As it was, Steven could gather but a confused impression of the flying troop as it thundered past—of a whirl, bucketing, straining, pumping, clanking, splashing; of men's faces, crimson, distorted, open-mouthed; of bridles slavered with blood and foam; of craning horses' necks, and nostrils afire!
Geiger-Hans gave a shrill laugh:
"The most gallant the Hussars of the Guard of His Majesty Jerome the First (and last!) in full rout! And, oh, shadow of Moscow! who are the pursuers?"
CHAPTER XVIII
THE RAID
"List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle rendered you in music."
(King Henry V.).
The forest was now alive with hoarse, guttural cries, as if the wooded depths had released some giant brood of ravens. And then, helter-skelter, even as the last belated hussar, blood streaming from a black gash in his forehead, clattered heavily rearmost of his comrades, reins loose, clinging to the saddle—they came! Squat riders on squat horses—cattle and man as shaggy and unkempt one as the other—with long tags of hair bobbing round wild-bearded faces, pointed fur caps drawn down to the eyes, sheepskin-clad knees up almost to the chin, stirruped with rope, brandishing rough spears; miscellaneous booty—a goose, a sucking-pig, a frying-pan, maybe a cottage clock—swinging at the saddle-bow! They came, shouting their crow-call, exulting, squealing, grunting! They came, filled the road with clamour and clatter, and stench ... and were gone before Steven could draw, it seemed to him, the full breath of his amazement!
Like the second gust of the hurricane, they had gathered, broken past them, and were lost; the clamour of their tempest way rising loud, then growing swiftly faint in the distance, as the valley received them.
"Now," said Geiger-Hans, looking up, "here is an experience for your English-bred youth. Fate has annihilated the centuries; you have beheld the passage of the Huns! Pouah! what a wild-beast trail they have left behind them! To think that Napoleon should have gone to seek these wolves and jackals in their steppes, and spread the Cossack over the face of Europe!"
He sprang out of the ditch; and the grey, much injured in feeling, snorting and sullenly upheaving its haunches, was induced to follow. A roll of far-off musketry crepitated up to them from the plain.