Page:The true story book.djvu/168

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150
THE TALE OF ISANDHLWANA

mountains, and defended themselves there till their ammunition was exhausted, and their ring broken by the assegai. All about the plain lay Englishmen and Zulus, as they had died in the dread struggle: here side by side, amidst rusted rifles and bent assegais, here their bony arms still locked in the last hug of death, and yonder the Zulu with the white man's bayonet through his skull, the soldier with the Zulu's assegai in what had been his heart. One man was found, who, when his cartridges were spent, and his rifle



was broken, had defended himself to the end with a tent-hammer that lay among his bones, and another was stretched beneath the precipice, from the crest of which he had been hurled.

Well, they buried them where they were discovered, and there they sleep soundly beneath the shadow of Isandhlwana's cliff.


And now a few words more, and this true story will be finished. We conquered the Zulus at last, at a battle called Ulundi, where they hurled themselves in vain upon the bullets and bayonets of the