“Do you know what passed here five minutes ago?”
“The attack of the bastion was settled!” cried a captain.
“It was; and who was to lead the assault? do you know that?”
“No.”
“A colonel FROM EGYPT.”
At that there was a groan from the men.
“With detachments from the other brigades.”
“AH!” an angry roar.
Colonel Dujardin walked quickly down between the two lines, looking with his fiery eye into the men’s eyes on his right. Then he came back on the other side, and, as he went, he lighted those men’s eyes with his own. It was a torch passing along a line of ready gas-lights.
“The work to us!” he cried in a voice like a clarion (it fired the hearts as his eye had fired the eyes)—“The triumph to strangers! Our fatigues and our losses have not gained the brigade the honor of going out at those fellows that have killed so many of our comrades.”