Dead men, everywhere dead men -- they
lay about in knots, they were flung by ones and twos in every
position upon the open spaces, for all the world like the people
on the grass in one of the London parks on a particularly hot
Sunday in August. In front of this entrance, on a space which
had been cleared of dead and of the shields and spears which
were scattered in all directions as they had fallen or been thrown
from the hands of their owners, stood and lay the survivors of
the awful struggle, and at their feet were four wounded men.
We had gone into the fight thirty strong, and of the thirty
but fifteen remained alive, and five of them (including Mr Mackenzie)
were wounded, two mortally. Of those who held the entrance,
Curtis and the Zulu alone remained. Good had lost five men killed,
I had lost two killed, and Mackenzie no less than five out of
the six with him. As for the survivors they were, with the exception
of myself who had never come to close quarters, red from head
to foot -- Sir Henry's armour might have been painted that colour
-- and utterly exhausted, except Umslopogaas, who, as he grimly
stood on a little mound above a heap of dead, leaning as usual
upon his axe, did not seem particularly distressed, although
the skin over the hole in his head palpitated violently.
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