VII
hey who saw the full promise of the night in one instant of time dashed from their lips and lost in desert sands struggled fiercely with their fate. Baldry's great figure at their head, Baldry's great voice shouting encouragement, they strove to pass the trench, to rush upon and overwhelm the masked batteries, the hidden marksmen. An effectual chevaux-de-frise, the pointed stakes withstood them, tore them, and threw them back. Effort upon effort, a wild crossing over the interlaced bodies of the fallen, a forward rush upon the guns, a loud "'Ware the vines!" from Baldry--another and a wider ditch, irregular and shallow, but lined with thorns like stilettos, and strung from side to side with lianas strong as ropes to entangle, to bring prone upon the thorns the desperate men who strove in the snare. A small band won to the farther side, but the shot was as a blast of winter among sere leaves, and terribly thinned their ranks. All was vain, all hopeless; to advance, destruction, to tarry in that arena amidst the deadly thunder of the guns, no less a thing.
"Back, back!" shouted Baldry. "Back through the tunal--back to the Admiral at the main battery! Here all's lost!"
Above the din rose his voice. Back to the one door of safety surged the English, but the way was narrow from that pit into which they had been betrayed. The guns yet spoke; men dropped with an answering groan or with a wild cry to their comrades not to leave them behind in that fatal trench, upon Death's harvest-field. How in the murk and rain of death could the whole gather the maimed, know the living from the dead? Barely might the uninjured save themselves, give support perhaps to some hurt and staggering comrade. Happy were the dead, for the fallen whose wounds were not mortal, perhaps the fate of the men of the Minion! Of the company which had come with Robert Baldry through the tunal to take by surprise the fortress of Nueva Cordoba hardly a third found again its shelter, turned drawn faces to the sea, rushed from that death-trap, through the bitter and fatal wood, towards hillside and plain, and the Admiral's attack upon that fortification which with all their force they had twice endeavored to storm and found impregnable.
Baldry himself? Surely he was among them!--in that shadowy pass was not this his great form--or this--or this?
"Baldry! Robert Baldry!" cried Sedley, and there came no answer. High and shrill as a woman's wail rang again the young man's voice. "Captain Robert Baldry!"
"He's not here, sir," said a Devon man, softly. "God rest his soul!"
Sedley raised his white face to the stars, then: "On men, on! We've to help Sir John, you know!" Tone of voice, raised arm, and waving hand, subtle and elusive likeness to the leader whom he worshipped, upon whom he had moulded himself--for the moment it was as though Sir Mortimer Ferne had cried encouragement to their sunken hearts, was beckoning them on to ultimate victory plucked from present defeat. A cheer, wavering, broken, touched with hysteria, broke from throats that were dry with the horror of past moments. On with Henry Sedley, their leader now, they struggled, making what mad haste they might through the tunal.