fres. The Zulus,
finding that they would be overtaken before they could cross the river,
had faced about, and, standing shoulder to shoulder, were awaiting the
attack of their pursuers. The battle soon commenced, by a shower of
assagies being thrown by the Natal Caffres; then a charge was made, and
for a time we could see nothing but a struggling mass of black warriors.
Then the tide of battle evidently turned in favour of Umnini's men; for
the Zulus were flying in the direction of the river, followed by the
Natal Caffres. In savage warfare, it is in the retreat that the greater
number of men are killed: the pursuer has the advantage of casting his
assagy at an enemy who can neither dodge nor protect himself by his
shield. The number of Zulus who were slain during this retreat was very
great--we could see man after man struck down and assagied; and the
officers became quite excited, and exclaimed that these niggers fought
like tigers. I told them of some of the battles I had been in, against
the Zulus, and of some of the dodges we had practised. They said they
wished they had some two hundred blue-jackets with them, and they would
have given a good account of these Zulus. I told them that the
cutlasses used by the sailors would be of no use against an assagy; that
a Zulu would send his assagy through a man at twenty or thirty yards'
distance, and that a man armed with a sword would be unable to do
anything with it at that distance. Then, again, when the Zulus rushed
in on an enemy, it was possible to shoot down several of them, but those
not shot would stab with their assagies, before the men armed with guns
could reload.

Having seen the defeat and the slaughter of a large number of the Zulus,
the officers decided to pull off to the ship, and report to the captain
what had occurred. There was luckily very little surf on the bar, and
we pulled over what there was without shipping much water in our boat.
On reaching the ship, the officers gave an account to the captain of
what had occurred, and were very full of praise for my skill and
coolness in having saved them from the Zulus; for they agreed that, had
they been left to themselves, they never could have reached the boats,
as the Zulus would have surrounded them, and though they might have shot
several, yet they could not have loaded quickly enough to prevent their
enemy from closing in on them. The officers gave a very good account of
the fight they had see