Camp Fire Yarns of the Lost Legion Part 15

This he was forced to allow, but then the same question cropped up again. What was to be done? Could I not give him some sound advice?

Why, certainly. The best course he could pursue would be for himself and people to at once turn Christians, and then, if they obeyed the missionary implicitly, they would soon make up the leeway of mana that the others had acquired, and he would be on the same plane as the other josser.

To this he agreed, and swore he and his people would be converted right away, and started off hot-toe to summon them.

I had just finished telling my comrades about my first attempt at converting the heathen when who should appear but his Reverence himself, in a terrible state of fl.u.s.ter.

Approaching me, he said sorrowfully: "Surely I am misinformed: surely you did not lend a musket to one of these heathens with which to kill one of my dear Christian converts."

I pleaded guilty. "Is it not written," I said, "'He that lendeth to the poor giveth to the Lord'? This poor chap hadn't a musket of his own so I lent him one."

The dear old fellow was very much shocked, but I convinced him that I was fully aware no harm would come from my perhaps injudicious kindness; and finally, on the appearance of my old friend, the knight of the rueful countenance, with his leading people, who one and all declared that they were convinced of the power of the Christian G.o.d, and that they were all both anxious and willing to join his flock, his sorrow turned to gladness, and he declared that Providence worked in wondrous ways, and that now he was convinced that our visit had been a great blessing to his community, although he had had at first grave doubts upon the subject. He also returned thanks for the sudden and wonderful conversion of the heathen, and declared that now the whole island would become the home of one happy family, living together in peace and harmony. I had my doubts; but he was such a good old fellow that we all turned to and built him a swagger church, and endowed it with a spare s.h.i.+p's bell we had on board.

So that when we left the dear old innocent took a tearful farewell of us and gave us his blessing; and a really good man's blessing, like a tinker's cuss, does no one any harm. He also prophesied we should all meet again in heaven; but there again I have grave doubts, as I fancy most of our crew were making for a more tropical lat.i.tude.

Well, I have never heard of that island since the day we left it, and I have even forgotten its name; but I have always felt uncertain about the happy-family part of the business, and fear his Reverence was premature in the thanks he gave concerning it. For on the day we left, on my presenting the exdevil dodger with an American axe, as a parting gift, he gravely informed me that he felt the mana of the Christians rising so strongly within him that as soon as he had acquired a few more hymns and prayers he should feel strong enough to have another go at his enemy, and he thought, this time, he would fetch him, especially as my beautiful present would provide him with a beau-ideal weapon that would do its work quietly and not kick back and destroy its innocent proprietor. I may therefore be forgiven for my doubts on the brotherhood, peace and harmony of that happy family.

I have never tried to convert any heathens since, but I sincerely hope that my one attempt proved, in the long run, as profitable as our trip to the South Seas did for us. But may I again remark, I hae ma doots.

[Ill.u.s.tration: YARNING AROUND THE CAMP FIRE]

PART II

CHAPTER I

THE DeBUT OF THE LOST LEGION IN NATAL

"There were giants in the earth in those days."

MOSES.

Of course ninety-nine out of every hundred old war dogs who have the misfortune to retain their pristine longing for hard work and an active life, when they are rapidly approaching the allotted threescore years and ten of their existence, and maybe, like the writer, are incapacitated by rheumatism, sciatica, tic-doloreux, housemaid's knee, liver and the hump from ever partic.i.p.ating again in such sports as their hearts yearn for but their age and infirmities render impracticable, sit down, and, instead of employing their remaining years in making their souls, grouse and grumble at their bad luck, blaming everyone except themselves (_bien entendu_) for their bad luck, and maybe poverty, entirely forgetting the glorious years they put in when they were able to lead a charge, rush a kopje, or back a bucking horse with the best. Yes, and they are p.r.o.ne to belittle, and perhaps to undervalue, the men who have shouldered them out and taken their places in the fighting line, and who are at present responsible for and are upholding the honour of our gracious King and glorious old flag on the frontiers of our splendid Empire. "Yes, by gad, sir,"

growls one old war dog to another, "these present men are not worth their salt, sir. They should have been with us, sir, fifty years ago, then they would have known what privations and hand-to-hand fighting meant. Nowadays they are fitted out with flat trajectory magazine rifles, Maxim guns, pom-poms, and the Lord only knows what else, while we had to fight with old muzzle-loading rifles, sneiders or Martini-Henry's that were always jamming, etc., etc., etc." Grouse, grumble, grouse: and so they go on _ad infinitum_.

