"The artillery won't get any of the credit for this day's work in any case, so what's the odds?" Mercer replied. "Fraser knows what we're about. He was here a short time ago, very much upset from burying poor Ramsay."
The Colonel had one foot in the stirrup, but he paused and said sharply: "Is Ramsay dead?"
"Fraser buried him on the field not half an hour ago. Bolton's gone too, I believe. Was Norman Ramsay a friend of yours, sir? Pride of our service, you know."
"Yes," replied Audley curtly, and hoisted himself into the saddle, wincing a little from the pain of his wounded thigh. "I must push on before your steel-clad gentry come up again. Good luck to you!"
"The same to you, sir, and you'd better hurry. Cannonade's slackening."
The pause following the third onset of the cavalry was of longer duration than those which had preceded it. Ney had sent for reinforcements, and was reassembling his squadrons. To Milhaud's and Lefebvre Desnoutttes' original forty-three squadrons were now added both Kellermann's divisions and thirteen squadrons of Count Guyot's dragoons and Grenadiers a Cheval, making a grand total of seventy-seven squadrons. Not a foot of the ground, a third of a mile in width, lying between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, could be seen for the glittering mass of horsemen that covered it. It was an array to strike terror into the bravest heart. They advanced in columns of squadrons: gigantic carabiniers in white with gold breastplates; dragoons wearing tiger-skin helmets under their brass casques, and carrying long guns at their saddlebows; grenadiers in imperial blue, with towering bearskin shakos; steel-fronted cuirassiers; gay chasseurs; and white-plumed lancers, riding under the flutter of their own pennons. They did not advance with the brilliant dash of the British brigades, but at a purposeful trot. As they approached the Allied position the earth seemed to shake under them, and the sound of the horses' hooves was like dull thunder, swelling in volume. Fifteen thousand of Napoleon's proudest horsemen were sent against the Allied infantry squares, to break through the Duke's hard-held centre. They came over the crest in wave upon wave; riding up in the teeth of the guns until the entire plateau was a turbulent sea of bright, shifting colours, tossing plumes, and gleaming sabres. The fallen men and horses encumbering the ground hampered their advance, and once again the musketry fire from the front faces of the squares caused the squadrons to swerve off to right and left. Lancers, grenadiers, dragoons jostled one another in the press, their formation lost; but the tide swept on up to the second line of squares, and surrounded them. Some of the cavalry pushed right down the slope to the artillery wagons in the rear, and slew the drivers and horses, but though men were dropping all the time in the squares, the gaps were instantly filled, and when a square became disordered, the sharp command: "Close up!" was obeyed before the Cavalry could take advantage of the momentary confusion. For three-quarters of an hour the squares were almost swamped by the overwhelming hordes that pressed up to them, fell back again before the fire of the muskets, and rode round and round, striking with swords and sabres at the bayonets, discharging carbines, and making isolated dashes at the corners of the squares.
The French were driven off the plateau, when in hopeless confusion, by the charge of the Allied cavalry, but they retreated only to re-form. The cannonading burst forth again, and the sorely tried infantry, deafened by the roar of artillery, many of them wounded and all of them worn out by the grim struggle to keep their ranks closed, lay down on the torn ground, each man wondering in his heart what would be the end.
When the squadrons came over the crest again, Colonel Audley was nearly caught among them. He was mounted on his last horse, the Earl of Worth's Rufus, and owed his preservation to the hunter's pace. He snatched out his sword when he saw the cavalry bearing down upon him, threw off a lance by his right side, and clapping his spurs into Rufus's flanks, galloped for his life. One of Maitland's squares opened its files to receive them, and he rode into the middle of it and the files closed behind him.
"Hallo, Audley!" drawled a tall Major, who was having sticking-plaster put on a sabre cut. "That was a near thing, wasn't it?"
"Too damned near for my taste!" replied Audley, sliding out of the saddle and looping Rufus's bridge over his arm. He eased his wounded leg, with a grimace. "See anything of the Duke, Stuart?"