Read The Shangani Patrol Online
Authors: John Wilcox
The Shangani Patrol (48 page)
‘Back!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t let them get behind us. Back to the laager.’ He pulled on his bridle and his horse swung round as a spear hissed by over his right shoulder. ‘Ride low,’ he screamed.
He became aware that he was riding in the middle of two Matabele who had appeared as if by magic. One of them seized his bridle while the other jabbed at him with a stabbing assegai, catching the edge of his coat with the spearhead and becoming entangled with it. Lashing out wildly with his boot, he raked the spearman’s face with his spur and swung the barrel of his rifle into the head of the man holding his bridle, sending him crashing to his knees. His horse surged forward and he heard the crack of Mzingeli’s rifle off to his right. Where was Jenkins? ‘Three five two!’ he yelled.
‘Comin’.’ The cry came from his left, and Jenkins emerged from the trees, his head low along his mount’s neck and his heels raking its sides. Behind him came a group of natives, all seeming to run almost as fast as Jenkins’s horse and sending in its wake a hail of assegais, before they halted, panting. To the right, Mzingeli rode on a parallel course, blood streaming from a cut on his left thigh. Fonthill, clinging on for dear life as his horse took the bit between its teeth, stole a precarious glance over his shoulder. The Matabele had disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. But had they been able to get behind the patrol? He filled his lungs. ‘Troopers,’ he yelled. ‘Back to the laager. Ride for your lives.’
The three horsemen broke out of the brush at the same time and saw ahead of them, in the half-light, the rather pathetic attempt that had been made to form a laager. It was clearly less effective than that drawn up on the other bank the previous evening. A handful of wagons and carts had been pushed together in a rough semicircle, extending from the riverbank. Many gaps remained, however, and as a bugle sounded, Fonthill saw men doubling up to fill them in two ranks, the front kneeling, those behind standing.
‘Stand back, we’re coming through,’ he screamed and led the trio towards the nearest gap. It looked at first as though the line of troopers would not break, but they did so at the last minute, as though in reluctance, and the three galloped through, closely followed by the horse whose rider had been speared. He, alas, had long since fallen from the saddle.
Half tumbling from his mount, Fonthill ran to Mzingeli. ‘Not much,’ said the tracker. ‘Scratch.’ Then, with satisfaction: ‘I kill him.’
Alice, medical bag in hand, had materialised. Her face was white in the dawn light. ‘Are you all right, Simon?’ she called, as she knelt down to examine Mzingeli’s wound.
‘Yes, fine. Look after Mzingeli. Are you all right, 352?’
The Welshman was reloading his Martini-Henry. ‘Right as rain, bach sir. But my God, them black fellers frightened the life out of me, comin’ out of the trees like that without a sound. Not a nice way to fight, look you. I almost ’ad a spear in me belly before I saw ’em. Like ghosts, they was.’
Fonthill was conscious that men in various stages of undress, all carrying rifles, were doubling up towards the ring of wagons and the line of defenders.
‘Here they come.’ The shout came from Forbes, revolver in hand, who was standing on a cart to the left of the line. His voice boomed out. ‘No one is to fire until I give the order. We will fire in volleys. Front rank first.’ A single shot rang out. ‘Blast your eyes, that man. I said hold your fire until I give the order. Wait.’
Fonthill and Jenkins ran to join the major. The sun was now beginning to peep over the top of the line of trees some two hundred yards away and the first of its rays shone directly into the eyes of the defenders. ‘To hell with that sun,’ swore Forbes. Then he shouted, ‘Pull your hat brims down. Select your target. Still wait . . .’
Simon shaded his eyes and saw that the line of the bush, some two hundred yards away, had suddenly erupted with a mass of Matabele, who now raised a triumphant yell and began running towards the defenders, their dappled shields seeming to form a phalanx that moved towards them at great speed. He gulped, thrust a cartridge into the breech of his rifle and looked behind him for Alice. She was kneeling just below him, carefully winding a bandage around Mzingeli’s thigh. He caught Jenkins’s eye; the Welshman winked before nestling his cheek into the stock of his rifle. This was Jenkins doing what he was born to do, with coolness and delight. No fuss. No fright. Lucky devil!
Then: ‘Front rank, FIRE!’ Simon heard the voice of Wilson, on the right of the half-circle, repeating the order, like an echo, and then he and Jenkins fired together. As the smoke cleared, he saw that the first line of Matabele seemed to have melted away and shields and black bodies were strewn across the earth. But the attack hardly paused in its stride.
‘Brave buggers,’ muttered Jenkins.
‘Front rank, reload.’ The voice of Forbes was stentorian and steady, echoed from the right by the higher note of Wilson’s. ‘Second rank, FIRE! Second rank, reload, Front rank, FIRE!’
Suddenly, a sound that Fonthill had never heard before on any battlefield joined in the awful cacophony. First one Maxim machine gun and then a second began their staccato chattering, causing spurts of dust to rise at the feet of the advancing warriors and then, as the barrels were raised, bringing them down in a great swathe.
‘About bloody time,’ grunted Forbes. ‘They were almost on us. What the hell were those gunners doing?’
But the attack was not finished. From the ranks of the front spearmen appeared a line of riflemen, who knelt and discharged their weapons at the defenders. Fonthill realised with a start of guilt that these were the brand new Martini-Henry rifles that he had struggled to bring up from Kimberley. Then he saw, through the blue smoke, that the sight of each gun was raised to its maximum height and that the bullets were singing past, high over the heads of the defenders.
Forbes turned and grinned. ‘They think that the higher they raise the sights, the faster the bullets will go,’ he said.