Yes, it is very true men who are approaching the age-limit of threescore years and ten had in their early manhood to fight with inferior rifles to those that our gallant troops are armed with at present, and, speaking from personal experience, deuced good weapons we thought them, and were always game and happy enough to use them when luck sent any fighting our way. Well, I have no doubt that in those days our seniors were making the same remarks and pa.s.sing similar strictures on us, that we nowadays are pa.s.sing on our successors, and as they in their turn will bestow on theirs. Still there is no doubt that, thanks to science and the enormous expenditure of cash, the lot of the present-day fighting-man is infinitely better than it was fifty years ago, while far more men and much better material were employed on a war of conquest during the sixties and the seventies of the last century than were deemed necessary fifty years previously; in fact you may say it has been so way back to the days of romance, when Samson used to play a lone hand against the Philistines, or even when Sir Galahad and his compeers used to start out holy-grailing, giant-killing, dragon-hunting or lovely-maiden-rescuing. True, there are nothing like the hards.h.i.+ps in modern wars there were in those of the past, although I opine that the Turks have just had about as bad a time of it as ever men wanted to face; but then it has been sharp, quick and soon over, and entirely due to their rotten Government allowing them to be caught on the hop.

(Please G.o.d the precious gang who at present misrule our country will not put us into a like hole.) Still I doubt very much at the present day if you could get troops of any nation to voluntarily face the hards.h.i.+ps that Pizarro's men had to undergo during the conquest of Peru, or any of our young sybaritic loungers to don aluminium waistcoats (much less steel ones) and go for a jaunt crusading as their hardy ancestors did. But, mark time, the majority of the progenitors of our nowadays gilded youths were in those times trading in old clo's or doing a bit of stiff and not wearing metal vests and unmentionables at all at all.

However, we will pa.s.s over the good ould toimes, when a rale fighting-man had no need to insure himself with Lloyd George against unemployment, and comedown to the nineteenth century--in fact the years 1838-1839, when there were but few English in Natal, and the black fiend, Dingaan, who had murdered his brother Tshaka, ruled the roost in Zululand with his army of 50,000 bloodthirsty warriors. I am not writing a book on the history of Natal, but, as 999 out of every 1000 Englishmen have probably never heard of Tshaka or Dingaan, and are just as ignorant of the struggles of the early Settlers in the garden colony of South Africa, I may state that, although Natal was not officially occupied by British troops till 1842, when Captain Smith of the 27th Regiment marched there with a portion of his corps and a detachment of artillery and built a fort near Kongella, in which he was speedily surrounded and besieged by the trek Boers under Pretorius: yet small parties of Englishmen (good Lost Legionaries every one of them) had years previously taken root in the vicinity of where Durban now stands, where they carried on the usual pioneer pursuits, such as hunting and trading with the natives. Yes; they had taken root, and meant to hold their own and stick to their foothold in the country, notwithstanding the jealousy and secret enmity of large parties of trek Boers, who were crowding into Natal for the purpose of forming a Dutch republic there. Well, the year 1838 had been a hot one for the Boer trekkers, as in the early part of it Pieter Retief, a chief, one of their most influential commandants, together with seventy picked Boers and from thirty to forty picked Hottentots, having visited Dingaan's kraal for the purpose of making a treaty, were inveigled, unarmed, into the cattle enclosure, overpowered and brutally murdered.

