Then, at last, with an ear-splitting roar that seemed to silence our guns, the enemy spoke. The hill in front, hidden the second before by smoke, became in a moment visible, lit up by a thousand darting flames. Dark masses seemed to topple down, rocks hung midway in air, and involuntarily I stepped back and uttered a cry of horror. Out of that hell of fire came an answering wail of shrieks and curses--the feeble voice of man!
'Ach Gott!' I said, trembling. My hair stood on end.
'Steady, comrade, steady!' muttered the man who had before spoken to me. 'Presently it will be our turn.'
He had scarcely spoken, when a man came riding along the front with his hat in his hand. He rode a white horse, and wore no back or breast, nor, as far as I could see, any armour.
'Steady, Swedes, steady!' he cried in a loud voice--he was a big, stout man with a fine presence. 'Your time will come by-and-by. Then remember Breitenfeld!'
It was the King of Sweden. In a moment he was gone, passing along the lines; and I drew breath again, wondering what would happen next. I had not long to wait. Men came straggling back across our front, some wounded, some helping their comrades along, all with faces ghastly under the powder-stains. And then like magic a new regiment stood before us, where the other had stood. Again the King's guns pealed along the line, again I heard the hoarse cry 'Vorwärts!' waited a minute, and once more the hill seemed to be rent by the explosion. From every cave and ledge guns flashed forth, lighting up the smoke. The roar died away again--slowly, from west to east--in cries and shrieks; and presently a few men, scores where there had been hundreds, came wandering back like ghosts through the reek.
'This looks ill!' I muttered. I was no longer scared. The gunpowder was getting into my head.
'Pooh!' my friend answered. 'This is only the beginning. It will take men to fill that gap. Wait till our turn comes.'
By this time the Waldgrave and my errand were forgotten, and I thought only of the battle. I watched two more assaults, saw two more regiments hurl themselves vainly against the fiery breast of the hill; then came a diversion. As the scattered fragments of the last came reeling back, a sudden roar of many voices startled me. The ground seemed to shake, and right across our front came a charge of horse--out of the smoke and into the smoke! In an instant our stragglers were trodden down, cut up, and swept away, before our eyes and within shot of us.
The men round me uttered shouts of rage. The line swayed, there was an instant's confusion. Then a harsh voice cried above the tumult, 'Steady, Gothlanders, steady! Pikes forward! Blow your matches! Steady! steady!' and in a twinkling, with a crash, such as the ninth wave makes when it falls on a pebbly beach, the horse were on us. I had a glimpse through the smoke of rearing breasts, and floating manes, and grinning teeth, and of men's faces grim and white, held low behind the steel; and I struck out blindly with my half-pike. Still they came on, and something hit me on the chest and I fell: but instantly a clash of long pikes met over my body, and I scrambled to my feet unhurt! Then a dozen spurts of flame leapt out round me, and the horsemen seemed to melt away.