sseurs was down, and that,
unless he took the vacant place, and rallied them together, the
few score troopers that were still left would scatter, confused and
demoralized, as the best soldiers will at times when they can see no
chief to follow.

He spurred the horse he had just mounted against the dense crowd
opposing him, against the hard, black wall of dust, and smoke, and
steel, and savage faces, and lean, swarthy arms, which were all that
his eyes could see, and that seemed impenetrable as granite, moving and
changing though it was. He thrust the gray against it, while he waved
his sword above his head.

"En avant, mes freres! France! France! France!"

His voice--well known, well loved--thrilled the hearts of his comrades,
and brought them together like a trumpet-call. They had gone with him
many a time into the hell of battle, into the jaws of death. They surged
about him now; striking, thrusting, forcing, with blows of their sabers
or their lances and blows of their beasts' fore-feet, a passage one to
another, until they were reunited once more as one troop, while their
shrill shouts, like an oath of vengeance, echoed after him in the
defiance that has pealed victorious over so many fields from the
soldiery of France. They loved him; he had called them his brethren.
They were like lambs for him to lead, like tigers for him to incite.

They could scarcely see his face in that great red mist of combat, in
that horrible, stifling pressure on every side that jammed them as if
they were in a press of iron, and gave them no power to pause, though
their animals' hoofs struck the lingering life out of some half-dead
comrade, or trampled over the writhing limbs of the brother-in-arms they
loved dearest and best. But his voice reached them, clear and ringing
in its appeal for sake of the country they never once forgot or once
reviled, though in her name they were starved and beaten like rebellious
hounds; though in her cause they were exiled all their manhood through
under the sun of this cruel, ravenous, burning Africa. They could see
him lift aloft the Eagle he had caught from the last hand that had borne
it, the golden gleam of the young morning flashing like flame upon
the brazen wings; and they shouted, as with one throat, "Mazagran!
Mazagran!" As the battalion of Mazagran had died keeping the ground
through the whole of the scorching day while the fresh hordes poured
down on them like ceaseless torrents, snow-fed