And now the hunting-shirt men! A line of fire unending glances from right to left and left to right, along the crest of those mud walls, and Death begins his reaping. The head of the English column burns away, as though thrust into a furnace! The column wavers and welters like a red ship in a murky sea of smoke! It pauses, falteringly--disdaining to fly, yet unable to advance!
“Forward, men!” shouts General Gibbs. “This is the way you should go!”
As he points with his sword to those terrible mud walls, he falls riddled by the hunting-shirt men.
CHAPTER XVII--THE SLAUGHTER AMONG THE STUBBLE
WHEN the main advance begins, Sir Edward is in the center with the Highlanders. The latter are not to move until he has word of their success from General Keane with Rennie's rifle corps, and General Gibbs with the main column--the one by the river and the other by the cypress swamp. He has not long to wait; a courier dashes up from the river--eye haggard, disorder in his look!
“General Keane?” cries Sir Edward, his apprehension on edge.
“Dead. The Rifles are in full retreat!” Sir Edward stands like one stricken. Then he pulls himself together.
“Bring on your Highlanders!” he cries to Colonel Dale. “We must force their lines in front of General Gibbs. It is our only chance!”
Sir Edward dashes across to General Gibbs, in the shadow of that significant cypress swamp. He sees General Gibbs go down! He sees the red column torn and twisted by that storm of lead which the hunting-shirt men unloose.
As the English reel away from those low-flying messengers of death, Sir Edward seeks to rally them.
“Are you Englishmen?” he cries. “Have you but marched upon a battlefield to stain the glory of your flag?”
Sir Edward's gesticulating arm falls, smashed by a bullet from some sharp-shooting hunting-shirt man. He seems not to know his hurt! He is on fire with the thought that those honors, won upon forty fields, are to be wrested from him by a “Copper Captain,” backed by a mob of peasants in buckskin! He rushes among the shaken English to check the panic which is seizing them!
At Sir Edward's welcoming shout, Colonel Dale waves a salute! It is his last; the huntingshirt men are upon him with those unerring rifles, and he falls dead before his General's eyes. Coincident with the fall of his beloved Dale, Sir Edward is struck by a second bullet. It enters near the heart. As his aide catches him in his arms, he beckons feebly to Sir John Tylden.