of an English gentleman, fail of their effect. On the contrary, when, a fortnight later, Alston's Horse formed that fatal ring on Isandhlwana's bloody field, they flashed through the brain of more than one despairing man, so that he set his teeth and died the harder for them.
"Bravo, my young Viking!" said Mr. Alston to Ernest, while the roof was still echoing to the cheers evoked by his speech, "the old Berserker spirit is cropping up, eh?" He knew that Ernest's mother's family, like so many of the old Eastern County stocks, were of Danish extraction.
It was a great night for Ernest.
Two days later Alston's Horse, sixty-four strong, marched out of Pretoria with a military band playing before. Alas! they never marched back again.
At the neck of the poort or pass the band and the crowd of ladies and gentlemen who had accompanied them halted, and, having given them three cheers, turned and left them. Ernest, too, turned and gazed at the pretty town, with its white houses and rose-hedges red with bloom, nestling on the plain beneath, and wondered if he would ever see it again. He never did.
The troop was then ordered to march at ease in half-sections, and Ernest rode up to the side of Alston; on his other side was the boy Roger, now about fourteen years of age, who acted as Alston's aide-de-camp, and was in high spirits at the prospect of the coming campaign. Presently Alston sent his son back to the other end of the line on some errand.
Ernest watched him as he galloped off, and a thought struck him.
"Alston," he said, "do you think that it is wise to bring that boy into this business?"
His friend slewed himself round sharply in the saddle.
"Why not?" he asked, in his deliberate way.
"Well, you know there is a risk."
"And why should not the boy run risks as well as the rest of us? Look here, Ernest, when I first met you there in Guernsey I was going to see the place where my wife was brought up. Do you know how she died?"
"I have heard she died a violent death; I do not know how."
"Then I will tell you, though it costs me something to speak of it. She died by a Zulu assegai, a week after the boy was born. She saved his life by hiding him under a heap of straw. Don't ask me particulars; I can't bear to talk of it. Perhaps now you will understand why I am commanding a corps enrolled to serve against the Zulus. Perhaps, too, you will understand why the lad is with me. We go to avenge my wife and his mother, or to fall in the attempt. I have waited long for the opportunity; it has come."
Ernest relapsed into silence, and presently fell back to his troop.
On the 20th of January, Alston's Horse, having moved down by easy marches from Pretoria, camped at Rorke's Drift, on the Buffalo River, not far from a store and a thatched building being used as a hospital, which were destined to become historical. Here orders reached them to march on the following day and join No. 3 column, with which was Lord Chelmsford himself, and which was camped about nine miles from the Buffalo River at a spot called Isandhlwana, or the "Place of the Little Hand." Next day, the 21st of January, the corps moved on accordingly, and following the waggon-track that runs past the Inhlazatye Mountain, by midday came up to the camp, where about twenty-five hundred men of all arms were assembled under the immediate command of Colonel Glynn. Their camp, which was about eight hundred yards square, was pitched facing a wide plain, with its back towards a precipitous, slab-sided hill, of the curious formation sometimes to be seen in South Africa. This was Isandhlwana.
"Hullo!" said Alston, as, on reaching the summit of the neck over which the waggon-road runs, they came in sight of the camp, "they are not entrenched. By Jove," he added, after scanning the camp carefully, "they haven't even got a waggon-laager!" and he whistled expressively.
"What do you mean?" asked Ernest.
Mr. Alston so rarely showed surprise that he knew there must be something very wrong.
"I mean, Ernest, that there is nothing to prevent the camp from being destroyed, and every soul in it, by a couple of Zulu regiments, if they choose to make a night attack. How they are to be kept out, I should like to know, in the dark, when you can't see to shoot them, unless there is some barrier? These officers, fresh from home, don't know what a Zulu charge is, that is very clear. I only hope they won't have occasion to find out. Look there," and he pointed to a waggon lumbering along before them, on the top of which, among a lot of other miscellaneous articles, lay a bundle of cricketing bats and wickets, "they think that they are going on a picnic. What is the use, too, I should like to know, of sending four feeble columns sprawling over Zululand, to run the risk of being crushed in detail by a foe that can move from point to point at the rate of fifty miles a day, and which can at any moment slip past them and turn Natal into a howling wilderness? There, it is no use grumbling; I only hope I may be wrong. Get back to your troop, Ernest, and let us come into camp smartly. Form fours--trot!"
On arrival in the camp, Mr. Alston learned, on reporting himself to the officer commanding, that two strong parties of mounted men under the command of Major Dartnell were out on a reconnaissance towards the Inhlazatye Mountain, in which direction the Zulus were supposed to be in force. The orders he received were to rest his horses, as he might be required to join the mounted force with Major Dartnell on the morrow.
That night, as Alston and Ernest stood together at the door of their tent, smoking a pipe before turning in, they had some conversation. It was a beautiful night, and the stars shone brightly. Ernest looked at them, and thought on how many of man's wars those stars had looked.
"Star-gazing?" asked Mr. Alston.
"I was contemplating our future homes," said Ernest, laughing.
"Ah, you believe that, do you? think you are immortal, and that sort of thing?"
"Yes; I believe that we shall live many lives, and that some of them will be there," and he pointed to the stars. "Don't you?"
"I don't know. I think it rather presumptuous. Why should you propose that for you is reserved a bright destiny among the stars more than for these?" and he put out his hand and clasped several of a swarm of flying-ants which were passing at the time. "Just think how small must be the difference between these ants and us in the eyes of a Power who can produce both. These have their homes, their government, their colonies, their drones and workers. They enslave and annex, lay up riches, and, to bring the argument to an appropriate conclusion, make peace and war. What then is the difference? We are bigger, walk on two legs, have a larger capacity for suffering, and, we believe, a soul. Is it so great that we should suppose that for us is reserved a heaven, or all the glorious worlds which people space--for these, annihilation? Perhaps we are at the top of the tree of development, and for them may be the future, for us the annihilation. Who knows? There, fly away, and make the most of the present, for nothing else is certain."
"You overlook religion entirely."
"Religion? Which religion? There are so many. Our Christian God, Buddha, Mohammed, Brahma, all number their countless millions of worshippers. Each promises a different thing, each commands the equally intense belief of his worshippers, for with them all blind faith is a condition precedent; and each appears to satisfy their spiritual aspirations. Can all of these be true religions? Each holds the other false and outside the pale; each tries to convert the other, and fails. There are many lesser ones of which the same thing may be said."
"But the same spirit underlies them all."
"Perhaps. There is much that is noble in all religions, but there is also much that is terrible. To the
