the wings should glisten in the fuller day.
Half naked, scorched, blinded; with an open gash in his shoulder where
the lance had struck, and with his brow wet with the great dews of the
noon-heat and the breathless toil; his eyes were clear as they flashed
with the light of the sun in them; his mouth smiled as he answered:

"Have we shown ourselves cowards, that you think we shall yield?"

A hurrah of wild delight from the Chasseurs he led greeted and ratified
the choice. "On meurt--on ne se rend pas!" they shouted in the words
which, even if they be but legendary, are too true to the spirit of the
soldiers of France not to be as truth in their sight. Then, with their
swords above their heads, they waited for the collision of the terrible
attack which would fall on them upon every side, and strike all the
sentient life out of them before the sun should be one point higher in
the heavens. It came; with a yell as of wild beasts in their famine, the
Arabs threw themselves forward, the chief himself singling out the "fair
Frank" with the violence of a lion flinging himself on a leopard. One
instant longer, one flash of time, and the tribes pressing on them would
have massacred them like cattle driven into the pens of slaughter. Ere
it could be done, a voice like the ring of a silver trumpet echoed over
the field:

"En avant! En avant! Tue, tue, tue!"

Above the din, the shouts, the tumult, the echoing of the distant
musketry, that silvery cadence rung; down into the midst, with the
Tricolor waving above her head, the bridle of her fiery mare between
her teeth, the raven of the dead Zouave flying above her head, and her
pistol leveled in deadly aim, rode Cigarette.

The lightning fire of the crossing swords played round her, the glitter
of the lances dazzled her eyes, the reek of smoke and of carnage was
round her; but she dashed down into the heart of the conflict as gayly
as though she rode at a review--laughing, shouting, waving the torn
colors that she grasped, with her curls blowing back in the breeze, and
her bright young face set in the warrior's lust. Behind her, by scarcely
a length, galloped three squadrons of Chasseurs and Spahis; trampling
headlong over the corpse-strewn field, and breaking through the masses
of the Arabs as though they were seas of corn.

She wheeled her mare round by Cecil's side at the moment when, with six
swift passes of his blade, he had warded off the Chief's blows and sent
his own s