This was negligence enough, but worse was to follow. Two small reconnoitring parties who were sent out on January 21st were alarmed by the sight of a large body of Zulus not far away. In some haste they sent to the camp for reinforcements. On receipt of this intelligence Lord Chelmsford got together several companies of the 24th, some mounted infantry and a few guns, and at a very early hour the next morning started out to meet, as he confidently supposed, Cetewayo’s main army. A body of Zulus was encountered and repulsed, but they did not form the larger portion of Cetewayo’s impis. While the British commander-in-chief was thus decoyed from his base, an army of 20,000 Zulus was hastening fleet-footed round the hills, to swoop down upon the doomed camp. At Isandhlana only eight hundred men had been left. These comprised a handful of Mounted Infantry and Volunteers, seventy of the Royal Artillery with two guns, and some companies of the 24th Regiment and the Natal Carabineers. This puny force was under the command of Colonel Durnford, R.E., who had been hastily summoned thither from Rorke’s Drift. Lord Chelmsford marched out at about four in the morning. Five hours later the advancing Zulu impis were sighted by the watchers at Isandhlana, and an urgent message was despatched to the front. This message the General disregarded, his aide-de-camp’s telescope having assured him that the camp was unmolested. Not everyone, however, shared this optimistic opinion, for Colonel Harness and Major Black, believing the messenger’s story to be true, started back to Isandhlana on their own account, taking four companies with them. But, to their grief, they were peremptorily recalled. Had they continued their journey they would have been in time to witness the end of the death struggle which was even then in progress at the camp; though it is doubtful if they could have done anything to save their comrades. Eight hundred against twenty thousand. What chance had they? By noon the crescent of the Zulu army had enveloped the camp. Drawing closer and still closer in, the ringed warriors, the cream of Cetewayo’s fighting men, armed with assegai, knobkerry, and rifle, burst upon Durnford’s little company as they hastily tried to form a laager with the waggons. Durnford himself was in the thick of it, encouraging the troopers, placing a gun here and ordering a charge there. But it was all in vain. Before the fierce fire of thousands of Zulu rifles, and before the host of assegais that hurtled through the air, the redcoats and the Basutos of the Native Contingent went down like corn under the sickle. They fought well, as desperate men will when driven to bay; but while they fired and reloaded and fired again behind them came the right horn of the overlapping Zulu army to strike at them in the rear. _That_, and not a panic-stricken flight, accounted for the many assegai wounds which were afterwards observed in the fallen men’s backs.