his comrade--and
once his valet.

[Illustration: "He dismounted and clutched the senseless
carbineer."]

Out of the fiery tunnel came tearing his terrified horse,
riderless; out of the billowing, ruddy vapours reeled Berkley,
dragging the carbineer.

It was the regiment cheering him that the Zouaves heard.

The fields were now swimming in bluish smoke; through it the
Zouaves were reforming as they marched. Little heaps of brilliant
colour dotting the meadow were being lifted and carried off the
field by comrades; a few dismounted carbineers ran hither and
thither, shooting hopelessly crippled horses. Here and there a
dead lancer lay flat in the grass, his scarlet pennon a vivid spot
beside him.

The hill road to the burning bridge was now choked with Colonel
Arran's regiment, returning to the crest of the hill; through the
blackish and rolling smoke from the bridge infantry were creeping
swiftly forward toward the river bank, and very soon the
intermittent picket firing began again, running up and down the
creek bank and out across the swamp lands, noisily increasing as it
woke up vicious volleys from the woods on the opposite bank, and
finally aroused the cannon to thunderous anger.

Berkley, standing to horse with his regiment on the sparsely wooded
hill crest, could see the crowding convolutions of smoke rising
from the thickets, as each gun spoke from the Confederate
batteries. But to him their thunder was like the thunder in a
dream.

Hour after hour the regiment stood to horse; hour after hour the
battle roared west and south of them. An irregular cloud, slender
at the base, spreading on top, towered to mid zenith above the
forest. Otherwise, save for the fleecy explosion of shells in the
quivering blue vault above, nothing troubled the sunshine that lay
over hill and valley, wood and river and meadowland.

McDunn's battery was not firing; the Zouaves lay dozing awake in
the young clover, the Lancers, standing to horse, looked out across
the world of trees and saw nothing stirring save a bird or two
winging hastily northward.

Berkley could distinguish a portion of the road that ran down to
the burning bridge, where part of McDunn's battery was in position.
Across the hills to the left a scarlet windrow undulating on either
flank of the battery marked the line of battle where the Zouaves
lay in a clover-field, within supporting distance of the guns.

Except for these, and a glimpse of Lowe's