This act of treachery the savage monster quickly followed up with a lightning raid into Natal, during which over 600 Boers, men, women and children, were butchered with fiendish barbarity. This raid he continued down to Port Natal, where the aforementioned few Englishmen were forced to take refuge on board two s.h.i.+ps that, providentially, happened to be in the harbour. Later on in the year the Boer War punitive expedition, under the celebrated commandant Piet Uys, were ambushed and badly worsted, having to fall back, with the loss of their O.C. and many men, so that the year 1838 is still regarded by the Dutch inhabitants of South Africa as a very black year indeed.

Now the Zulu raid to Port Natal had upset the equilibrium of the English settlers, who, being moreover very savage at the losses they had sustained, determined to pay back the Zulu potentate in his own coin. First of all they volunteered to join Piet Uys' commando, but as he entered Zululand from the north they were left behind, and so determined to form a punitive column of their own.

And, now I have reeled off this prosy prelude, let me tell you how it was I first heard of the exploits of the first band of English Lost Legionaries, who, although fighting for their own hand, made the English pioneers in Natal respected and feared by both Boer and savage, while the story also convinced your humble servant that, no matter how good he fancied himself and his lambs to be, still, in the near past, there were better and more daring men tailing on to the halyards of the Old Rag than either he individually or all his flock collectively were. And now let me trek.

It was during the latter end of December 1878, just previous to the Zulu War, and forty years after the aforementioned incidents had occurred in Natal history, that I was trekking through the Thorn Country from Grey Town to Rourke's Drift, together with the staff of the 3rd N.N.C., and we were camped for the day on the banks of the Tugela River, when there arrived, at the same outspan, an old interior trader, trekking out of Zululand. Now, as I was particularly anxious to gain all the information I could about that country, I entered into conversation with him, and eventually he accepted my invitation to come over to my waggon, have some lunch and a yarn. Tiffin having been discussed and pipes lit we were chatting on the probabilities of the coming war when he noticed my M.H. sporting carbine and heavy B.L.

revolver that my servant had just cleaned, and at once requested permission to examine them. After he had done so, and I had explained to him the mechanism of the carbine and the flatness of its trajectory in comparison with the sneider with which he himself was armed, he heaved a sigh, and handing back the weapon said: "Ah, if the first English army that invaded Zululand had been provided with such guns, instead of old flint muskets, they might have won the day."

Smelling a yarn I replied: "I thought no English army had ever invaded Zululand up to date."

My guest smole the pitying smile that an old-timer usually employs when a new chum exhibits his ignorance or puts his foot into it and queried: "Did you ever hear of Cane?"

"Oh yes," quoth I; "if you mean the c.o.c.katoo agriculturist who had the first row with the boss of the original sheep-raising industry, I have heard of him."

"No," responded my companion; "the party I allude to was no relation of his--did not even spell his name the same way, though both of them were handy with their dukes, and p.r.o.ne to go for their neighbours when riled. By the way, what is the strength of your invading force?"

"Oh," said I, "about 6000 white men and an equal number of natives."

"And I suppose," queried he, "all your white men are armed with M.H.

rifles, and that you will take three or four batteries of artillery, rockets, etc., and that a percentage of your natives will be armed with rifles?"

I nodded a.s.sent.

"Well," he continued, "the first English army which invaded Zululand, when Dingaan was at the zenith of his power, consisted of 18 Englishmen, perhaps half-a-dozen Dutchmen, 30 Hottentots and about 3000 Natal Kafirs, and they had only 400 old M.L. muskets to the whole outfit."

"Oh, come," said I; "you're trying to pull my leg."

"Devil a bit," said he. Then he spun me the following yarn, which anyone may verify by perusing the late Mr D. C. F. Moodie's book, "The History of the Battles and Adventures of the British, the Boers and the Zulus in South Africa," from which volume I have not only refreshed my memory, but have cribbed many paragraphs, which I shall quote during my narration, as I consider the whole story to be so incredible that it requires the evidence of an historian who, although not present himself at the battle, was yet alive at that time and who both knew and conversed with the survivors of the invasion.

