THE DEVIL CAPTAIN.

Patea Mail, Volume V, Issue 494, 25 February 1880, Page 2

THE DEVIL CAPTAIN.

The late General Donovan, known to almost everyone some years back, in the city of Cape Town, &c., as the man with the lion’s voice, for many years commanded that famous corps, the Cape Mounted Rifles. As an evidence of the strength of his lungs, it is stated he could drill his regiment with perfect ease a quarter of a mile off. He was at the time of the first Kaffir war a captain commanding a troop in the above-named regiment. Ho was over six teet in height, perfectly proportioned, and possessed of muscular strength rarely given to human beings. Scarce knowing what fear meant, a consummate horseman, well skilled with his weapons, he invariably defeated the enemy whenever they had an encounter, hims If coming off seathebss/ so that he got to be regarded by the natives as bearing a charmed life. The Kaffirs then, as now, fought with address and determination, and wore, and are, peculiarly cruel to their captured. If not immediately and humanely slain by innumerable stabs of the deadly assegai, they were usually reserved for the fearful torture of being flayed alive after sufi’-r----ing nameless indignities. The Kaffirs, particularly the Zulus, made a vow that if ever the “ devil captain,” as they called Donovan, or wii&t was the equivalent in' their gutturals, fell into their hands, his fate would be worse than any that preceded him, and he knew they were men of their word. In one of the fights that took place in the up-country, not far from where the recent tragedies were enuctec, the captain's luck seemed to have descried him, and he and Ids command fell into an ambush in a gully between two rifts of hills, common in that country. His men were almost all eit-imr killed or wounded, his horse shot iVuur under him, sabre broken, and pistols empty. lie apparently wis at the enemy’s mercy. Donovan knew that small mercy would be accorded him, and as the two Zulu chiefs, famed for their strength and bravery, advanced to cap-’ tnre him alive, he seized one literally in each hand, and with his enormous strength, doubled by his despair of the moment, brought their heals together with a deadly crash. One of the wonti'Dil’ men afterwards said that it was like the sound of broken bottles. One chief was killed, and the other so maimed that he lived but a day or two. The rest of the baud fled with terror, now thoroughly convinced that he was not a man, but a demon. The survivors and the dead' chiefs were shortly after brought in by reinforcements ol the regiment. Donovan was hardly ever again opposed during the continuance ot the war.