Suddenly a pale shaft of light streamed through the fog above; the restless, shifting vapours glimmered; a dazzling blot grew from the mist. It was the sun. Little by little the landscape became more distinct; the pallid, watery sky lightened; a streak of blue cut the zenith. Everywhere in the road great, lumbering wagons stood, loaded with straw; the sickly morning light fell on silent files of infantry, lining the road on either hand.
"It's a convoy of wounded," said Grahame. "We're in the middle of it. Shall we go back?"
A wagon in front of them started on; at the first jolt a cry sounded from the straw, another, another—the deep sighs of the dying, the groans of the stricken, the muttered curses of teamsters—rose in one terrible plaint. Another wagon started—the wounded wailed; another started—another—another—and the long train creaked on, the air vibrating with the weak protestations of miserable, mangled creatures tossing their thin arms towards the sky. And now, too, the soldiers were moving out into the road-side bushes, unslinging rifles and fixing bayonets; a mounted officer galloped past, shouting something; other mounted officers followed; a bugle sounded persistently from the distant head of the column.
Everywhere soldiers were running along the road now, grouping together under the poplar-trees, heads turned to the plain. Some teamsters pushed an empty wagon out beyond the line of trees and overturned it; others stood up in their wagons, reins gathered, long whips swinging. The wounded moaned incessantly; some sat up in the straw, heads turned also towards the dim, gray plain.
"It's an attack," said Grahame, coolly. "Marche, we're in for it now!"
After a moment, he added, "What did I tell you? Look there!"
Out on the plain, where the mist was clearing along the edge of a belt of trees, something was moving.
"What is it?" asked Lorraine, in a scarcely audible voice.
Before Grahame could speak a tumult of cries and groans burst out along the line of wagons; a bugle clanged furiously; the teamsters shouted and pointed with their whips.
Out of the shadow of the grove two glittering double lines of horsemen trotted, halted, formed, extended right and left, and trotted on again. To the right another darker and more compact square of horsemen broke into a gallop, swinging a thicket of lances above their heads, from which fluttered a mass of black and white pennons.