The enemy could only succeed by stabbing, whereas our wayleals were scorpions whose guns were fatal. With the points of their spears they made great havoc in our battalions. But as long as our ammunition lasted their formations were immediately shrivelled up.
Coltonobory began to mass his army in the form of an immense outspreading hemisphere of the form of an open umbrella. His intention was to enclose us on all sides, and so if possible devour us. I at once ordered the army to take the form of a cone, each legion being a segment thereof, whose apex was formed of bockhockids, and whose base was wide circles of wayleals. With a blast of the trumpet I drove the entire army like an enormous javelin right through the heart of the foe, tearing a yawning chasm, half a mile in diameter, in his ranks!
We lost fully two thousand men in this movement, and the foe over ten thousand in killed and wounded.
The enemy, paralyzed by the onset, became consolidated into three or four immense globes. In front of these they placed their bockhockids, whose monstrous limbs alone could keep our spears at a safe distance. It was the intention of Coltonobory to ram us with the cohorts led by Grasnagallipas and his bockhockids.
Hastily re-forming our broken ranks as before, I ordered a flank movement, rapid and decisive. Our bockhockids plunged into a tremendous mass of wayleals. Into the chasm thus made in the ranks of the enemy General Zooly-Soase threw her amazons, protected on either side by the legion of priests of Egyplosis under Gerolio. The priestesses, whose spears were particularly long and powerful, did terrible execution. The enemy was for a time panic-stricken as the glorious girls made their successful onset. Their dramatic beauty and the flash of their spears made a scene of imposing grandeur. Coltonobory, recovering from his surprise, ordered his bockhockids to the centre of the fight. To prevent the sacrifice of the priestesses by overwhelming odds I sent the bockhockids of art to their assistance. These swept to the rescue like a flight of eagles, and the empyrean echoed to the roar of the combat.
The fighting now became general. The sunlit heavens seemed filled with the ferocity of war. The discharge of guns, the yells of wayleals, the trumpet signals of the commanders, the crash of swords and spears, the ceaseless motion of wings, and the long trail of dead and wounded combatants that followed the fight like the débris of a comet, was a sight but rarely beheld by human eyes.
Each army seemed so equally balanced—the king's army had the advantage in numbers and our own the advantage in weapons—that neither party could yet claim a victory. Further fighting seemed useless until some new tactics were employed; therefore I gave orders for a cessation of the battle, and caused flags of truce to be hoisted.
Both armies indeed required food and repose, and the wounded required immediate attention. The enemy was no less anxious for a truce than ourselves, consequently all fighting ceased and both armies withdrew. Several miles apart sentinels were placed on guard on outposts in the atmosphere, and our wayleals threw themselves upon the air in various attitudes of repose.
In company with Generals Hushnoly, Ladalmir, Gerolio, Zooly-Soase, Thoubool, Charka, Yermoul, Starbottle and Goldrock, I visited the scene of the battle.
How ghastly the realities of war! There floated irregular piles of dead and wounded bodies, from which poured many a trickling stream of ruddy life, which formed immense cloud-pools of blood surrounding each ghastly pile. The heaped-up masses of the dead would vibrate, as some poor suffocating wretch struggled in his last agonies. Dr. Merryferry and his assistants hastily took possession of the wounded, and ministered to their necessities. Water was supplied them from the leathern bags of water that formed part of the commissariat supplies.