They should have sung it in the face of England, not of the Afghans, whom, it impressed as much as did the wild Irish yell.
‘They came down singing,’ said the unofficial report of the enemy, borne from village to village the next day. ‘They continued to sing, and it was written that our men could not abide when they came. It is believed that there was magic in the aforesaid song.’
Dan and Horse Egan kept themselves in the neighbourhood of Mulcahy. Twice the man would have bolted back in the confusion. Twice he was heaved, kicked, and shouldered back again into the unpaintable inferno of a hotly contested charge.
At the end, the panic excess of his fear drove him into madness beyond all human courage. His eyes staring at nothing, his mouth open and frothing, and breathing as one in a cold bath, he went forward demented, while Dan toiled after him. The charge checked at a high mud wall. It was Mulcahy who scrambled up tooth and nail and hurled down among the bayonets the amazed Afghan who barred his way. It was Mulcahy, keeping to the straight line of the rabid dog, who led a collection of ardent souls at a newly unmasked battery and flung himself on the muzzle of a gun as his companions danced among the gunners. It was Mulcahy who ran wildly on from that battery into the open plain, where the enemy were retiring in sullen groups. His hands were empty, he had lost helmet and belt, and he was bleeding from a wound in the neck. Dan and Horse Egan, panting and distressed, had thrown themselves down on the ground by the captured guns, when they noticed Mulcahy’s charge.
‘Mad,’ said Horse Egan critically. ‘Mad with fear! He’s going straight to his death, an’ shouting’s no use.’
‘Let him go. Watch now! If we fire we’ll hit him, maybe.’
The last of a hurrying crowd of Afghans turned at the noise of shod feet behind him, and shifted his knife ready to hand. This, he saw, was no time to take prisoners. Mulcahy tore on, sobbing; the straight-held blade went home through the defenceless breast, and the body pitched forward almost before a shot from Dan’s rifle brought down the slayer and still further hurried the Afghan retreat. The two Irishmen went out to bring in their dead.
‘He was given the point and that was an easy death,’ said Horse Egan, viewing the corpse. ‘But would you ha’ shot him, Danny, if he had lived?’
‘He didn’t live, so there’s no sayin’. But I doubt I wud have bekase of the fun he gave us—let alone the beer. Hike up his legs, Horse, and we’ll bring him in. Perhaps ‘tis better this way.’
They bore the poor limp body to the mass of the regiment, lolling open-mouthed on their rifles; and there was a general snigger when one of the younger subalterns said, ‘That was a good man!’