Read Death on a Pale Horse for Free Online

cartridges to carry back this minute. If you cannot do it, let us have the boxes and we will break them open!”
    Smith-Dorrien straightened up.
    â€œNo, Captain Bonham! There must be order. There cannot be order if the boxes are taken away! Some companies will have too many cartridges and others too few.”
    â€œH Company has none at all, sir! If we fall back, the northern flank cannot hold out! The artillery has been routed. My message is a command from Colonel Pulleine, sir. It is not a request!”
    â€œThen open them here! Your mounted men may ride back with enough packages in your saddle-bags to carry on. It will be quicker than carrying heavy boxes such a distance!”
    This concession was a signal for general disorder. The supernumeraries and infantry runners pushed forward in a scrum to drag the remaining boxes over the tailboards of the wagons. The scene was one of looting. Despite Smith-Dorrien’s warning of metal striking a spark on metal, a bayonet flashed as it stabbed down to prise a thick wooden lid from the carcase of a heavy box. Elsewhere, iron hammers were being used to smash in the lids and sides.
    There was a cry of relief as several lids sprang loose under the pressure of bayonets. A crowd surged round the quartermaster in possession of a broken box. The metal foil was ripped back. Caps or helmets were held out as wax-paper was torn and the brass cartridges tipped out in a stream. From the col, the view stretched far beyond the enclosure of the wagon-park. It needed no field-glasses to show that the amounts of ammunition would be too little and too late. Captain Bonham and his corporals raised dust as they turned and galloped off with the first consignments.
    The warriors had broken the line to the south, where Durnford’s surrounded position had now been overwhelmed. The tribesmen were in among the first tents. A well-aimed spear brought Bonham from the saddle. As the captain fell into the path of the next rider, his corporal’s horse reared and threw him at the feet of his killers. Only the second corporal charged his way through. The bandsmen carrying the first heavy box got no further. From the hill, it was plain that the horns of the Zulu impi had almost closed round the rear of the British position. If Pulleine was still alive, he surely knew the end had come.
    Unaware of the extent of the disaster, two men in the dark tunics of quartermasters were shouting at each other. Officers joined in. Smith-Dorrien had broken open a new box. He was tipping cartridges into twenty or thirty helmets and haversacks held out for him. Bloomfield shouted from a nearby wagon, “For heaven’s sake, don’t take those, man! They belong to our battalion. It’s all we have left!”
    â€œHang it all!” the young subaltern called back. “You don’t want a requisition order at a time like this, do you?”
    With the first breach, the line which had held against the impi’s weight began to fragment. Its men now found the attackers at their backs and feared they would be cut off. The 24th Foot, with Pulleine still alive and assuming direct command, drew back in a semblance of orderly retreat. The men at either end of the line fell away first and fought to the end among the tents of the company lines. Pulleine tried to keep the main body intact, ordering them back to the lower slope of Isandhlwana. Beyond the wagons, the boulders and low ridges might afford a defensive line.
    As they withdrew, the men snatched ammunition pouches from the bodies of the fallen. Ironically, now that the camp was being overrun, the survivors found cartridges enough to supply themselves. Their tactic must surely be to defend a position among the rocks of the lower slope, saving ammunition, holding this makeshift redoubt until Lord Chelmsford’s return with the mounted column. Yet even that defensive line was soon being infiltrated by the warriors of the tribes.
    The last stage