ever shuffled down St James’s with a flower in my buttonhole, pausing only to belch claret or exchange grave salutes with Cabinet Ministers and clubmen ('Why, there’s old General Flashman,' they’d say, 'dear old Sir Harry —wonderful how he keeps going. They say it’s the brandy that does it; grand old chap he is.' That was all they knew.) But there I was, I say, at a time when I ought to have had nothing to do but drink my way gently towards an honoured grave, spend my wife’s fortune, gorge at the best places, leer at the young women, and generally enjoy a dissolute old age—and suddenly, I had to kill Tiger Jack. Nothing else for it.
What brought the beads out on my withered brow more than anything else was my recollection of our first meeting, so many years before, when I’d seen for myself what an ice-cold killing villain he was—aye, and it was in a place where sheer cool nerve and skill with a gun were the narrow margin between escape and horrible death. You’ll remember the name: Isan’lwana. I can see it still, the great jagged rock of the 'Little House' rearing up above the stony, sun-baked African. plain, the scattered lines of our red-coated infantry, joking and cat-calling among themselves as they waited for the ammunition that never came; the red-capped Natal Kaffirs scurrying back to take their positions on the rocky slope; a black-tunicked rider of Frontier Horse leaping the gun limbers bellowing a fatuous order to laager the wagons, which went unheeded and was too late by hours; Pulleine fumbling with his field-glasses and shouting hoarsely: 'Is that a rider from Lord Chelmsford?'; a colour-sergeant frantically hammering at the lid of an ammunition box; the puffs of smoke from our advanced line firing steadily at the Zulu skirmishers; the rattle of musketry over the ridge to the left; the distant figures of Dumford’s men on the right flank falling back, firing as they came; a voice croaking: 'Oh, dear God Almighty!'—and it was mine, as I looked nor’east over the ranks of the 24th, and saw the skyline begin to move, like a brown blanket stirred by something beneath it, and then all along the crest there was the rippling, twinkling flash of thousands of spear-points, and a limitless line of white and coloured shields with nodding plumes behind them, rank after rank, and down the forward slope came the black spilling tide of Ketshwayo’s impis, twenty thousand savages rolling towards our pitiful position with its far-stretched line of defenders, Death sweeping towards us at that fearful thunderous jog-trot that made the earth tremble beneath our very feet, while the spears crashed on the ox-hide shields, and the dust rolled up in a bank before them as they chanted out their terrible bass chorus: 'Uzitulele, kagali ’muntu!'—which, you’ll be enchanted to know, means roughly: 'He is silent, he doesn’t start the attack.'
Which was a bloody lie, from where I was standing petrified, and the horrible thing was, I wasn’t even in the Army, but was there by pure chance (how, exactly, I’ll tell you another time). Much consolation that was, you can imagine, as that frightful black horde came surging across the plain towards our makeshift camp beneath Isan’lwana rock, the great mass in the centre coming on in perfect formation while the flank regiments raced out in the 'horns' which would encircle our position. And there was poor old Flashy, caught behind the companies of the 24th as they poured their volley-firing into the 'chest' of the Zulu army, cheering and shouting for the ammunition- carriers, and Durnford' s bald forehead glinting in the sun above his splendid whiskers as he pulled his men back to the donga and blazed away at the left 'horn' sweeping in towards them.
