck like a leech, and the gun must have picked up speed, because the closest Zulus were suddenly lost in the dust-cloud, and for a moment we were clear of the immediate pursuit, the driver still holding his seat on the leader and yelling and quirting away as the team topped the crest and went careering down the far slope towards the Rorke’s Drift track.
The slope was thick with fugitives, white and black, a few mounted but most on foot, going pell-mell down to the broken ground and distant scrub with only one thought in mind—to get away from the merciless black vengeance behind us. They seemed to be making for a deep ravine about half a mile to the left, where it seemed to me they were sure to be caught by the left "horn" of the Zulu army as it came circling in; I struggled up astride the gun and bawled above the din to the driver to bear right for the Rorke’s Drift road. He cast a terrified glance over his shoulder, pointing frantically and shaking his head; I looked, and my heart died. Already, round the far side of the Isan’lwana hill, the van-guard of the Zulu right "horn" was streaming down like a black lance-head to cut the track; I . could make out the green monkey caps and plumes of the Tulwana regiment. Five minutes at most, and the ring of steel would have closed round Isan’lwana, and God help anything white that was still inside.
There was nothing for it but the ravine, and we rushed down the slope at breakneck speed, the driver lashing the exhausted horses, and Flashy going up and down astride that damned barrel like a pea on a drum. I stole a glance back, and beyond the scattered groups of running fugitives I could see the first ranks of the Zulu "chest" coming over the hill; this won’t do, my lad, thinks I, we’ll have to move a deal faster if we want to see Piccadilly again. The gun lurched under me, sickeningly, there was a yell of alarm from the driver ahead, and by God the right rear-wheeler had broken a trace and was veering madly off to the right, head up and snorting; she stumbled and went down as the second trace parted, and I shot off the gun as it slewed round, hit the ground with a fearful jar, and went rolling arse over elbow, tearing the skin off shoulder and knee on the rock-hard earth before I fetched up winded within a yard of the fallen horse.
I had a hand on its mane as it thrashed up again, hooves flying, and you may be sure I wasn’t the only one. Half a dozen fugitives had the same notion, and one, a sergeant gunner, was half-aboard the beast. "Mine, damn you!" roars he. "She can’t take two!"
"Right you are, my son," says I, and knocked him flying. I got a limb across that heaving bare back—and that’s all I ever need.' Thank God I’ve never seen the mount I couldn’t master; I wound my hands into the mane, dug in my heels, and went head down for the ravine, just as the gun I had lately left went careering into it—team, driver and all. It was a deep, narrow cleft—Christ! was it narrow enough to jump? I tensed myself for the leap, gave her my heel at the last moment, and we went soaring over; there was a horrible instant when we seemed to hang on the far lip, but we scrambled to safety by our eyebrows. I heard a scream behind me, and turned to see a big grey failing to make the same jump; she fell back into the ravine, with her rider crushed beneath her.
The ravine, and the bank I had just left, looked like Dante’s Inferno; they were fleeing down it among the rock and thorn, towards the Buffalo River five miles away, and those black devils were on the far lip—" ’S-jee! ’S-jee!" and the assegais flashing up and down like pistons. I looked to my right front, where the Tulwana were streaking across the track; there was still a gap between them and the ravine, and I went for it hell-for-leather, the horse slithering on the loose rocks and me clinging like grim death. She was only an artillery screw, but there must have been a hunter ancestor in her somewhere, for she outraced that Zulu pincer with a hundred yards to spare, and I was able to hold her in as we shot into the safety of the scrub, with the screams and gunshots fading into the distance behind us.
That was how I made my strategic retreat, then, from the massacre of Isan’lwana—the greatest debacle of British arms since the Kabul retreat nearly forty years earlier.[4] Oh, aye, I’d been in that, too, freezing and bleeding on that nightmare march which never reached the Khyber. But I’d been a thoughtless boy then; at Isan’lwana I was an older, much wiser soldier, and I knew I was a long way from safety yet. I couldn’t tell how many others had won clear (about fifty, in fact, against a thousand who fell under the assegais), but I could guess that the next stop along the line for Ketshwayo’s merry men would be Rorke’s Drift, eight miles away on the Buffalo. They’d gobble up the picquet there, and be over the Natal border by sundown; it behoved Flashy to bear away north, and try to cross the river well beyond the reach of the impis. The trouble was, even I didn’t know how fast Zulus can travel with the blood smell in their nostrils.'
It was about the middle of the afternoon when I came out of the scrub and boulders, into a little kraal perhaps ten miles from Isan’lwana. I reckoned I was clear of pursuit, but my beast was tuckered out, and I could have jumped for joy at the sight of an army wagon among the huts, and a burly red-cheeked sergeant puffing his cutty while he watched the native women tending a cooking-pot close by. It was a stray ammunition cart belonging to a flying column sent out north the previous day; they’d had a brush with some Zulu scouts last evening, and there were two or three wounded on blankets laid across the ammunition boxes. The cart was taking them down to Rorke’s Drift, the sergeant said.
"Not today you ain’t," says I, and told him briefly what had happened to most of Chelmsford’s force. He goggled and dropped his pipe.
"Cripes!" says he. "Why, the rest of our column was makin' for Isan’lwana this mornin'! ’Ere, Tiger Jack’s got to ’ear about this! Major! Major, sir—come quick!"
And that was when I got my first sight of Tiger Jack Moran. He came out of one of the huts in answer to the sergeant’s cry, and as soon as I clapped eyes on him, thinks I, this is a killing gentleman. He was perhaps forty, as big as I was, but leaner, and he walked with a smooth, pigeon-toed stride, like a great slim cat. His face was lean, too, and nut-brown, with a huge hooked nose, a bristling black moustache, and two brilliant blue eyes that were never still; they slid over you and away and back again. It was a strong face, but mean; even the rat-trap mouth had an odd lift at one side which, with the ever-shifting eyes, made it look as though he knew some secret joke about you. For the rest, he wore a faded Sapper jacket and a wideawake hat, with a black sash round his hips; when he turned I saw he had one of the new long-barrelled Remington .44 revolvers reversed through the sash over his right rump,—a gunfighter’s gun, with the foresight filed away, if you please. Well, well, thinks I, here’s one to keep an eye on.