of
Bones, to the effect that in the great rout of the battle I was
not to join the flying but to set my face towards Ulundi and that
if I did so I should be protected and no harm would come to me.
I knew that all this prophecy was but a vain thing fondly
imagined, although it was true that the battle and the rout had
come. And yet I acted on it--why Heaven knows alone.

Setting the spurs to my horse I galloped off past Isandhlwana
Mount, on the southern slopes of which a body of the 24th were
still fighting their last fight, and heading for the Nqutu Range.
The plain was full of Zulus, reserves running up; also to the
right of me the Ulundi and Gikazi divisions were streaming
forward. These, or some of them, formed the left horn of the
impi, but owing to the unprepared nature of the Zulu battle, for
it must always be remembered that they did not mean to fight that
day, their advance had been delayed until it was too late for
them entirely to enclose the camp. Thus the road, if it can so
be called, to Fugitives' Drift was left open for a while, and by
it some effected their escape. It was this horn, or part of it,
that afterwards moved on and attacked Rorke's Drift, with results
disastrous to itself.

For some hundreds of yards I rode on thus recklessly, because
recklessness seemed my only chance. Thrice I met bodies of
Zulus, but on each occasion they scattered before me, calling out
words that I could not catch. It was as though they were
frightened of something they saw about me. Perhaps they thought
that I was mad to ride thus among them. Indeed I must have
looked mad, or perhaps there was something else. At any rate I
believed that I was going to win right through them when an
accident happened.

A bullet struck my mare somewhere in the back. I don't know
where it came from, but as I saw no Zulu shoot, I think it must
have been one fired by a soldier who was still fighting on the
slopes of the mount. The effect of it was to make the poor beast
quite ungovernable. Round she wheeled and galloped at headlong
speed back towards the peak, leaping over dead and dying and
breaking through the living as she went. In two minutes we were
rushing up its northern flank, which seemed to be quite
untenanted, towards the sheer brown cliff which rose above it,
for the fighting was in progress on the other side. Suddenly at
the foot of this cliff the mare stopped, shivered and sank down
dead, probably from inter