Runners brought word to Theodore of our army’s approach, and from early afternoon the Ab army, seven thousand strong, was moving into position from the Islamgee plain to the lower slopes of Fala and Selassie. Theodore himself, with his generals and atten dants and your reluctant correspondent, went up the muddy slope to the gun emplacements on the Fala summit, and looking back I had my first proper sight of what Napier would be up against: rank upon rank of robed black spearmen and swordsmen and musketeers swinging along in fine style, disciplined and damned business-like with waving banners and their red-robed commanders, five hundred strong on horseback, marshalling them to perfection. I didn’t know what force in guns and infantry Napier might have, but I guessed it wouldn’t be above two thousand, and I was right; odds of three to one, but that wouldn’t count against British and Indian troops… unless something went wrong, which it dam’ nearly did.
From the Fala summit we got our first sight of the approaching columns, almost three miles away across the great expanse of rock and scrub, on the far side of Arogee. Theodore was like a kid in a toyshop with his glass, turning to me bright with excitement and bidding me look and tell him who was who and what they were about. It had begun to rain in earnest now, with lightning flashing in the black clouds and a strong wind sweeping across the summit, but the light was good, Theodore’s glass was a first-class piece, and when I brought it to bear I almost dropped it in surprise, for the first thing I saw was Napier in person.
There was no mistaking him, for like old Paddy Gough he affected a white coat, and there he was, a tiny figure sitting on his pony on a knoll about two miles away with his staff about him, and not a thing between him and us except some Bombay and Madras Sappers skirmishing ahead of his position. No place for a general to be, and it was with some alarm that I traversed the glass and got an even greater shock, for I could see that the bughunting old duffer was courting catastrophe all unaware—and I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.
His own position, with the first column still some distance behind him, was dangerous enough, but over to the right, coming up the King’s Road, was the second column, and it was led by a convoy of mules, barely escorted, with supply train written all over ’em -rations, ammunition, equipment, the whole quartermaster’s store of the brigade simply begging for some enterprising plunderer to swoop down on them… and here he was, at Theodore’s elbow, leaping with excitement at the heaven-sent chance.
He was old Gabrie, the Ab field-marshal, who’d come thundering up from the Fala saddle where he’d been supervising his army’s assembly, flinging himself from his horse and bawling:
“See, see, Toowodros, they are in our hands!” He was an old pal of Theodore’s, all ceremony forgotten. “Let us go, in God’s name! We have them, we have them!”
If Theodore had been as smart a soldier as Gabrie… well, we might have had a disaster to rank with Isandhlwana or Maiwand, but he hesitated, thank God, and lost the chance. And since it all happened with such speed, so many different factors together, I’d better take time to explain.
The march up the spur and the Afichu plateau to Arogee had taken longer than expected, thanks to the broiling heat, the steep ness of the climb, and the fact that they didn’t think they were marching to battle, but merely to sites to pitch camp. Napier wasn’t expecting an Ab attack, and got too far forward (in my opinion), and the baggage column had easier going on the King’s Road and likewise arrived too quickly in an exposed position. Phayre got the blame, justly or not I can’t say. If Theodore had allowed Gabrie to attack at once, the baggage column was done for, and that might have spelled disaster; I say might because Napier was a complete hand when it came to improvising, as he was about to show.
Well, Theodore hesitated to cast the dice, with Gabrie pleading to be let loose. Not long, perhaps, but I reckon long enough, before he cried, “Go, then!” Gabrie was off like a shot, waving his scarf to advance the army, and Theodore yelled to the gunners to fire. The German workmen had been measuring the charges, but the Ab gunners manned the pieces, and the first salvo almost caught Napier himself, a chain-shot landing a few yards behind him. And by then he’d had another nasty start, as the whole crest from Fala to Selassie suddenly came to life with seven thousand Ab infantry rolling down to Arogee like a black-and-white tide, bellowing their war-songs and bidding fair to sweep away the Sappers screening Napier’s knoll, who had only muzzle-loading Brown Bess to stem the flood. And to the right the baggage column, caught in the open and barely guarded, must be engulfed by the savage legions bearing down on it.
I thanked God in that moment that I was watching that charge from behindhand not from in front of it, for it must have been a sight to freeze the blood, those great robed figures racing down in a chanting mass almost a mile from wing to wing, sickle-swords and spears flourished, black shields to the fore, braids and robes flying, and out in front old Gabrie, sabre aloft, his brilliant red silk cloak billowing behind him, the five hundred scarlet-clad cavalry chieftains at his back. From above it looked like the discharge from an overturned ant-hill spilling across the plain towards an enemy caught unprepared by the sheer speed of the attack.
That was when Bob Napier earned his peerage. He had a couple of minutes’ grace, and in that time he had the King’s Own, who’d been hurrying towards the sound of the guns, skirmishing past him to join the Sapper screen, and in behind the khaki figures I saw the dark puggarees of the Baluch. As they deployed, waiting for the onslaught, Napier opened up with the Naval Brigade rocket batteries which he’d called up to a point just behind his knoll. In a moment the white trails of smoke were criss-crossing the plain, the rockets smashing into the Ab ranks, cutting furrows through them; they wavered and checked, appalled at this terrible new weapon they’d never seen before, but then they came on again full tilt through the pouring rain, the King’s Own stood fast, and on the word three hundred Sniders let fly in a devastating volley that blew the red-coated horsemen’s charge to pieces and staggered the infantry mass behind them.
Why they didn’t run then and there, I can’t fathom. The rockets must have been terror enough, but now they were meeting rapid-fire breech-loaders for the first time, yet still they came on until the Sniders and the Enfields of the Baluch stopped them in their tracks, and they gave back, firing their double-barrelled muskets as they went and being shot down as they tried to find cover among the rocks and scrub oaks. The King’s Own advanced steadily, a mounted officer who I guess was Cameron keeping them in hand; still the Abs retreated and died… but they never ran, and I guess my time there must have made me an old Abyssinian hand, for I find myself writing "Bayete, Habesh!” on their behalf. There, it’s written. In their shoes I’d not ha’ stopped running till Magdala.
While this was happening, Theodore was pounding away with his Fala battery, which I realised was unlikely to damage anyone (the chain-shot that almost did for Napier must have been a great fluke), but on the right the baggage of the second brigade was in mortal peril. The right wing of the Ab charge was thundering down on it, the spearmen singing like Welshmen, careless of the shells bursting above them from the guns of the Mountain Train formed up on the King’s Road ahead of the baggage. Our guns were flanked by the Punjabi Pioneers, burly Sikhs in brown puggarees and white breeches, and as the Abs came surging up the slope to their posi tion, letting fly their spears, they were met by two shattering volleys—and then the Sikhs were charging them with the bayonet against Ab spears and swords, smashing into their ranks like a steel fist, outnumbered but forcing the robed tribesmen back, and standing by Theodore on Fala I had to clamp my jaws tight to stop myself yelling, for I remembered their fathers and uncles at Sobraon, you see, and within I was crying: "Khalsa-ji! Sat-sree-akall” There’s no hand-to-hand fighter in the world better than a Sikh with his bayonet fixed; they scattered the spearmen like chaff and charged on, and I saw the fancy red puggarees of the 10th Native Infantry among them as they pitchforked the enemy into the gullies—those same ravines that I’d marked on Fasil’s table as a death-trap if we’d blundered into them.