They stood facing the woods, lances poised, for about ten minutes, when a general officer with dragoon escort came galloping down the road and through the meadow toward McDunn’s battery.  It was Claymore, their general of brigade.

“Retire by prolonge!” he shouted to the battery commander, pulling in his sweating horse.  “We’ve got to get out of this!” And to Colonel Arran, who had ridden up, flushed and astonished:  “We’ve got to leave this place,” he repeated shortly.  “They’re driving the Zouaves in on us.”

All along the edge of the woods the red breeches of the Zouaves were reappearing, slowly retreating in excellent order before something as yet unseen.  The men turned every few paces to fire by companies, only to wheel again, jog-trot toward the rear, halt, load, swing to deliver their fire, then resume their jogging retreat.

Back they fell, farther, farther, while McDunn’s battery continued to fire and retire by prolonge, and the Lancers, long weapons disengaged, accompanied them, ready to support the guns in an emergency.

The emergency seemed very near.  Farther to the left a blue regiment appeared enveloped in spouting smoke, fairly hurled bodily from the woods; Egerton’s 20th Dragoons came out of a concealed valley on a trot, looking behind them, their rear squadron firing from the saddle in orderly retreat; the Zouaves, powder soiled, drenched in sweat, bloody, dishevelled, passed to the left of the battery and lay down.

Then, from far along the stretch of woods, arose a sound, incessant, high-pitched—­a sustained treble cadence, nearer, nearer, louder, shriller, like the excited cry of a hunting pack, bursting into a paroxysm of hysterical chorus as a long line of gray men leaped from the wood’s edge and swept headlong toward the guns.

Berkley felt every nerve in his body leap as his lance fell to a level with eight hundred other lances; he saw the battery bury itself in smoke as gun after gun drove its cannister into obscurity or ripped the smoke with sheets of grape; he saw the Zouaves rise from the grass, deliver their fire, sink back, rise again while their front spouted smoke and flame.

The awful roar of the firing to the right deafened him; he caught a glimpse of squadrons of regular cavalry in the road, slinging carbines and drawing sabres; a muffled blast of bugles reached his ears; and the nest moment he was trotting out into the smoke.

After that it was a gallop at full speed; and he remembered nothing very distinctly, saw nothing clearly, except that, everywhere among his squadron ran yelling men on foot, shooting, lunging with bayonets, striking with clubbed rifles.  Twice he felt the shocking impact of his lance point; once he drove the ferruled counterpoise at a man who went down under his horse’s feet.  One moment there was a perfect whirlwind of scarlet pennons flapping around him, another and he was galloping alone across the grass, lance crossed from right to left, tugging at his bridle.  Then he set the reeking ferrule in his stirrup boot, slung the shaft from the braided arm loop, and drew his revolver—­the new weapon lately issued, with its curious fixed ammunition and its cap imbedded.