in the cart that carries his belongings; yet, while he thinks
it is, his enemies all flourish.

We dismounted to rest the horses, and waited behind the forest until
it grew so dark that between the bursting of the star-shells a man
could not see his hand held out in front of him. Now and then a
stray shell chanced among us, but our casualties were very few. I
wondered greatly at the waste of ammunition. My ears ached with the
din, but there seemed more noise wrought than destruction. We had
begun to grow restless when an officer came galloping at last to
Colonel Kirby's side and gave him directions with much pointing and
waving of the arm.

Then Colonel Kirby summoned all our officers, and they rode back to
tell us what the plan was. The din was so great by this time that
they were obliged to explain anew to each four men in turn. This was
the plan:

The Germans, ignorant of our arrival, undoubtedly believed the
British infantry to be without support and were beginning to press
forward in the hope of winning through to the railway line. The
infantry on our right front, already overwhelmed by weight of
artillery fire, would be obliged to evacuate their trench and fall
back, thus imperiling the whole line, unless we could save the day.

Observe this, sahib: so--I make a drawing in the dust. Between the
trench here, and the forest there, was a space of level ground some
fifty or sixty yards wide. There was scarcely more than a furrow
across it to protect the riflemen--nothing at all that could stop a
horse. At a given signal the infantry were to draw aside from that
piece of level land, like a curtain drawn back along a rod, and we
were to charge through the gap thus made between them and the
forest. The shock of our charge and its unexpectedness were to serve
instead of numbers.

Fine old-fashioned tactics, sahib, that suited our mind well! There
had been plenty on the voyage, including Gooja Singh, who argued we
should all be turned into infantry as soon as we arrived, and we had
dreaded that. Each to his own. A horseman prefers to fight on
horseback with the weapons that he knows.

Perhaps the sahib has watched Sikh cavalry at night and wondered how
so many men and horses could keep so still. We had made but little
noise hitherto, but now our silence was that of night itself. We had
but one eye, one ear, one intellect among us. We were one! One with
the night and with the work ahead!

One red light swinging n