doomed. But after awful minutes and minutes,
which stretch to hours, the line sweeps up. Raglan's immortal two guns
come into play from the knoll on the distant right, and the tide of
battle is turned again. And all the while we of the cavalry division are
maddened with excitement, and consumed by ennui, by turns, wearied with
thirst and heat, and waiting in vain for our chance to strike a blow at
the enemy. Bored and tired and athirst, the men who have stood for hours
at the bridle throw themselves on the sunburned grass. No chance for
us to-day, says one to the other, and the tide of battle, now grown
invisible, is rolling noisily here and there, now seeming as if it
would vanish altogether into the air, and now as if a flying enemy had
suddenly taken heart and were back in swift return. And here is a hill
to the west of us, and the hot sun, yet shining clean and bright through
whiffs and shreds of scattered smoke, goes down behind it, and the
shadow lengthens, and creeps up the brown-green face of the hill to the
left. And lo, on a sudden, a sweating galloper on the crest of the hill,
with his horse one lather from haunch to bridle, is tearing down with
orders. Here is old Stacey in the saddle again, and his hoarse voice is
calling. The tired and thirsty souls are alert in an instant, and away
go the Heavy Dragoons at a walk until the hill is breasted. Then at a
trot, a canter, a gallop, a charge. For the masses of the enemy are all
huddled in disorderly crowds away there in the pass, and it needs but
one decisive blow to smite them into utter rout and scatter them like
chaff. Then was an hour when the fate of a great campaign lay in the
balance; and because that hour was not chosen England had to pour out
her blood and her treasure in one mingled torrent for a year or two. For
as the charging regiment was in amongst the lingerers of the retreat,
the pursuit was called away. The keener spirits had naturally ridden
furthest, and there was no man there that day who was keener than Polson
Jervase. When the bugles rang out the 'Retire,' he would, had he been in
command, have risked a plagiarism of Nelson, with a glass at the blind
eye, and would have failed to recognise the recalling signal. But he
was a unit, and a private unit at that. And he was already half emmeshed
amidst the edges of the flying crowd, and actually at their mercy,
if any of the fugitives had found so much as a sheep's heart to awake
within him.

So