For one brief moment, as I cast a frantic eye behind me to pick out the quickest line of retreat to the Rorke’s Drift track, I absolutely thought it might be touch and go. You see, while we were most damnably trapped, without proper defences, in spite of the warnings old Paul Kruger had given to Chelmsford about laagering and trenching every night in Zulu country,[1] and while we were only a few hundred white soldiers and loyal niggers against the whole Zulu army—well, a few dozen Martini-Henrys, in the hands of men who know how to use ’em, can stop a whole lot of blacks with clubs and spears. I’d been with Campbell’s Highlanders at Balaclava, when they broke the Ruski cavalry with two volleys, and I still bore the scars of Little Big Horn, where Reno’s troopers held off half the Sioux nation (the other half were killing Custer and me just down the valley, but that’s another story).[See Flashman and the Redskins] Anyway, as I watched the 24th companies on the Isan’lwana slope, pouring their fire into the brown, and the artillery banging away for dear life, cutting great lanes in the impis, I thought, bigod, we’ll hold ’em yet. And we would have done, but the ammunition boxes hadn’t been broken out, and just as the great mass of Zulus, a bare furlong from our forward troops, seemed to be wavering and hanging back—why, the 24th were down to their last packets, and the yelling and cheering turned to desperate cries of:
'Ammunition, there! Bring the boxes, for God’s sake!'
Our fire slackened, the 24th took a step back, the Natal Kaffirs came pouring away from the left under the lee of the hill, flinging their arms aside as they ran, the order 'Fix bayonets!' rang out from the ranks immediately to my front, and the Zulus regiments rallied and came bounding in in a great mad charge, the rain of throwing spears whistling ahead of them like hail, and the stabbing assegais coming out from behind the white shields as they tore into our disordered front line, the roar of '’Suthu! ’Suthu!' giving way to their hideous hissing '’S-jee! ’S-jee!' as the spears struck home.
Time for the lunch interval, thinks I; let’s be off. Once they were at close quarters, there wasn’t a hope, and by the look of it, through that hell of smoke and gunfire and fleeing men, with Kaffirs rushing past, and the gunners and wagon-men frantically trying to inspan and flee, the surviving remnants of the 24th weren’t going to hold that huge press of Zulus more than a matter of minutes.
Thus far in the battle, being only a well-meaning civilian, I’d made a tremendous show of trying to get the wagons to laager in a circle, so that we could make a stand if our forward troops gave way—it was the sensible thing to do, and it also kept me at a safe distance from the fighting. So I was well placed beside an inspanned cart when the dam burst, and the Nokenke regiment of Ketshwayo’s army (that’s who the historians tell me it was, anyway; I only know they were appalling bastards with leopard-skin head-dresses, screaming fit to chill your blood) came tearing up the hill.
I was into that wagon in a twinkling, bawling to the driver to go like blazes, and blasting away over the tailboard with an Adams six-shooter in each fist. I wish I’d a pound for every time I’ve looked out at a charging barbarian horde with my guts dissolving and prayers babbling out of me, but that one took the biscuit. They came racing in, huge black-limbed monsters with their six-foot shields up, eyes and teeth glaring over the top like spectres, the plumes tossing and those disgusting two-foot steel blades glittering and smoking with blood. I saw three men of the 24th, back to back, swinging their clubbed rifles, go down before the charge, and the Zulus barely broke stride as they ripped the corpses up with their assegais (to let the dead spirits out, don’t you know) and rushed on. I blazed away, weeping and swearing, thinking oh God, this is the end, and I’m sorry I’ve led such a misspent life, and don’t send me to Hell, whatever Dr Arnold says—and my hammer clicked down on an empty chamber just as the first Zulu vaulted over the side of the wagon, howling like a dervish.
I screamed and closed with him, seizing his right wrist as the spear-point swung at my breast, my hand slipping on that oily skin; I drove a knee at his groin, butting him for all I was worth and trying to bite his throat—all I got was a mouthful of monkey-, skin collar, and God, how he stank! A shot crashed right beside my ear, and the Zulu fell away, his face a mask of blood.' I never even saw who had shot him, nor did I pause to inquire, for as I reeled away to the side of the wagon, here came a gun-team thundering past, with an artilleryman crouched on one of the leaders, lashing at the beasts and at the Zulus who raced alongside trying to spear him from the saddle. Behind the team the gun was bouncing over the ground, with some poor devil clinging to the muzzle, his feet trailing in the dust, until a Zulu, leaping behind, dashed his brains out with a knobkerrie.
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
