scream of shells overhead.  Something stabbed into our column right beside me.  Many went headlong, crying out as they fell.  Suddenly the colours seemed to halt and sway like a tree-top in the wind.  Then down they went! — squad and colours — and we spread to pass them.  At the order we halted and laid down and fired volley after volley at the grey coats in the edge of the thicket A bullet struck in the grass ahead of me, throwing a bit of dirt into my eyes.  Another brushed my hat off and I heard a wailing death yell behind me.  The colonel rode up waving a sword.

‘Get up an’ charge!’ he shouted.

On we went, cheering loudly, firing as we ran, Bullets went by me hissing in my ears, and I kept trying to dodge them.  We dropped again flat on our faces.

A squadron of black-horse cavalry came rushing out of the woods at us, the riders yelling as they waved their swords.  Fortunately we had not time to rise.  A man near me tried to get up.

‘Stay down!’ I shouted.

In a moment I learned something new about horses.  They went over us like a flash.  I do not think a man was trampled.  Our own cavalry kept them busy as soon as they had passed.

Of the many who had started there was only a ragged remnant near me.  We fired a dozen volleys lying there.  The man at my elbow rolled upon me, writhing like a worm in the fire.

‘We shall all be killed!’ a man shouted.  ‘Where is the colonel?’

‘Dead,’ said another.

‘Better retreat,’ said a third.

‘Charge!’ I shouted as loudly as ever I could, jumping to my feet and waving my sabre as I rushed forward.  ‘Charge!’

It was the one thing needed — they followed me.  In a moment we had hurled ourselves upon the grey line thrusting with sword and bayonet.

They broke before us — some running, some fighting desperately.

A man threw a long knife at me out of a sling.  Instinctively I caught the weapon as if it had been a ball hot off the bat.  In doing so I dropped my sabre and was cut across the fingers.  He came at me fiercely, clubbing his gun — a raw-boned, swarthy giant, broad as a barn door.  I caught the barrel as it came down.  He tried to wrench it away, but I held firmly.  Then he began to push up to me.  I let him come, and in a moment we were grappling hip and thigh.  He was a powerful man, but that was my kind of warfare.  It gave me comfort when I felt the grip of his hands.  I let him tug a jiffy, and then caught him with the old hiplock, and he went under me so hard I could hear the crack of his bones.  Our support came then.  We made him prisoner, with some two hundred other men.  Reserves came also and took away the captured guns.  My comrades gathered about me, cheering, but I had no suspicion of what they meant.  I thought it a tribute to my wrestling.  Men lay thick there back of the guns — some dead, some calling faintly for help.  The red puddles about them were covered with flies; ants were crawling over their faces.  I felt a kind of sickness and turned away.