ey've got with them?" wondered Byng. "By the lord
Harry, no,--it's a coach and six! They're flogging it along like a
twelve-pounder! And what the devil's in those wagons?"

But he had no time for guesswork. The desultory thunder of the rebel
ordnance ceased, and the whole mass that hemmed him in began to revolve
within itself, and present a new front to the approaching cavalry.

"Caught on the hop, by God! The whole line will advance! Trumpeter!"

One trumpet-call blared out and a dozen echoed it. In a second more a
roar went up that is only heard on battle-fields. It has none of the
exultant shout of joy or of the rage that a mob throws up to heaven;
it is not even anger, as the cities know it, or the men who riot
for advantage. It is a welcome ironically offered up to
Death--full-throated, and more freighted with moral effect on an enemy
than a dozen salvoes of artillery.

The thousands ahead tried hard to turn again and face two attacks at
once; but, though the units were efficiently controlled, there were none
who could swing the whole. Byng's decimated, forward-rushing fragment
of a mixed brigade, tight-reined and working like a piece of mechanism,
struck home into a mass of men who writhed, and fell away, and shouted
to each other. A third of them was out of reach, beyond the British
rear; fully another third was camped too far away to bring assistance at
the first wild onslaught. Messengers were sent to bring them up, but the
messengers were overtaken by a horde who ran.

Then, like arrows driven by the bows of death, three squadrons took them
on the flank as Cunningham changed direction suddenly and loosed his
full weight at the guns. Instead of standing and serving grape, the
rebel gunners tried to get their ordnance away--facing about again too
late, when the squadrons were almost on them. Then they died gamely,
when gameness served no further purpose. The Rangars rode them down and
butchered them, capturing every single gun, and leaving them while they
charged again at the rallying hordes ahead.

The strange assortment of horsed wagons and the lumbering six-horse
coach took full advantage of the momentary confusion to make at a gallop
for the British rear, where they drew up in line behind the Sikhs, who
were volleying at short range in the centre.

Byng detached two companies of British soldiers to do their amateur
damnedest with the guns, and, for infantry, they did good service with
them; fifteen or