The Zulus now continued a heavy fire, particularly on Melville, whose scarlet patrol jacket rendered him fatally conspicuous among the greenery by the river-side at that place. Two great boulders, six feet apart, lie there, and between them he and Coghill took their last stand, and fought, sword in hand, till overwhelmed. 'Here,' says Captain Parr in his narrative, 'we found them lying side by side, and buried them on the spot'--truly brothers in arms, in glory and in death. When all but drowned, Florian succeeded in disentangling his foot from the stirrup-iron, and struck out for the Natal side. A shrill yell from the other bank announced that he was not unseen; bullets ploughed the water into tiny white spouts about him, and many a long reedy dart was launched at him--but with prayer in his heart and prayer on his lips he struggled on, and reached the bank, where he lay still, worn breathless, incapable of further exertion, and weakened by his recent fall in the donga, after escaping from Elandsbergen; thus believing that all was over with him, the Zulus ceased firing, and went in search of congenial carnage elsewhere. And there, dying to all appearance, in a reedy swamp by the Buffalo river, the tall grass around him, bristling with launched assegais, lay Florian Melfort, the true heir of Fettercairn, friendless and alone. * * * * * No Briton survived in camp to see the complete end of the awful scene that was acted there! And of that scene no actual record exists. For a brief period--a very brief one--a hand to hand fight went on among, and even in, the tents, and the company of Captain Reginald Younghusband of the 24th alone appears to have made any organized resistance. Making a wild rally on a plateau below the crest of the hill, they fought till their last cartridges were expended, and then died, man by man, on the ground where they stood. The Zulus surged round and over them with tiger-like activity, frantic gestures, remorseless ferocity, and lust of blood, whirling and flinging their ponderous knobkeries, or war-clubs, one blow from which would suffice to brain a bullock. Even the savage warriors who slew and mutilated them were filled with admiration at their courage, while tossing their own dead again and again on the bayonet-blades to bear down the hedge of steel. 'Ah, those red soldiers at Isandhlwana!' said the Zulus after; 'how few they were, and how they fought! They fell like stones--each man in his place.' There is something pathetic in the description of the stand made by the _last man_ (poor Bob Edgehill, of the 24th), as given in the _Natal Times_. Keeping his face to the foe, he struggled towards the crest of the hill overlooking the camp, till he reached a small cavern in the rocks. Therein he crept, and with rifle and bayonet kept the Zulus at bay, while they, taking advantage of the cover some rocks and boulders afforded them, endeavoured by threes and fours to shoot him.