Major Lent ran forward and started to climb the smoky fence; everywhere the Zouaves were swarming along the newly split rails or driving their bayonets through the smoke at the gray phantoms clustering behind. Shots rang out, the crack of stock against stock, the ringing clamour and click of steel filled the air.
The zouave next to Stephen lurched up against him spouting blood from the neck; on the other side of him another, a sergeant, too, had gone stark mad, apparently, and was swinging his terrible sabre bayonet without regard to friend or foe; and still another man of his squad, swearing horridly, had clutched a ghostly enemy in the smoke across the fence and was trying to strangle him with his bare hands.
Stephen, bewildered by a blow which glanced from his head to his left shoulder, clung to his musket and tried to stagger forward, but a bayonet seared his right temple, tearing the scalp and letting down a rush of blood all over his face and eyes. Blinded, the boy called instinctively: "Father! I'm hurt! Could you help me!"
Colonel Craig turned white under his tan, and looked back.
"I can't help you, my boy. Sergeant, will you look after my son?" And he ran forward into the infernal network of bayonets, calling out: "Get through there, boys. We might as well clean up this mess while we're about it. Pull down that fence! Never mind those men behind it!—rush it! Kick it over! Now come on! I don't ask you to do anything that I don't do. Major Lent and I will take you through. Come on and take that bridge!"
A captain, fighting back the bayonets with his sword, suddenly floundered to the fence top and clung, balanced on his belly, shouting hysterically:
"Look at the Lancers! Look at 'em coming! Now, Zouaves! Pull down the fence and give them a chance to charge the bridge!"
Over a low swell of land some horsemen trotted into view; behind them the horizon was suddenly filled with the swimming scarlet pennons of the Lancers. A thousand horses' heads shot up against the sky line, manes tossing; a thousand lance points fell to a glittering level.
They were cheering shrilly as they came on; the Zouaves heard them, the gray infantry regiment gave way, turned, filed off, retreating toward the bridge at a slow trot like some baffled but dangerous animal; and after it ran the Zouaves, firing, screaming, maddened to hysteria by their first engagement, until their panting officers and their bugles together barely managed to halt them short of the edges of utter annihilation just as a full Confederate brigade rose grimly from the wood's edge across the stream, ready to end their hysterical yelling for ever.
Stephen, sitting on the grass among the dead and stricken, tied his bloody turban, pulled the red fez close over it, smeared the blood from his eyes, and, clutching his musket, stood up unsteadily.