D'Aquilar Pope's company of the 24th was thrown forward in extended order near the waggon track till his left touched the files of the right near the Artillery. Facing the north were the companies of Mostyn, Cavaye, and Hammersley, with two of the Native Contingent, all in extended order, and over them the guns threw shot and shell eastward. But all the alternative companies were without supports to feed the fighting line, unless we refer to some of the Native Contingent held as a kind of reserve. The crest of that precipitous mountain in front of which our luckless troops were fighting with equal discipline and courage in the silent hush of desperation, is more than 4,500 feet high; but the camp upon, its eastern slope had been in no way prepared, as we have said, for defence by earthworks or otherwise. 'The tents,' we are told, 'were all standing, just as they had been left when the troops under Chelmsford and Glyn marched out that morning, and their occupants were chiefly officers' servants, bandsmen, clerks, and other non-combatants, who, until they were attacked, were unconscious of danger. Fifty waggons, which were to have gone back to the commissariat camp at Rorke's Drift, about six miles in the rear as the crow flies, had been drawn up the evening before in their lines on the neck between the track and the hill, and were still packed in the same position. All other waggons were in rear of the corps to which they were attached. The oxen having been collected for safety when the Zulus first came in sight, many of them were regularly yoked in.' It was not until after one o'clock that our handful of gallant fellows on the slope of the hill fully realised the enormous strength of the advancing army, now ascertained to have been _fourteen thousand men_, under Dabulamanzi. By that time the Zulus had fought to within two hundred yards of the Natal Contingent, which broke and fled, thus leaving a gap in the fighting line, and through that gap the Zulus--loading the air with a tempest of triumphant yells and shrieks--burst like a living sea, and in an instant all became hopeless confusion. 'Form company square,' cried Hammersley, brandishing his sword; 'fours deep, on the centre--close.' But there was no time to close in or form rallying-squares, and never again would our poor lads 're-form company.' Before Mostyn's and Cavaye's companies could close, or even fix their bayonets, they were destroyed to a man, shot down, assegaied, and disembowelled, while the shrieks and fiend-like yells of the Zulus began to grow louder as the rattle of the musketry grew less, and the swift game of death went on.