Then he heard for the first time of the valiant defence of Rorke's Drift by Bromhead and Chard, with only one hundred and thirty men of all ranks against four thousand Zulus, all flushed with the slaughter at Isandhlwana. He was told how the gallant few in that sequestered post beside the Buffalo River--merely a loop-holed store-house, a parapet of biscuit-boxes, and a thatched hospital, wherein thirty-five sick men lay--fought with steady valour for hours throughout that terrible night, resisting every attempt made by the wild thousands to storm it, and without other light than the red flashes of the musketry that streaked the gloom; how the hospital roof took fire, and how six noble privates defended like heroes the doorway with their bayonets (till most of the sick were brought forth), each winning the Victoria Cross; how no less than six times the Zulus, over piles of their own dead, got inside the wretched barricades, and six times were hurled back by our soldiers with the queen of weapons, which none can wield like them--the bayonet. 'Thank God that some of the dear old 24th are left, after all!' was the exclamation of Florian, when among their tents he heard this heroic story, and related his own desperate adventures to a circle of bronzed and eager listeners. For the first time after several days he saw his face in a mirror, and was startled by the wild and haggard aspect of it and the glare in his dark eyes. 'Surely,' thought he, 'I am not the same fellow of the dear old days at Revelstoke--not the lad whom Dulcie remembers--this stern, wild-eyed man, who looks actually old for his years;' but he had gone through and faced much, hourly, of danger, suffering, and probable death. Could he be the same lad whom she loved and still loves, and with whom she fished and boated on the Erme and Yealm, and gathered berries in the Plymstock woods and the old quarries by the sea? How often of late had he lived a _lifetime_ in a _minute_! There were sweet and sad past memories, future hopes, strange doubts, retrospections, and present sufferings all condensed again and again into that brief space, with strange recollections of his youth--his dead parents, the old home, the cottage near Revelstoke, Dulcie, Shafto, and old nurse Madelon--a host of confused thoughts, and ever and always 'the strong vitality of youth rebelling against possible death'--for death is always close in war. But it was not death that Florian feared, but--like the duellists in 'The Tramp Abroad'--_mutilation_. CHAPTER X. FLORIAN JOINS THE MOUNTED INFANTRY.