Our miscellaneous sign-board had done its work.
"By Jove, young un, you're right! And in quarter column, too! We've got 'em on toast—on toast, egad!"
I never heard any one not in a book say "egad" before, so I saw something really out of the way was indeed up.
The Colonel was a man of prompt and decisive action. He sent the orderly to tell the Major to advance two companies on the left flank and take cover. Then we led him back through the wood the nearest way, because he said he must rejoin the main body at once. We found the main body Very friendly with Noël and H. O. and the others, and Alice was talking to the Cocked-Hatted One as if she had known him all her life. "I think he's a general in disguise," Noël said. "He's been giving us chocolate out of a pocket in his saddle." Oswald thought about the roast rabbit then—and he is not ashamed to own it—yet he did not say a word. But Alice is really not a bad sort. She had saved two bars of chocolate for him and Dicky. Even in war girls can sometimes be useful in their humble way.
The Colonel fussed about and said, "Take cover there!" and everybody hid in the ditch, and the horses and the Cocked Hat, with Alice, retreated down the road out of sight. We were in the ditch too. It was muddy—but nobody thought of their boots in that perilous moment. It seemed a long time we were crouching there. Oswald began to feel the water squelching in his boots; so we held our breath and listened. Oswald laid his ear to the road like a Red Indian. You would not do this in time of peace, but when your county is in danger you care but little about keeping your ears clean. His backwoods strategy was successful. He rose and dusted himself and said:
"They're coming!"
It was true. The footsteps of the approaching foe were now to be heard quite audibly, even by ears in their natural position. The wicked enemy approached. They were marching with a careless swaggeringness that showed how little they suspected the horrible doom which was about to teach them England's might and supremeness. Just as the enemy turned the corner so that we could see them, the Colonel shouted:
"Right section, fire!" and there was a deafening banging.
The enemy's officer said something, and then the enemy got confused and tried to get into the fields through the hedges. But all was vain. There was firing now from our men, on the left as well as the right. And then our Colonel strode nobly up to the enemy's Colonel and demanded surrender. He told me so afterwards. His exact words are only known to himself and the other Colonel. But the enemy's Colonel said, "I would rather die than surrender," or words to that effect.
Our Colonel returned to his men and gave the order to fix bayonets, and even Oswald felt his manly cheek turn pale at the thought of the amount of blood about to be shed. What would have happened can never now be revealed. For at this moment a man on a piebald horse came clattering over a hedge—as carelessly as if the air was not full of lead and steel at all. Another man rode behind him with a lance and a red pennon on it. I think he must have been the enemy's General coming to tell his men not to throw away their lives on a forlorn hope, for directly he said they were captured the enemy gave in and owned that they were. The enemy's Colonel saluted and ordered his men to form quarter column again. I should have thought he would have had about enough of that myself.