THE SURPRISE AT M‘NEILL’S ZEREBA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1219, 10 July 1885, Page 3

THE SURPRISE AT M‘NEILL’S ZEREBA.

The correspondent of the “ Hally Telegraph ” has written a graphic account of the surprise at Sir John M‘Neill’s zereba. He says:—“ Befpre the camp knows that the desert warriors are charging they are there. Covered by our galloping pickets, they fling themselves unperceived upon our troops standing at ease, and, concealed by the dust raised by the .startled Lancers, are positively already hacking and hewing before bayonets can be fixed or swords drawn. The work of blood had thus begun, and in tierce, savage earnest. Holding their swords in both hands, the fanatics slashed blindly to light and left, here dashing a camel, there cutting down a man. The spearsmen stabbed,not at random, hut indiscriminately, and beasts, camp followers, sold ers, taken utterlv by surprise, went down before them in helpless slaughter. The place where the orderly convoy had stood with its camels in square, mules in camp, followers at their stations, regiments drawn up, became at once, as by some horrible sudden sorcery, a crimson shambles, and there went up Out of the mass of terror stiicken men such a cry.of agony and despair and bloodthirsty rage as might make a man wake in his sleep to dream of it for years to come. A wild, blood curdling wail of rage and fear it was, together with here and scream so sharp as to be heard above the rest in al. its individual misery But in less than half a minute the convoy broke clean wild. The camp followers fled, their beasts got loose, and, as if they were fleeing in mad fright before a prairie fire, came thundering down upon the zereba—the avalanche had not got fairly under way. It moved forward slowly, but with invsistable force. The camels being tied together, the mules chained, the poor brutes were hopelessly entangled with each other and with the loads they were drawing. Each impeded the other’s escqie, and, as the Hadendowa’s swoids flashed about among them, hamstrung camels and mules with their throats cat fell to the ground to be dragged along as dead weight by their comrades, in a few moments of this mad, horrible butchery panic grew supreme, and every beast frantically struggling to get free, the ropes and chains were broken, harness was kicked.free, loads tumbled, carts were shaken off, and then, as with a simultaneous impulse, the whole multitude dashed set ward. It was a wave of biting, kicking, plunging brutes, beside themselves wit hj the pain of wounds, maddened by the instinct of imminent death, I was right, in its way. My only chonce seemed to get into the zereba, so I turned towards it. But in an instant the galloping beasts were up with me, round me, ahead of me. Streaming along with them came the camp followers, flying for life, as well they might; for with horror I saw the Hadendowas thick among them, hard at massacre.” The correspondent goes on to describe how, carried past the zereba in the furious torrent of frightened animals and under fire of our own men, he at last shook himself free and escaped to Snakim. Ho closes his letter with this :—“ The naked fact is this—that the cimp was rushed by an enemy who wore previously reported to bo close at baud ; and at a time when we had been especially warned wo should be attacked. The unhappy camp followers and the camels paid in merciless butchery for all that they may have done ; but the fault lies with those who ought to have protected the lives of the men entrusted to them as carefully as if fclioj had teen those of their wives and children—and who did not do their duty. That is the truth, as everybody here knows, and L nm bound, by ray profession, to bull it.”