Then we were there, so unexpectedly that I stared amazedly at the long, black monsters which the gunners could not spike.
I sprang on one and waved the colours, while the men cheered madly.
Suddenly, like a flash of lightning, there went by a ragged line of horsemen, spurring hard, and leaning over the heads of their animals that, with foam-splashed lips, distended nostrils, and heaving sides, strained every muscle.
We gazed open-mouthed at the apparition, and then gave ourselves up to renewed cheering as our own hussars--Stephen riding neck by neck with their colonel--dashed in pursuit.
Farther away on the left, the regiment of veterans, having captured the battery, was engaged in fierce conflict with a body of infantry. Now from all sides our friends were hurrying up, and the Austrians, overwhelmed by numbers, fled over the Tapio River towards Koka, where they sheltered behind the sand-hills. As for us, we halted on the ground it had cost us so dear to win; and the colonel immediately sent me to collect the runaways from the regiment, and bring them back.
This I did with exceeding difficulty, as the whole of Klapka's corps was in a terrible state of confusion. Then, with Dobozy and half a dozen soldiers, I proceeded to search for the body of the hapless Thurzo.
I picked up the sword which had dropped from the nerveless fingers, while Dobozy cut a curl from the dead lad's raven hair.
"For his mother," he said softly, not attempting to hide the tears that gathered in his eyes. "He was her only son, and she is a widow."
The men carried the body to a small wood nearly half a mile away, and there, with the sweet-smelling pines swaying mournfully overhead, we buried him, marking the place by a rude cross.
"It will comfort her, when the war is ended, to come and pray beside it," said Dobozy, as we turned sorrowfully toward the spot where our regiment was stationed.