A shell burst close beside us as we swung through St. James' Palace into Pall Mall, another, as we entered Waterloo Place, struck the Crimean Monument just ahead; but we breasted the hill in lower Regent Street between dead shuttered buildings all asleep, as though it were Sunday morning in times of peace.
We crossed the circus set round with familiar theatres, and hotels, their porches still bearing torn playbills on the columns, their cornices and domes just caught by the morning light.
A falling shell scattered the rear ranks and burst. Ambrose was killed, O'Hagan wounded, Joubert, the Transvaaller, was unhorsed. Drawing his sword, he saluted her Majesty, then set the point to his neck, drove the blade home, and fell. We rode on through the Quadrant, entering Regent Street.
We were a troop of cowards, ashen white and shaken, ready to run if a dog barked. The hot blood tingling in our veins, young strength, the desires of manhood, all the powers of nature cried out within us demanding life. Why should we die!
The elder empires died, and England's time was come. She should fall gloriously as became her life, still great, still mighty, before age sapped her strength, before decay rotted her honour. Nations born of her loins should pass her freedom on to distant ages, and teach their royal posterity of peoples the discipline and speech of the English race.
Our part was not in her death but in the living future—why should we die?
But Margaret led us on.
The sparrows fluttered about our horses' feet, a mist rose on the pavement, and above, the warm light glowed on the high pavilions, colonnades, and roofs crowning the cliff-like walls on either hand.
How empty the street was! Grave bronze statues looked down as we rode by, there were the sparrows fluttering, a cyclist was coming up behind, and an old woman venturing across our front, very much frightened at our trampling.
In an instant all was changed. A cluster of cars came whirling down from the north, killing the woman under their ruthless wheels, and as they passed, the occupants yelled and beckoned. The cyclist had come up abreast shouting to her Majesty some message from the Palace, but we could not listen.