After the raid made by Dingaan on Port Natal, in 1838, two Englishmen, named John Cane and Robert Biggar, together with a few other British adventurers smarting under the losses they had sustained, determined to retrieve them and avenge their injured feeling by making a raid into Zululand, for which purpose they mustered 18 Britishers, 5 or 6 Dutchmen, 30 Hottentots who were first-cla.s.s, up-to-date fighting men and less than 3000 Kafirs.

The number of fire-arms this motley outfit possessed was 400 old-fas.h.i.+oned muskets, which number included a few rifles and sporting guns of that epoch, the great majority of the Kafirs carrying only their s.h.i.+elds and a.s.segais, and this expeditionary force they called the Grand Army of Natal. Thus equipped, these daring Lost Legionaries crossed the Tugela in February 1839, and entered a mountainous broken country, where one of the most bloodthirsty despots that Providence ever allowed to exist awaited them, with an army of over 50,000 highly trained warriors who had never before been beaten.

Long odds, my gentle reader? Yes; too long odds even for a bellicose Irishman wid his back teeth awash wid the crater. Still, they did it, and now I am going to quote Moodie.

Having crossed the Tugela River the advance guard encountered some Zulu spies, and fired upon them, thus opening the ball. Ascending the opposite hill they came upon the kraal of "Endonda Kusuka"--that is, tardy in starting--and surrounded it before daylight. A detachment of Dingaan's army was lying there, upon whom they opened fire with their guns; when the inmates of the huts, finding the firing directed low, took hold on the tops of the huts, holding by the sticks which formed the wattle-work. This plan was, however, quickly detected, on account of the huts sinking with the pressure, when the settlers directed their fire higher up, and the people fell, wounded or dead. The whole kraal was destroyed, the people being killed and the huts burnt. As the morning of this awful day dawned, many of those who were attacked lying dead and others being in the pangs of death, one of them said: "You may do with me as you please, and kill me; but you will soon see and feel the great Elephant"--meaning Dingaan's army. The Elephant soon appeared, and crushed them to death under his ponderous feet. The land was very hilly, the hills stretching out something like the fingers of a man's hand when extended, rising to ridges in the centre, and descending to deep ravines on each side; the kraal being near the top of one of these ridges and reaching down the slopes on each side.

It was at a short distance from this kraal that the great Elephant presented himself and uttered his piercing cry and terrific scream, which, coming from thousands of infuriated savages, wrought to the highest pitch of frenzy, must have had an appalling effect, being enough to make the stoutest heart quail.

Dingaan did not appear in person in this notable battle, nor were the old warriors allowed to fight, the young men being destined to win the highest honours, and take the weapons of their foes as trophies to perpetuate the memory of their conquest.

The Zulu captains commanding were Umahlebe, Zulu and Nongalazi. These, with the old warriors, took their stand on the hill, from whence they could see all that pa.s.sed, and issue their commands accordingly.

Seven Zulu regiments were brought into the field of action. They were flushed with three successive victories--first, the cutting-off of Relief and his party at the great place; second, the slaughter of the Boers in the Weenen district; and third, the defeat of Uys and the dispersion of his people. Besides they were full of rage at the loss of their cattle, women and children at Utunjambeli, and the destruction of the kraal before their eyes, for which they were burning to be revenged. These circ.u.mstances led them to fight with a fury which could only be quenched in death. When they were shot down, if they could crawl, they would take an a.s.segai and try to inflict a fatal stab on one of their bitter foes, rendering it needful to fire upon them again and again until dead.

The Natal army had therefore to fight with the vigour of men whose lives were in a fearful balance, and who were made desperate by the greatness of the impending danger. They were drawn up near the kraal in question, the English and Hottentots with muskets in front, and the native aids with a.s.segais in the rear. The first division of the Zulu army came on with a fearful rush, but were met by the steady fire and deadly shots of their foes, which cut them down like gra.s.s. They were checked, broken, driven back and defeated, many lying dead and dying at the feet of the settlers. Robert Joyce, or, as he was called, Bob Joyce, a deserter from the 72nd Regiment, had ten men under him with guns, besides Kafirs; and such fearful execution did they do that they cut a pathway through the Zulu regiment as they approached, until the Zulu commanders ordered a change in the mode of attack.

