Hammersley's company, which had been on the extreme left, though unable to form square, succeeded in reaching, but in a shattered condition, a kind of terrace on the southern face of the hill, from whence, as the smoke cleared away, they could see the Zulus using their short, stabbing assegais with awful effect upon all they overtook below. Under the fire of the cannon, which had been throwing case-shot, the Zulus fell in groups rather than singly, and went down by hundreds; but as fast as their advanced files melted away, hordes of fresh savages came pouring up exultingly from the rear to feed the awful harvest of death; and, as they closed in, 'Limber up!' was the cry of Major Smith, the Artillery commanding officer; but the limber gunners failed to reach their seats, and, save a sergeant and eight, all perished under the assegai; and while in the act of spiking a gun, the Major was slain amid an awful _mêlée_ and scene of carnage, where horse and foot, white man and black savage, were all struggling and fighting in a dense and maddened mass around the cannon-wheels. Notwithstanding the manner in which he exposed himself, Hammersley, up to this time, found himself untouched; but his subaltern, poor Vincent Sheldrake, whose wounded sword-arm rendered him very helpless, was bleeding from several stabs and two bullet-wounds, which it was impossible to dress, yet he strove to save his servant Tom, who was lying in his last agony, and who, in gratitude, strove to accord him a military salute, and died in the attempt. 'Poor Vincent! you are covered with wounds!' said Hammersley. 'Ay; so many that my own mother--God bless her!--wouldn't know me; so many that if I was stripped of these bloody rags you would think I was tattooed. It is no crutch and toothpick business this!' replied Sheldrake, with a grim faint smile, as from weakness he fell forward on his hands and knees, and Florian stood over him with bayonet fixed and rifle at the charge. At that moment an assegai flung by a Zulu finished the mortal career of Sheldrake. But Florian shot the former through the head, and the savage--a sable giant--made a kind of wild leap in the air and fell back on a gashed pile of the dead and the dying. It was Florian's last cartridge, and his rifle-barrel was hot from continued firing by this time. All was over now! Every man who could escape strove to make his way to the Buffalo River, but that proved impossible even for mounted men. Intersected by deep watercourses, encumbered by enormous boulders of granite, the ground was of such a nature that the fleet-footed Zulus, whose bare feet were hard as horses' hoofs, alone could traverse it, and the river, itself swift, deep, and unfordable, had banks almost everywhere jagged by rocks sharp and steep.