Colonel Durnford, having despatched his two troops to the left, had moved out to the front at a canter, followed at a foot’s pace by the rocket battery, etc. About five miles out, a trooper rode down from the hills on the left, and reported an immense “impi” behind the hills, and almost immediately the Zulus appeared in force in front and on the left, in skirmishing order, ten or twelve deep, with supports close behind. They opened fire at about 800 yards, and advanced very rapidly. Colonel Durnford retired a little way—to a donga—and extended his men, then fell back, keeping up a steady fire, for about two miles,[129] when he came upon the remains of the rocket battery, which (it appeared) had turned to the left on hearing firing on the hills, been cut off, and broken up. Fighting was still going on here, but the Zulus were speedily driven back. Colonel Durnford retired slowly on the camp, disputing every yard of ground, until he reached a donga about 800 yards in front of the right of the camp; there, prolonging the line of the camp troops, and the right being reinforced by between thirty and forty mounted men, under Captain Bradstreet, a stand was made. “This gully,” Mr. Brickhill, interpreter to No. 3 Column, says, “the mounted force held most tenaciously, every shot appearing to take effect,” and with the havoc caused by the guns, “a thousand Zulu dead must have laid between the conical hill and the gully. They lay just like peppercorns upon the plain.” The two troops of native horse sent to reconnoitre the Ingqutu Hills, retired fighting before the enemy in good order “to a crest in the neck which joins Sandhlwana to Ingqutu. Leaving their horses well sheltered here, they held this crest splendidly, keeping up a steady galling fire.”[130] They were eventually compelled to retire, with the loss of Captain G. Shepstone.[131] We must now consider what had taken place at the camp. All was quiet till about twelve o’clock, when firing was heard on the hill where the company on picquet was stationed; the troops were immediately turned out and formed on the left front of the camp. About this time Captain Gardner, 14th Hussars, arrived with an order from the General, addressed to Lieut.-Colonel Pulleine, “to send on the camp equipage and supplies of the troops camping out, and to remain himself at his present camp and entrench it.”[132] Captain G. Shepstone reached the camp with his warning about the same time. Colonel Pulleine decided it was impossible to carry out the General’s order, as the enemy were already in great force on the hills to the left. Captain Gardner sent off a message to head-quarters, saying that “our left was attacked by about ten thousand of the enemy. A message was also sent by Colonel Pulleine.”