And so say all of us.
This conversation took place after the earthwork was cleared of the enemy—at least of the living enemy, for the whole interior was crowded with their dead—and while the sailors and artillerymen were turning the two Krupp guns found in it upon the retiring foe and the ruins of the old sugar-mill to which the Soudanese still clung. And the troops had a little rest while the leaders determined the direction of the next attack. And the water-bottles you may be sure were mostly drained, for the men’s throats were like lime-kilns.
An officer standing on the highest part of the parapet beckoned to Strachan, who doubled up and joined the group assembled there.
“Look,” said the friend who had called him, pointing to the right, “the cavalry are going to have their turn.” Sure enough, there were the three lines of cavalry, advancing at a walk towards the dense hordes of Soudanese who covered the plain, some retiring slowly and reluctantly, but the majority still holding their ground.
As they drew nearer the Hussars broke into a trot, and then, when quite close, they were loosed, and swept down on the foe at full gallop, a simoon of glittering steel. Surely the grandest sight the modern world can afford; the last remnant of chivalry. For ever since the invention of fire-arms the infantry officer’s place in battle has necessarily been in rear of his men; but the cavalry officer still rides in front, yards in front. He believes that his men are behind him, but he sees them not. Alone he plunges into the enemy’s ranks, and the first shock of the encounter is his. He is a knight without his grandsire’s defensive armour, and exposed to rifle bullets and bursting shells, which the old paladin knew not.
“Oh, to be with them!” cried Tom in his excitement, uttering what was in the hearts of all the group, as with eager eyes, parted lips, and breath coming short, they saw the line swallowed up in the sea of Arabs. A minute’s confusion, with nothing distinguishable but the flash of weapons, and they re-appeared beyond the masses through whom they cut their way, prostrate figures marking their track, and were now serrying their ranks, disordered in the fierce passage.
But the spectators could watch no more, for the shells failed to dislodge the Arabs from the ruined mill, and it was impossible to advance and leave any such indomitable fanatics, who cared not for numbers and despised death, so long as they could wreak their wrath upon an infidel, in their rear; and the immediate business was to turn them out of that lair.
There were about a couple of hundred sheltered by the ruin and the old boiler; and for some distance round about the ground was regularly honey-combed with rifle-pits, each of which contained an Arab, crouching down, spear in hand, only desiring to kill an enemy and die.
It was said before that they swarmed out of the fort earlier in the day like bees when their hive is tapped. Like bees, too, when angered, they only sought to sting, though they knew that the act of stinging was their own destruction. As a soldier came to the edge of an apparently empty hole in the ground, a man would spring out upon him and transfix him before he had time to offer resistance. Not that this succeeded often.
The men soon learned to approach these rifle-pits with their muzzles lowered, finger on trigger, the point of the bayonet over the opening before they came up to it. Then, if the Arab made his spring, he was transfixed; if he kept crouching, waiting for the other to pass, he was shot. A large number of the holes became the graves they looked like before the boiler was reached.