He galloped toward the right, but it seemed to him that distance did not cause any decrease in the crash and roar. Either his imagination supplied it, or the battle was increasing in violence. He rode on, and then a new sound greeted him. It was the thunder of another battle, or rather a link in the chain of battles. He was approaching the position of a French army which had been assailed with a fury equal to that from which the British suffered.
John was merely one of many messengers and the French commander smiled grimly when he read his dispatch.
"Look!" he said, pointing a long arm.
John saw another vast gray host, rolling forward, crushing and invincible. At some points the French had already lost ground, and they were fighting a desperate, but losing battle. No help could come from them, and he believed that the French armies farther east were in the same mortal danger.
John received his return dispatch. He knew without the telling what was in it. The French would certainly urge the British to fall back. If they did not do so they would be lost, the French line in its turn would be crumpled up, and France was conquered.
It was given to John, a youth, as he rode back in the red light of the late sun, to know that a crisis of the world was at hand. He was imaginative. He had read much and now he saw. It struck upon him like a flash of lightning. Along that vast front in face of the French armies and the British there must be a million troops, armed and trained as no other troops ever were, and driven forward by a military autocracy which unceasingly had taught the doctrine, that might is right. The kings, the princes, the dukes and the generals who believed it was their right to rule the world were out there, and it was their hour. By morning they might be masters of Europe.
He had all the clear vision of a young prophet. He saw the sword and cannon triumphant, and he saw the menace to his own land. He shuddered and turned cold, but in a minute warmth returned to his body and he galloped back with the message. Others had returned with messages like his own, and, giving up his horse, he rejoined his comrades.
Carstairs and Wharton were gloomy. The ground that had been the front line of the British was now under the German foot. The German weight, irresistible in appearance, had proved so in fact, and far to left and right those terrible horns were pushing farther and farther around the flanks, John now saw the German army as a gigantic devil fish enveloping its prey.
"What did you find, John?" shouted Carstairs.
"I found a French army pressed as hard as our own, and I heard that farther to the east other French armies were being driven with equal fury."