hose who were hurled on them in
the black night, with the north sea-wind like ice upon their faces, and
the loose African soil drifting up in clouds of sand around them, they
could never have told. Nor how they strained free from the armed ring
that circled them, and beat aside the shafts of lances and the blades of
swords, and forced their chargers breast to breast against the fence of
steel and through the tempest of rage, and blows, and shouts, and wind,
and driven sand, cut their way through the foe whose very face
they scarce could see, and plunged away into the shadows across the
desolation of the plain, pursued, whether by one or by the thousand they
could not guess; for the gallop was noiseless on the powdered soil, and
the Arab yell of baffled passion and slaughterous lust was half drowned
in the rising of the wind-storm. Had it been day, they would have seen
their passage across the level table-land traced by a crimson stream
upon the sand, in which the blood of Frank and Arab blended equally.

As it was, they dashed headlong down through the darkness that grew yet
denser and blacker as the storm rose. For miles the ground was level
before them, and they had only to let the half-maddened horses, that had
as by a miracle escaped all injury, rush on at their own will through
the whirl of the wind that drove the dust upward in spiral columns and
brought icy breaths of the north over the sear, sunburned, southern
wastes.

For a long space they had no sense but that of rapid, ceaseless motion
through the thick gloom and against the pressure of the violent blasts.
The speed of their gallop and the strength of the currents of air were
like some narcotic that drowned and that dizzied perception. In the
intense darkness neither could see, neither hear, the other; the
instinct of the beasts kept them together, but no word could be heard
above the roar of the storm, and no light broke the somber veil of
shadow through which they passed as fast as leopards course through the
night. The first faint streak of dawn grew gray in the east when Cecil
felt his charger stagger and sway beneath him, and halt, worn out and
quivering in every sinew with fatigue. He threw himself off the animal
in time to save himself from falling with it as it reeled and sank to
the ground.

"Massena cannot stir another yard," he said. "Do you think they follow
us still?"

There was no reply.

He strained his sight to pierce the darkness, but