"Yes," answered the subaltern, "like potting rabbits. I think I could have wiped that fellow's eye if I'd been there. The bayonet versus lance was done better."
Jack glanced round, and saw the speaker smoking a pipe, while Sergeant Sparks tramped along close behind with an approving smile upon his face, as though, if questioned, he would have made exactly the same observation himself. It was no time to be fastidious or sentimental; the callous indifference to life and death, whether real or assumed, was the thing wanted. Here, at least, were two superiors who did not seem to consider the situation very serious. The young soldier shifted his rifle to the other shoulder, and grasped the butt with a firmer grip.
For an hour, which might have been a lifetime, the square toiled on, every now and again changing direction to gain more open ground; the stretchers and cacolets constantly receiving fresh burdens. A man, two files in front of our hero, went down with a bullet through the head, and those in rear stumbled over him.
"Close up! close up, and keep that corner blocked in!"
With mouth parched with the stifling heat and dust, Jack sucked at the lukewarm dregs of his water-bottle, and wondered if the river itself would ever quench his thirst. "Swabs," his rear-rank man, kept fingering the loose cartridges in his pouch. At length the marksman's patience and sang froid seemed exhausted.
"Is this going on for ever?" he blurted out, "Ain't we ever going to give it 'em back?"
Hardly had the question been asked, when the answer was made evident in a most unmistakable manner.
Away in the grass to the left front a number of white and green flags, mounted on long poles, had been for some time visible; and at this point, as though they sprang out of the ground, swarms of Arabs suddenly made their appearance, and with headlong speed and reckless devotion charged down upon the left-front corner of the square. The scattered line of skirmishers turned and fled for their lives; while behind them, like a devouring tidal wave, the vast black mass rushed forward, their fierce shouts filling the air with a hollow roar like that of a ground sea.
Like many another young soldier, with nothing but a few hundred yards of desert between himself and death, Jack's first impulse was to raise his rifle and blaze away at random as fast as he could load; but the clear, calm voices in the supernumerary rank, and the old habit of discipline, held him in check.
"Steady, men:—Aim low—Fire a volley!"