"It means that we've gone in, old chap."
"England!"
"Yes, we're in it! And I'm off." He made a gesture for silence. "Hark! Do you hear that?"
Warner listened: from the distance came a confused, metallic sound, growing more and more distinct, filling the room with a faint ringing, jarring harmony.
"Come to the window; it's worth seeing," said Halkett.
It was worth seeing. Through the still morning sunshine, from the southward came an immense sound wave; the rustle and clash of steel, the clink-clank of iron-shod hoofs.
Leaning from the window, Warner looked down the road. A high column of white dust stretched away into perspective as far as he could see. Under it, emerging from it, rode the French heavy cavalry, the morning sun a blinding sheet of fire on their armor.
On they came at a leisurely walk, helmets and breastplates blazing silvery fire under a perpendicular forest of lances canopied by the white dust.
They were terribly conspicuous; a cloudless sky exposed every detail of their uniforms—the gold epaulets of their officers, the crimson epaulets and breeches of the troopers, the orange-red whalebone plumes that flew like the manes of horses from the trumpeters' helmets.
On they came, riding at ease, accompanied by dust and by a vast and confused volume of assorted noises—the tintinnabulation of their armor, the subdued clash of sabers, the rattle and clash of equipments, the solidly melodious trample of thousands of horses.