'D'you hear that?' Seymour cried; 'Jones and Richardson have started firing.'
Hear! Why, I jumped to my feet and yelled with delight, for the 'pom—pom—pom—pom,' 'pom—pom—pom,' 'pom—pom—pom' and the 'crack—crack—crack' of the little one-pound shells bursting, told me what had happened.
'Keep down, you fool!' Seymour shouted. Bullets were shrieking past, chipping against the concrete every second, and Zorilla's infantry were coming down the road and through the trees, in close order, sweeping past the Casino towards the ford.
My aunt! how we shot! I'd never heard any noise like the noise of the firing that went on then, and I wonder, now, how many of those rifles were properly aimed.
The Casino seemed to be trembling and shaking, my little chaps began scrambling in the bottom of their bags for cartridges, and I knew that they were running short of ammunition, but then they began shrieking with joy, because the infantry couldn't stand the fire from Gerald's chaps along the stream, and we saw them dodging back again from tree to tree, and clearing away from the road—a tall gaunt officer, on horseback, trying to stem the retreat and turn them round again.
Even at that distance I recognised him. It was General Zorilla, but he couldn't make them face the stream again, and they swept past him out of sight.
'The cavalry are broken!' Seymour cried joyfully, and, turning my head, I saw them coming back again, the pom-pom shells knocking up little spurts of dust and smoke among them, and some of Gerald's people at the side of the road firing point-blank at them. They were having an awful time, horses and men coming down every second, and as a horse fell, it brought down others behind it, in a heap of struggling bodies and legs, the little white-shirted men darting out from the trees with their machetes to kill the wretched troopers before they could get to their feet.
Those still on horseback came nearer and nearer, the leading ones were almost up to the ford, and I could see them lying down on their horses' necks, their arms raised in front of their heads, as Gerald's people crowded to the side of the road to fire at them; they burst through the stream and came flying past the front of the Casino, many horses riderless, their flanks streaming with blood from sharp spurs, and their blood-shot eyes almost sticking out of their heads. We could hear the sobbing noise they made in their distress—poor brutes, they were absolutely foundered.
PLAN OF OPERATIONS ROUND SAN FERNANDO.