The Magyars were full of fire and dash. They rushed to death with a cheer and a shout, or to the rattle of a song. When the warning blast rang out, their faces flushed, their eyes burned with a fiery glow, the hot blood sped more swiftly through their veins--they were real live human beings.
On the other hand, it seemed to us, as we gazed from the hill, that there were no individual Russians--only companies, or regiments, or brigades.
It was a weird sight to witness one of these regiments, compact and grey-coated, come gliding up towards the guns.
As Szondi put it, one forgot the men in watching the movements of the machine.
It advanced silently, steadily, and in one piece; it--not they--moved faster; suddenly a curious shiver passed through it, a curtain of smoke was spread over it, and presently you saw the one piece, only very much smaller, moving back again, leaving bits of grey lying here and there, as if chipped from the mass.
Farther along, another machine, similarly constructed, was going through exactly the same performance, becoming smaller in the same manner.
One such I saw more distinctly still, having carried a message from the general to the artillery chief just as it approached.
The fate of that regiment was so terrible that even now I sometimes shudder at the remembrance.
Like the others, it came on regularly and without noise. The great guns at my feet roared out as if in fright; the smoke cleared away, showing the grey mass diminished in size, but nearer; the guns cried out again, the smoke-cloud settled and lifted, discovering the grey mass very much smaller, but still moving nearer, until at length it reached the very muzzles of the guns, and then--well, then it simply vanished!
Some parts of it doubtless returned in safety, though to me, watching from behind the cannon, it seemed as if the whole body had been swept away.