Ballads of Brave Deeds :: :: University of Virginia Library

A full account of the gallant way in which Mr William Fletcher, uncommissioned officer of Royal Engineers, on February 7th, 1895, with a mere handful of men, held a halffinished stockade at Malemya's Town against the chief Kawinga and 1500 warriors, and after fighting for four hours, finding that his ammunition was failing, charged and put them to flight,—was given in the British Central Africa Gazette, 11th March 1895.

Mr Alfred Sharpe, British Consul for the territories under British influence to the North of the Zambesi, who came to the relief of the garrison after the attack, corroborated the account, and gave me further details of one of the most daring sorties in the face of overwhelming numbers that was probably ever made.

The name Fletcher may imply that the hero's ancestors were arrow-makers.

We were eighteen men all told that day
Inside a half-built wooden pen,
When the king Kawinga came our way,
With his fifteen hundred fighting men.

But eight were Sikhs as tried as good,
And nine we had taught to handle a gun;
And the fury of battle was in my blood,
For I was an arrow-maker's son.

Long years ago in the green-wood land
With little to eat and many to fight,
My father's fathers were deft of hand
To shape the bolt, and to feather its flight.

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And here we were in the rough stockade,
Undyked, unmounded, a handful pent,
With none to succour or send for aid,
And a King's whole tribe on our murder bent.

Their bugles sounded, their tom-toms beat,
Spears flashed and banners were waved on high,
There was crackle of forest and trample of feet,
And “Loot! Loot! Loot!” was the warrior cry.

Each black-heart serpent crawled in the grass
With his pouches of poison and fiery tongue,
And bullets in thousands seemed to pass
As the spite of their death-shower over us sung.

Never before in that warrior world
Had a few in the face of such hundreds stood,
Never before had such hail been hurled,
And spears so thirsted to drink of blood.

Never since Africans hammered a blade,
Or bows were fashioned, or javelins thrown,
Was heard in the forest such fusillade
As scared the wild dogs of Malemya's town.

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But our triggers were true and our eyes saw well,
As prone on the ground we eighteen lay,
And all in a ring the black men fell,
And the fifteen hundred were held at bay.

But the sun came over the Baobab trees,
For we fought from the morn till the height of noon;
Not once did we dare to rise to our knees,
But we knew our powder must fail us soon.

“Now fix your bayonets,” loud I cried,
“Let us give them a cheer, and charge, my men,
It is better by far to fall outside
Than die like beasts in a cattle pen.”

So we leapt to our feet and nine by nine
Straight forth of the shelter dared to go,
With bayonets fixed, and in double line
We fired a volley and rushed on the foe.

And the cheer we gave as beneath the smoke
Of our own fierce volley we charged like flame,
It bred such panic, the foemen broke,
For they deemed that devils to fight with them came.

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By the Yaos, Walolos and Coast-men slain,
By the spear and the matchlock cast away,
Eight miles thro' the forest the road was plain
To the fort we had held for our Queen that day.

Ah! give me a handful of Sikhs to shoot,
To cheer and to charge from their lions' den,
And the King Kawinga may come for loot
With his fifteen hundred fighting men!