musket and tried to stagger forward,
but a bayonet seared his right temple, tearing the scalp and
letting down a rush of blood all over his face and eyes. Blinded,
the boy called instinctively: "Father! I'm hurt! Could you help
me!"

Colonel Craig turned white under his tan, and looked back.

"I can't help you, my boy. Sergeant, will you look after my son?"
And he ran forward into the infernal network of bayonets, calling
out: "Get through there, boys. We might as well clean up this mess
while we're about it. Pull down that fence! Never mind those men
behind it!--rush it! Kick it over! Now come on! I don't ask you
to do anything that I don't do. Major Lent and I will take you
through. Come on and take that bridge!"

A captain, fighting back the bayonets with his sword, suddenly
floundered to the fence top and clung, balanced on his belly,
shouting hysterically:

"Look at the Lancers! Look at 'em coming! Now, Zouaves! Pull
down the fence and give them a chance to charge the bridge!"

Over a low swell of land some horsemen trotted into view; behind
them the horizon was suddenly filled with the swimming scarlet
pennons of the Lancers. A thousand horses' heads shot up against
the sky line, manes tossing; a thousand lance points fell to a
glittering level.

They were cheering shrilly as they came on; the Zouaves heard them,
the gray infantry regiment gave way, turned, filed off, retreating
toward the bridge at a slow trot like some baffled but dangerous
animal; and after it ran the Zouaves, firing, screaming, maddened
to hysteria by their first engagement, until their panting officers
and their bugles together barely managed to halt them short of the
edges of utter annihilation just as a full Confederate brigade rose
grimly from the wood's edge across the stream, ready to end their
hysterical yelling for ever.

Stephen, sitting on the grass among the dead and stricken, tied his
bloody turban, pulled the red fez close over it, smeared the blood
from his eyes, and, clutching his musket, stood up unsteadily.

He could see the charge of the 8th Lancers--see the horsemen wheel
and veer wildly as they received the fire of the Confederate troops
from the woods across the stream, squadron after squadron sheering
off at a gallop and driving past the infantry, pell-mell, a wild
riot of maddened horses, yelling riders, and streaming scarlet
pennons descending in one vivid, headlong torrent to the bridge.
B