The first division, however, only retreated to make way for the Zulu forces to come from different points favoured by the formation of the hill. Cane sent Ogle's Kafirs to attack the Zulus on the south-west, whilst he, with the main body of the Natal army, took the north-east.

When Ogle's Kafirs had dispersed these, they were to come round and take the Zulus in the flank; instead of which, the hour of revenge being come for some affront which they received at Cane's hands, when they had dispersed the Zulus they fled to the drift, on which the Zulu chiefs exclaimed: "O ganti baka balegane"--_i.e._ "They can run, can they?" The sight of them running inspired fresh courage into the Zulus, who now closed in from all quarters upon the diminished Natal army, coming down as an overwhelming flood, the mighty ma.s.ses of which it was impossible to resist. The strife was deadly in the extreme. The Zulus lost thousands of their people: they were cut down until they formed banks over which those who were advancing had to climb, as well as over the wounded, crawling and stabbing, tenacious of life, and selling it dearly.

Cane fought hard and died of his wounds. A fine old Kafir who was present gave me a description of his death. He was questioned about other matters, but as soon as he came to this his eyes appeared to flash with excitement and his hands moved in all forms to express the firing of the guns and the stabbing with the a.s.segais. He took a stick and held one point to his breast to show where the a.s.segai entered Cane's chest. He then gave his companion another stick, to show how a second a.s.segai was buried between Cane's shoulders, Cane's gun was lying on his left arm, his pipe in his mouth, his head nodding until he fell from his horse and died. His horse was killed close by. The last deed of this man was tragical. One of his own people who had thrown away his badge was coming to s.n.a.t.c.h the a.s.segai from his back when Cane, supposing him to be a Zulu, shot him at once over his shoulder. Stubbs, another of the Englishmen, was stabbed by a boy, and when he felt it was his death wound exclaimed: "Am I to be killed by a boy like you?" Biggar fell close by. The Natal army being surrounded and cut up, heaps of slain lay dead upon the field, to be devoured by beasts of prey, their bones being left to bleach under many summer suns. The work of destruction was, however, not yet complete. No sooner had the leaders fallen than the Natal Kafirs threw away their badges and s.h.i.+elds, and seized the s.h.i.+elds of the Zulus in order to favour their escape, whilst the swiftness with which they could run was their best defence. But in making their escape the Zulus knew their ground, and that the river must be crossed, and they therefore so surrounded them as to compel them to take one only course. In flight then these wretched beings had no alternative but to take a path at the bottom of which there is a descent of 100 feet perpendicular to the river, having deep water at the bottom, and so numerous were the bodies heaped upon each other in this great grave that at length, instead of leaping, they walked over the bodies of those who filled the chasm. One of those who made the leap was Upepe, who was stabbed as he went under water by a Zulu, who cursed him and said: "I have finished you"; but the death wound was not given, for the man escaped.

In order to complete the dire destruction of this day of blood and death, a division of Zulus were sent round to cut off those who might escape by the river. These men were to be seen up to the armpits in the stream, stabbing any who might be in danger of escaping; and very few gained the opposite bank and lived. It was here that another leader, Blankenburg, was killed. Of the few who escaped, some swam, some dived, and some floated along, feigning to be dead. One Goba crossed the river four times and was saved at last. Petrus Roetrzie, or "Piet Elias" as better known by many, entered the river lower than most of the others, and got into the long reeds of the opposite bank, where the Zulus searched for him in vain.

In this terrible battle fell John Cane, Robert Biggar, John Stubbs, Thomas Carden, John Russell,--Blankenburg, Richard Wood, William Wood, Henry Batt, John Campbell,--Lovedale and Thomas Campbell, with two or three other white men, leaving not a dozen to return and tell the tale of woe. Of the Hottentots three or four returned; and of the Kafirs very few except Ogle's. The few who escaped arrived at home singly, many of them having been pursued nearly to the Bay of Durban, owing their deliverance to the shelter of the bush and the darkness of the night.