“One party of soldiers came out from among the tents and formed up a little above the ammunition-waggons. They held their ground there until their ammunition failed them, when they were nearly all assegaied. Those that were not killed at this place formed again in a solid square in the neck of Sandhlwana. They were completely surrounded on all sides, and stood back to back, and surrounding some men who were in the centre. Their ammunition was now done, except that they had some revolvers which they fired at us at close quarters. We were quite unable to break their square until we had killed a great many of them, by throwing our assegais at short distances. We eventually overcame them in this way.”[172] When all we have narrated was known in Natal, the question was asked in the public prints: “Who, in the light of these recently-discovered facts, were the real heroes of that day? Surely the two officers who commanded in that narrow pass at the rear of the camp.... Surely, too, no smaller heroism was that of the fourteen carbineers ... who, mere boys as they were, gave their lives away in order to afford their comrades-in-arms a chance of retreat.... Any one of these men might have had a chance for his life, had he chosen to follow the example set by so many. They remained, however, and they died, and only after four months of doubt, contradiction, and despatch-writing, is it made known to the world who they were who have most deserved the coveted decoration ‘For Valour.’” “‘The dead shall live, the living die!’ Never was this well-known line of Dryden’s more strikingly illustrated than by the events of the past fortnight,” writes _The Natal Witness_ of June 7th, 1879. “‘The dead shall live,’ the mists of doubt, overclouding many a reputation, have been cleared up by a visit to the now sacred field of Isandhlwana.