VII

They who saw the full promise of the night in one instant of time dashed
from their lips and lost in desert sands struggled fiercely with their
fate. Baldry's great figure at their head, Baldry's great voice shouting
encouragement, they strove to pass the trench, to rush upon and
overwhelm the masked batteries, the hidden marksmen. An effectual
_chevaux-de-frise_, the pointed stakes withstood them, tore them, and
threw them back. Effort upon effort, a wild crossing over the interlaced
bodies of the fallen, a forward rush upon the guns, a loud "'Ware the
vines!" from Baldry--another and a wider ditch, irregular and shallow,
but lined with thorns like stilettos, and strung from side to side with
lianas strong as ropes to entangle, to bring prone upon the thorns the
desperate men who strove in the snare. A small band won to the farther
side, but the shot was as a blast of winter among sere leaves, and
terribly thinned their ranks. All was vain, all hopeless; to advance,
destruction, to tarry in that arena amidst the deadly thunder of the
guns, no less a thing.

"Back, back!" shouted Baldry. "Back through the tunal--back to the
Admiral at the main battery! Here all's lost!"

Above the din rose his voice. Back to the one door of safety surged the
English, but the way was narrow from that pit into which they had been
betrayed. The guns yet spoke; men dropped with an answering groan or
with a wild cry to their comrades not to leave them behind in that fatal
trench, upon Death's harvest-field. How in the murk and rain of death