dded the
steeds. The foremost cavalrymen drew rein; the horses reared. The
squadrons were colliding and plunging. In an eye's twinkling their
momentum had been checked.

"Charge! Charge!" Drusus sent the word tossing down along the cohorts,
and the legionaries pressed forward. It was done. The whole splendid
array of horsemen broke in rout; they went streaming back in
disordered squadrons over the plain, each trooper striving to outride
his fellow in the flight. Pompeius had launched his most deadly bolt,
and it had failed.

Now was Drusus's chance. No further order had been given him; to
pursue cavalry with infantry were folly; he needed no new commands.
The six cohorts followed his lead like machinery. The crash of battle
dimmed his voice; the sight of his example led the legionaries on.
They fell on the Pompeian archers and slingers and dispersed them like
smoke. They wheeled about as on a pivot and struck the enemy's left
wing; struck the Pompeian fighting line from the rear, and crushed it
betwixt the upper and nether millstone of themselves and the tenth
legion. Drusus drove into the very foremost of the fight; it was no
longer a press, it was flight, pursuit, slaughter, and he forced his
horse over one enemy after another--transformed, transfigured as he
was into a demon of destruction, while the delirium of battle gained
upon him.

Drusus saw the figure of a horseman clothed, like Caesar, in a red
general's cloak spurring away to the enemy's camp. He called to his
men that Pompeius had taken panic and fled away; that the battle was
won. He saw the third line of the Caesarians drive through the Pompeian
centre and right as a plough cuts through the sandy field, and then
spread terror, panic, rout--the battle became a massacre.

So the Caesarians hunted their foes over the plain to the camp. And,
though the sun on high rained down a pitiless heat, none faltered when
the Imperator bade them use their favour with Fortune, and lose not a
moment in storming the encampment. They assailed the ramparts. The
Pompeian reserve cohorts stood against them like men; the Thracian and
other auxiliary light troops sent down clouds of missiles--of what
avail? There are times when mortal might can pass seas of fire and
mountains of steel; and this was one of those moments. The Pompeians
were swept from the ramparts by a pitiless shower of javelins. The
panic still was upon them; standards of cohorts, eagles of legions,
they t