The officers dressed the four faces as well as the shattered and unequal state of the companies could form them now. Sending a last discharge of grape plunging into the masses of the foe, the gunners rushed for shelter behind the wall of bayonets, and now through the gloom of evening, the wrack, mist, and smoke, on came the French dragoons like rolling thunder!
As the ground was tolerably open the square was approached on three faces.
Against one was a brigade of cuirassiers, their brass helmets with scarlet plumes and brass corslets with elaborate shoulder-belts all dimmed by rain; opposed to another was the Lancer Regiment of Napoleon-Louis, the hereditary Duc de Berg, with white plumes and kalpecks in their busbies; and on the third face came the Light Dragoons of Ribeaupierre, in pale green lapelled with white and laced with silver, their tricolors waving above a forest of flashing sabres.
Quentin felt his heart beating wildly as they came on. In the square, every eye lit up, every brow was knit, and every lip compressed; but not a shot was fired until the foe was within pistol-range, when, from the faces of the square, there opened a close and disastrous fire, first from the right to the left, and then it became a wild roar of musketry, the men loading and firing as fast as they could, while many a pistol and carbine-shot took effect in their ranks, and Quentin was covered by the blood of a man who was killed thus by his side.
Yells of death were mingled with shouts of rage and defiance, as horse and man went down on every hand, the front squadrons swerving or recoiling madly on the rear, thus making all advance impossible; steeds reared, plunged, and neighed, their riders groaned, shrieked, and swore; swords, helmets, shakos, and broken lances were seen flying into the air, while lancers and cuirassiers, wounded and dying, were crushed and trodden flat by hoofs and falling horses.
The whole cuirassier brigade became an undistinguishable mass of confusion and indiscriminate slaughter; but not a horseman came within sword's point of that steady and invincible square of infantry.
At that moment, when the firing slackened a little, the voice of the Master of Rohallion was heard.
"Well done, my brave Borderers! kneeling ranks, fire a volley—ready—present—fire!"
It rang like thunder in the winter air, and found a thousand echoes among the mountains, and ere these died away the ruin of the foe was complete. This was the first occasion on which Quentin had fired a shot in grim earnest, and a thrill passed through his heart as he pulled the trigger and sent a bullet on its errand, while ignorant of its effect amid the smoke in front.
Ere the butts were again on the earth in their original position, and the bristling bayonets were pointed upward, amid the smoke that rolled around them like a murky curtain, the cavalry were seen in full flight, leaving a terrible débris of death and bloodshed behind them on the snow-clad mountain slope.