The shadow of death hovered over the sleeping armies. But a few miles apart they lay, thousand upon thousand, covering the frozen earth like a pall—the one exultant with victory gained, and eager for the morning to reap their harvest, the other equally eager and equally confident. But Death, looking down, laughed, well pleased. What mattered to him the paltry triumph of green or red. His feast he knew was assured.
The hours passed, the darkness deepened, and then rapidly began to fade, the splendour of the stars dulled. A figure—one of three British soldiers lying apart from the rest—stirred in his sleep, and suddenly awoke. He sat up, with a loud clanging in his ears, for the telephone-bell at his feet had spoken sharply, and now it was ringing again, a continuous vibrating sound.
The signal for the curtain's rising had come.
"That you, Sir Hector?" breathed a voice along the wires, that of Lord Fellowes, five miles ahead. "I'm going on, sir."
A quarter of an hour, half an hour, three-quarters of an hour passed, but still the silence remained unbroken, though the black was all grey now. Then suddenly Graeme sprang up, his body quivering and his eyes staring ahead.
"Surely that was a shot? And, yes, another; heavy firing now and—and it is—it is cheering. They've done it," and Hector pounced on the sleeping Godwin and shook him awake.
"Bloody victory!" he shouted. "D'ye hear, Old Slugabed? Get up, blast you, and rouse the army. Bring 'em on at a double after me, Hearts of Oak leading, don't forget that. Sound the 'rouse,' Trumpeter; Bobby, come on with me," and away flew Graeme to his horse, the high notes of the bugles now ringing through the dawn—their sound soon to be drowned in the swelling roar of the waking army.
"Forward, forward," he shouted, and was gone, swallowed up in the icy morning mist. His horse's hoofs rang on the iron-bound road, as he thundered on to the ridge ahead, whence a confused shouting was heard, punctuated with the dull thudding of shots and the scream of dying horses. On he rushed, the ridge rising darkly before him, and then he was at its foot, and up and through the trees that clothed it, his horse shying at prone green figures and grim silent shapes of guns.
At length he reached the top and drew rein, looking down into a huge cauldron of mist beyond, where a mighty conflict was now raging—a strange phantasmagoria of overturned tents, riderless horses, and fleeing phantom shapes of men.
Truly, a merry Christmas for Uriel, lying still and silent, with a broken bayonet in his breast, and his erstwhile jubilant army a shrieking mob of fugitives.