Suddenly a great bank of white smoke pushes upward from behind the wall.  Another and another—­a dozen roll up before the thunder of the explosions and the humming of the missiles reach our ears and the missiles themselves come bounding through clouds of dust into our covert, knocking over here and there a man and causing a temporary distraction, a passing thought of self.

The dust drifts away.  Incredible!—­that enchanted horse and rider have passed a ravine and are climbing another slope to unveil another conspiracy of silence, to thwart the will of another armed host.  Another moment and that crest too is in eruption.  The horse rears and strikes the air with its forefeet.  They are down at last.  But look again—­the man has detached himself from the dead animal.  He stands erect, motionless, holding his sabre in his right hand straight above his head.  His face is toward us.  Now he lowers his hand to a level with his face and moves it outward, the blade of the sabre describing a downward curve.  It is a sign to us, to the world, to posterity.  It is a hero’s salute to death and history.

Again the spell is broken; our men attempt to cheer; they are choking with emotion; they utter hoarse, discordant cries; they clutch their weapons and press tumultuously forward into the open.  The skirmishers, without orders, against orders, are going forward at a keen run, like hounds unleashed.  Our cannon speak and the enemy’s now open in full chorus; to right and left as far as we can see, the distant crest, seeming now so near, erects its towers of cloud and the great shot pitch roaring down among our moving masses.  Flag after flag of ours emerges from the wood, line after line sweeps forth, catching the sunlight on its burnished arms.  The rear battalions alone are in obedience; they preserve their proper distance from the insurgent front.

The commander has not moved.  He now removes his field-glass from his eyes and glances to the right and left.  He sees the human current flowing on either side of him and his huddled escort, like tide waves parted by a rock.  Not a sign of feeling in his face; he is thinking.  Again he directs his eyes forward; they slowly traverse that malign and awful crest.  He addresses a calm word to his bugler. Tra-la-la!  Tra-la-la! The injunction has an imperiousness which enforces it.  It is repeated by all the bugles of all the sub-ordinate commanders; the sharp metallic notes assert themselves above the hum of the advance and penetrate the sound of the cannon.  To halt is to withdraw.  The colors move slowly back; the lines face about and sullenly follow, bearing their wounded; the skirmishers return, gathering up the dead.

Ah, those many, many needless dead!  That great soul whose beautiful body is lying over yonder, so conspicuous against the sere hillside—­could it not have been spared the bitter consciousness of a vain devotion?  Would one exception have marred too much the pitiless perfection of the divine, eternal plan?