in their blood burn fiercer; the fullness of its light
only served to show them clearer where to strike and how to slay.

It was bitter, stifling, cruel work; with their mouths choked with sand,
with their throats caked with thirst, with their eyes blind with smoke;
cramped as in a vise, scorched with the blaze of powder, covered with
blood and with dust; while the steel was thrust through nerve and sinew,
or the shot plowed through bone and flesh. The answering fire of the
Zouaves and Tirailleurs kept the Arabs further at bay, and mowed them
faster down; but in the Chasseurs' quarter of the field--parted from
the rest of their comrades as they had been by the rush of that broken
charge with which they had sought to save the camp and arrest the
foe--the worst pressure of the attack was felt, and the fiercest of the
slaughter fell.

The Chef d'Escadron had been shot dead as they had first swept out to
encounter the advance of the desert horsemen; one by one the officers
had been cut down, singled out by the keen eyes of their enemies, and
throwing themselves into the deadliest of the carnage with the impetuous
self-devotion characteristic of their service. At the last there
remained but a mere handful out of all the brilliant squadron that had
galloped down in the gray of the dawn to meet the whirlwind of Arab
fury. At their head was Cecil.

Two horses had been killed under him, and he had thrown himself afresh
across unwounded chargers, whose riders had fallen in the melee, and
at whose bridles he had caught as he shook himself free of the dead
animals' stirrups. His head was uncovered; his uniform, hurriedly thrown
on, had been torn aside, and his chest was bare to the red folds of his
sash; he was drenched with blood, not his own, that had rained on him
as he fought; and his face and his hands were black with smoke and with
powder. He could not see a yard in front of him; he could not tell
how the day went anywhere, save in that corner where his own troop was
hemmed in. As fast as they beat the Arabs back, and forced themselves
some clearer space, so fast the tribes closed in afresh. No orders
reached him from the General of the Brigade in command; except for the
well-known war-shouts of the Zouaves that ever and again rang above
the din, he could not tell whether the French battalions were not cut
utterly to pieces under the immense numerical superiority of their foes.
All he could see was that every officer of Cha