it), to hear
the sounds of raging fight, and the yells of raving slayers, and the
howls of poor men stricken hard, and shattered from wrath to wailing;
then suddenly the dead low hush, as of a soul departing, and spirits
kneeling over it. Through the vapour of the earth, and white breath of
the water, and beneath the pale round moon (bowing as the drift went
by), all this rush and pause of fear passed or lingered on my path.

At last, when I almost despaired of escaping from this tangle of spongy
banks, and of hazy creeks, and reed-fringe, my horse heard the neigh
of a fellow-horse, and was only too glad to answer it; upon which the
other, having lost its rider, came up and pricked his ears at us, and
gazed through the fog very steadfastly. Therefore I encouraged him with
a soft and genial whistle, and Kickums did his best to tempt him with a
snort of inquiry. However, nothing would suit that nag, except to enjoy
his new freedom; and he capered away with his tail set on high, and the
stirrup-irons clashing under him. Therefore, as he might know the way,
and appeared to have been in the battle, we followed him very carefully;
and he led us to a little hamlet, called (as I found afterwards) West
Zuyland, or Zealand, so named perhaps from its situation amid this
inland sea.

Here the King's troops had been quite lately, and their fires were still
burning; but the men themselves had been summoned away by the night
attack of the rebels. Hence I procured for my guide a young man who knew
the district thoroughly, and who led me by many intricate ways to the
rear of the rebel army. We came upon a broad open moor striped with
sullen water courses, shagged with sedge, and yellow iris, and in the
drier part with bilberries. For by this time it was four o'clock, and
the summer sun, rising wanly, showed us all the ghastly scene.

Would that I had never been there! Often in the lonely hours, even now
it haunts me: would, far more, that the piteous thing had never been
done in England! Flying men, flung back from dreams of victory and
honour, only glad to have the luck of life and limbs to fly with,
mud-bedraggled, foul with slime, reeking both with sweat and blood,
which they could not stop to wipe, cursing, with their pumped-out lungs,
every stick that hindered them, or gory puddle that slipped the step,
scarcely able to leap over the corses that had dragged to die. And to
see how the corses lay; some, as fair as death in sleep;