Then, through the rolling ocean of smoke, he saw officers and men trying to hack away and beat out the burning timbers—­saw a reckless carbineer—­his own tent-mate—­dismount and run out across the planking which was already afire, saw him stumble and roll over as a bullet hit him, get to his knees blindly, trip and fall flat in the smoke.  Then Fear bellowed in Berkley’s ear; but he had already clapped spurs to his horse, cantering out across the burning planking and straight into the smoke pall.

“Where are you, Burgess?” he shouted.  The Fear of Death stiffened his lips as he reined up in the whirling spark-shot obscurity.  “Burgess—­damn you—­answer me, can’t you!” he stammered, half strangled in the smoke, trying to master his terrified mount with rein and knee and heel.

Vaguely he heard comrades shouting for him to come back, heard shells exploding amid the smoke, wheeled his staggering horse, bent swiftly and grasped at an inanimate form in the smoke, missed, dismounted and clutched the senseless carbineer—­his comrade—­and once his valet.

[Illustration:  “He dismounted and clutched the senseless carbineer.”]

Out of the fiery tunnel came tearing his terrified horse, riderless; out of the billowing, ruddy vapours reeled Berkley, dragging the carbineer.

It was the regiment cheering him that the Zouaves heard.

The fields were now swimming in bluish smoke; through it the Zouaves were reforming as they marched.  Little heaps of brilliant colour dotting the meadow were being lifted and carried off the field by comrades; a few dismounted carbineers ran hither and thither, shooting hopelessly crippled horses.  Here and there a dead lancer lay flat in the grass, his scarlet pennon a vivid spot beside him.

The hill road to the burning bridge was now choked with Colonel Arran’s regiment, returning to the crest of the hill; through the blackish and rolling smoke from the bridge infantry were creeping swiftly forward toward the river bank, and very soon the intermittent picket firing began again, running up and down the creek bank and out across the swamp lands, noisily increasing as it woke up vicious volleys from the woods on the opposite bank, and finally aroused the cannon to thunderous anger.

Berkley, standing to horse with his regiment on the sparsely wooded hill crest, could see the crowding convolutions of smoke rising from the thickets, as each gun spoke from the Confederate batteries.  But to him their thunder was like the thunder in a dream.

Hour after hour the regiment stood to horse; hour after hour the battle roared west and south of them.  An irregular cloud, slender at the base, spreading on top, towered to mid zenith above the forest.  Otherwise, save for the fleecy explosion of shells in the quivering blue vault above, nothing troubled the sunshine that lay over hill and valley, wood and river and meadowland.

McDunn’s battery was not firing; the Zouaves lay dozing awake in the young clover, the Lancers, standing to horse, looked out across the world of trees and saw nothing stirring save a bird or two winging hastily northward.