"Chelmsford’s wiped out, you say?" The blue eyes looked everywhere but into mine; I wouldn’t have trusted this fellow with the mess funds in a hurry. "The whole command?"
"Half of it, anyway," says I, guzzling away at a plate of salt and mealies the sergeant had given me. "Chelmsford himself’s off in the blue with Number 3 Column, and if he’s wise he’ll stay there. Ketshwayo’s army must be cayoodling round Rorke’s Drift by now, thousands of the brutes. There’s no hope that way—if it comes to that, I doubt if there’ll be anything white and living between Blood River and the Tugela by sunrise tomorrow."
"You don’t say," says he. "And you got away, eh? You’re not Army, though?"
"Not at the moment. I’m retired, but I imagine you’ve heard of me." I didn’t like his manner above half, with his slippery eyes and half-smile. "My name’s—"
"Silence!" He threw up a hand, and his head jerked round, listening. The sergeant and I held our breath, listening with him. I couldn’t hear a thing, beyond the noises of the kraal; the fire crackling, the soft shuffling of one of the nigger women, a baby crying in one of the huts. Just hot silence, in that baking sun, and then Moran says sharply to me:
"You came on that horse—how long did it take you?" "Two hours, perhaps—look here—"
"Inspan that wagon!" he barked at the sergeant. ’Look alive, now! Get that damned black driver—sharp’s the word! We’ll have ’em on top of us before we know it!" And before I could protest he had swung away and was running between the huts, jumping on to a great boulder, and looking back the way I had come, shading his eyes.
You don’t waste time arguing with a man who knows his business. I felt the hot prickle of fear down my spine as I helped the sergeant. get the beasts inspanned—they were horses, thank God; bullocks would have been useless if we were going to have to cut out as fast as Moran seemed to think we must. He jumped down from the rock and came striding back towards us, his head turning left and right to scan the ridges either side of the village, his hand twitching nervously at his right hip.
"Get those three wounded lying down! And get aboard your-selves—driver, start that rig moving!" He glanced at me, that sly grin turning the corner of his mouth. "I’d climb in, mister, if I were you. Unless my shikari’s instinct is playing me false, your black friends are closer than you think, and I don’t—"
Then it happened, and if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I’d not have believed it—and I knew Hickok in his prime, remember, before his eyesight went, and John Wesley Hardin, too.
The sergeant, in the act of climbing over the tailboard, let out a hell of a shriek; I glimpsed his face, red and staring, and his arm flung out to point, and then his eyes stared horribly, and he slumped down into the dust, with a throwing assegai between his shoulders, his limbs thrashing wildly. I turned, and there, not twenty yards away beyond Moran, standing on the boulder he’d just left and poised in the act of throwing, was a Zulu warrior. I could still tell you every detail of him (that’s what shock does to you)—the great black body behind the red and white shield, the calf-skin girdle, the white cow-tail garters, the ringed head with its nodding blue plume, even the little horn snuff-box swinging from his neck. It was a nightmare figure—and now there were two more, either side of him, leaping between the huts, screaming "’S-jee!" with their assegais raised to hurl at us.
Moran had spun on his heel at the sergeant’s scream, and I swear I never saw his right hand move. But the Remington was in his fist, and the boom-boom-boom of its triple explosion was almost like one echoing shot. The Zulu on the rock jerked upright, snatching at his face, and toppled backwards; the foremost of the two running towards us pitched headlong, with half his head blown away in a sudden bloody spray, and the third man stumbled crazily, dropping his shield and rolling over and over to finish a bare two yards from us, sprawled on his back. There was a hole where his right eye had been. And Moran’s pistol was back in his sash.
"Twins, by the look of ’em," says he. "Did you know the Zulus think they make the best scouts?[6] Well, don’t stand gawping, old fellow—there’ll be plenty of live ones on the scene presently. Mind the step!" And he was over the back of the moving wagon, with me tumbling breathlessly after him, shocked out of my wits by the speed and terror of it all. I’d say from the moment the sergeant fell to our jumping into the wagon had been a good five seconds—and in that time three men had died, thank God, and the man beside me was chuckling and pushing fresh shells into his revolver.
He was right about the live ones arriving, too—as our wagon wheeled out of the village on to a great empty stretch of plain beyond it, we could see black figures gliding in among the huts on the far side, and by the time we were a furlong out on the plain itself, with the driver lashing like fury and the wagon rolling dangerously from side to side, they were breaking cover in pursuit. There must have been more than twenty of them, and I don’t recall a more fearful sight than that silent half-moon of racing black figures, each with his mottled red and white shield and fistful of glittering spears, their white hide kilts and garters flying as they ran.
"Udloko, unless I’m mistook," says Moran. "Good regiment, that. Let’s add to their battle honours, what?"
He had got a Martini from one of the wounded men who were lying pale and silent behind us in the jolting wagon, and now he snuggled the butt into his shoulder, keeping the barrel clear of the rattling tailboard, and let off four shots as fast as he could eject and reload. He hit three more Zulus—this at a range of two hundred yards, from a wagon that was bucking like a ship at sea, and at moving targets. I tell you, I was stricken between terror and sheer admiration.'
"Damnation!" says he, after his missed shot. "Bet he felt the wind of it, though." He saw me staring, and grinned. "Don’t be alarmed, old boy; just pass up the cartridge packets and I’ll have our gallant foes discouraged in half a jiffy, just see if I don’t!"
But when I applied to the wounded for more cartridges, damned if there was a round among them.
"Well, we’re sitting on half a ton of the things," says Moran, cool as you please, and tapped the ammunition boxes. "Let’s forage, shall we?" So we broke open a case—and it was carbine ammunition, quite unsuitable for Martinis. I swallowed my innards for about the twentieth time that day; all the boxes carried the same stamp. And there, still loping across the sun-scorched plain behind us, not apparently having lost any distance, were the twenty Zulus, looking as fit as fleas and a dam' sight more unpleasant.
"Now, that’s vexing," says Moran, laying down his rifle and unlimbering his Remington again. He spun the chamber. "Six shots—hm’m. Well, let’s hope none of the horses breaks a leg, what?"
"For God’s sake, man!" My voice came out in a dreadful squeak. "They can’t keep up this pace forever!"
"Who—the horses, or Ketshwayo’s sporting and athletic club?" He gripped the tailboard and weighed the distance between us and our pursuers. "I think, on the whole, I’d put my money on the blacks. More staying power, don’t you know? By George, can’t they run, though!"
"But, my God, we’re done for! They’re gaining on us, I tell you—"
"Quite," says he. "Better think of something, eh? Unless we want our hides stretched over some damned Udloko war-drum, that is. Let’s see, now." He stood up in the swaying wagon, clutching a support, and peered ahead under the canvas cover, resting a hand on the shoulder of the terrified nigger driver who was rolling his eyes and letting his team rip for all it was worth. "If I remember right, this blasted plain ends in a deep gully about a mile ahead—there’s a crazy kind of bridge over it … we came across it on the way up. It took the wagon, all right—but very slowly. ’Fraid by the time we get across our friends will be calling on us—an' six shots won’t go far among that crowd, even if I make every one tell—which I would, of course. Wait, though!" And he dropped down on one knee, pushing one of the wounded men aside and ferreting among the ammunition boxes.