Some spearmen, however, braved the bullets of the defenders - and those of their compatriots behind them - and were able to run close enough to the line of the laager to hurl their assegais. Two troopers kneeling in the front rank in the central gap toppled backwards, trying to pluck the spears from their chests. But this was the high-water mark of the surge forward, and the Matabele turned and ran back out of range.
‘Will they come back again, do you think?’ The question came from Alice, who, rifle in hand, had joined them.
Fonthill pulled her to him for a quick moment, as much in relief that she was safe as in affection, then said, ‘I just don’t know. There are so many of them. If they get near enough they could overwhelm us. Stay close, my love.’
It took only some fifteen minutes before the Matabele came again. This time they were led by the riflemen, who ran forward, fired, fumbled to open the breech, inserted another round, fired again then repeated the exercise. This time not all of the bullets sang over the heads of the defenders in the line, but the firing was ragged and on the whole ineffectual, and soon the riflemen were replaced by the more familiar surging mass of spearmen, who swept across the open space, their assegais held aloft and their cowhide shields forward as though to deflect the volleys that crashed out against them again.
The bravery of the warriors was no match for the modern weapons of the defenders, of course, and faced with the terrible fire of the Maxims and rifles at such close range, the Matabele eventually turned and ran back to the cover of the bush. There, some of them stayed to hurl defiance before melting back into the shelter of the trees. They left behind them at least two hundred warriors strewn across the open ground, virtually all of them dead.
Forbes turned to Fonthill. ‘Where is my picket?’ he growled.
Simon shook his head. ‘I doubt if any of them escaped. The Matabele came at us suddenly at very close range out of the bush.’ He sighed. ‘We only just escaped, and I think we did so because we were riding slowly, carefully and quietly. I am afraid that your lads were making a bit of a noise and rather inviting the attack.’
The major nodded slowly. ‘Humph. Just shows what might have happened if they had come at us in that damned forest. Well, you warned us, Fonthill, and I’m damned grateful. Just gave us time to man the ramparts, as it were. Now, let’s see what the damage is.’
Jameson and Wilson joined them with the news that in addition to the picket, only two men had been killed and six wounded, including Mzingeli, whose wound did indeed prove to be superficial. To Fonthill’s great relief, six of the picket trickled in out of the bush during the course of the morning. They had, it seemed, found that the Matabele had closed in behind them before attacking, and so had simply spurred their horses on and doubled back later.
They did report, however, that they had seen the mass of the Matabele retreating back across more open ground in the direction of Bulawayo.
‘Good,’ said Jameson. ‘That means that we can push on. I am told, Forbes, that there is far less bush that way.’ He pointed to the west. ‘I suggest that we break up the laager and move on. I doubt whether we shall be attacked again until we near Bulawayo - even if then, that is.’
‘I quite agree,’ echoed Wilson.
‘Very well,’ said Forbes. ‘But I feel they will attack again. We have given them a bloody nose, but they still have about eighteen thousand warriors to throw at us. They are brave and they won’t give up yet.’
‘I say,’ called Wilson. He pointed out across the scene of battle to where a solitary figure was walking slowly among the dead. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Alice!’ snapped Fonthill. ‘She could get herself killed.’ He leapt over a thorn bush and ran towards her. ‘Alice! What are you doing? Come back. There could still be Matabele in the bush.’
She turned, notebook and pencil in hand. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. They’ve all gone by the look of it, except these here.’ She gestured around her. ‘I’ve counted more than one hundred and fifty dead so far.’ She fixed Simon with cold eyes. ‘Not much of a battle, was it? I mean - spears against machine guns. More of a massacre, I’d say.’
Fonthill sighed. ‘It didn’t seem like a massacre when Jenkins, Mzingeli and I were caught out in the bush.’
Alice’s expression softened and she put out a hand. ‘Yes, sorry, my love. Do you think that this will be the end of it?’
‘Forbes doesn’t think so and nor do I. I am sure they will make a stand, probably just outside Bulawayo, to stop us from entering the king’s kraal. After all, this hasn’t exactly been a battle. Lobengula didn’t commit many warriors. His army remains intact. It could be a very different story next time.’
Alice ran a desperate hand through her hair. ‘Oh God! How long does this nonsense have to continue?’
Simon seized her hand. ‘It will continue, Alice, until we have unseated Lobengula and he has been captured. You must resign yourself to that. Come on back now. You remain vulnerable out here.’
Hand in hand, they stepped over the bodies of the dead warriors, already attracting an army of flies, and made their way back to the laager. The wagons and carts were already being harnessed to their horses (no oxen - they would have slowed the advance), tents were being struck and mounts saddled.
‘What about these bodies, Doctor?’ Alice asked Jameson.
The little man frowned. ‘Have to leave them to the jackals, I fear. No time to give them a Christian burial, you see. Not that they would have appreciated that, being heathens.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘No. Sorry, ma’am. We must press on. I suggest you mount up.’
Within minutes the outriders had cantered out, and shortly afterwards, the two columns re-formed and began to snake towards Bulawayo and the kraal of the King of the Matabele.
Chapter 18
It took them seven more days to approach the capital, during which time, although there were various alarms and scares, there was no sign of Lobengula’s retreating impis. Eventually they reached Thabas Induna, the little flat hill that rose some twenty miles north of Bulawayo. Nearby was the source of the Imbembesi river, and Jameson decided that the columns should laager here and water the horses before the last push on to the king’s kraal.
The laager was established in comparatively open land, but the passage to the embryonic river was dotted with shrub and trees. Although patrols had reported no evidence of Matabele presence in the vicinity, Forbes decided to send a light escort to supplement the black wranglers taking the horses down to the river, and Fonthill and Jenkins, anxious to attend to their horses, as well as those of Alice and Mzingeli, accompanied them.
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