rs the soft Easterns did not care to stand. They fled screaming,

"These are devils! These are devils!"

We were among them now, hacking and stabbing with the short swords upon
their heads and backs. There was no need to aim the blow, they were so
many. Like a huddled mob of cattle they turned and fled down Nile. But
my orders had reached the vanguard and these, hidden in the growing
crops on the narrow neck of swampy land between the hills and the Nile,
met them with arrows as they came, also raked them from the steep cliff
side. Their chariot wheels sank into the mud till the horses were slain;
their footmen were piled in heaps about them, till soon there was a
mighty wall of dead and dying. And our centre and rearguard came up
behind. Oh! we slew and slew, till before the sun was an hour high over
half the army of the Great King was no more. Then we re-formed, having
suffered but little loss, and drank of the water of the Nile.

"All is not done," I cried.

For the Immortals still remained behind us, gathered in massed ranks
about their king. Also there were many thousands of others between these
and the walls of Amada, and to the south of the city yet a second army,
that with which Bes had been left to deal, with what success I knew not.

"Ethiopians," I shouted, "cease crying Victory, since the battle is
about to begin. Strike, and at once before the Easterns find their heart
again."

So we advanced upon the Immortals, all of us, for now the vanguard had
joined our strength.

In long lines we advanced over that blood-soaked plain, and as we came
the Great King loosed his remaining chariots against us. It availed him
nothing, since the horses could not face our arrows whereof, thanks
be to the gods! I had prepared so ample a store, carried in bundles
by lads. Scarce a chariot reached our lines, and those that did were
destroyed, leaving us unbroken.

The chariots were done with and their drivers dead, but there still
frowned the squares of the Immortals. We shot at them till nearly all
our shafts were spent, and, galled to madness, they charged. We did
not wait for the points of those long spears, but ran in beneath them
striking with our short swords, and oh! grim and desperate was that
battle, since the Easterns were clad in mail and the Ethiopians had but
short jerkins of bull's hide.

Fight as we would we were driven back. The fray turned against us and
we fell by hundreds. I bethought me of flight to