Of the troops he had left there that morning nothing now remained but the dead, and that was nearly all of them. The silence of death was there! And now we must note what had occurred in the absence of the General, of Colonel Glyn, and the main body of the second column. CHAPTER V. THE MASSACRE AT ISANDHLWANA. 'What the deuce is up?' cried Hammersley and other officers, as they came rushing out of their tents when the sound of firing was heard all along the crest of the hill on the left of the camp, as had been reported to Lord Chelmsford; and, soon after, the few Mounted Infantry under Colonel Durnford were seen falling back, pursued swiftly by Zulus, who, like a dark human wave, came rolling in thousands over the grim crest of the hill, throwing out dense clouds of skirmishers, whose close but desultory fire fringed all their front with smoke. There was no occasion for drum to be beaten or bugle blown to summon the troops; in a moment all rushed to arms, and the companies were formed and 'told off' in hot and nervous haste. The Zulus came on in very regular masses, eight deep, maintaining a steady fire till within assegai distance, when they ceased firing, and launched with aim unerring their deadly darts. Our troops responded by a close and searching fire, under which the black-skinned savages fell in heaps, but their places were fearlessly taken by others. The rocket battery had been captured by them in their swift advance, and every man of it perished in a moment with Colonel Russell. Driven back by their furious rush and force, the cavalry gave way, and Captain Mostyn, with two companies of the noble 24th, was despatched at the double to the eastern neck of the hill of Isandhlwana, where the Zulus in vast force were pressing along to outflank the camp, and on this wing of theirs he at once opened a disastrous fire. Near the Royal Artillery guns the other two companies of the 24th were extended in skirmishing order; this was about half-past twelve p.m., and, as the mighty semicircle--the horns of the Zulu army--closed on them, every officer and man felt that they were fighting for bare existence now, and only procrastinating the moment of extirpation. The shock which Hammersley's heart had received by the supposed deception of Finella was still too terribly fresh to render him otherwise than desperate and reckless of life, and in the coming _mêlée_ he fought like a tiger. He longed to forget both it and her--to put death itself, as he had now put distance, between himself and the place where that cruel blow had descended upon him; thus he exposed himself with a temerity that astonished Sheldrake, Florian, and others.