The cavalry was enveloped in the overwhelming
numbers of the center, and the flanks seemed to cover the Zouaves and
Tirailleurs as some great settling mist may cover the cattle who move
beneath it.
It was not a battle; it was a frightful tangling of men and brutes. No
contest of modern warfare, such as commences and conquers by a duel
of artillery, and, sometimes, gives the victory to whosoever has the
superiority of ordnance, but a conflict, hand to hand, breast to breast,
life for life; a Homeric combat of spear and of sword even while the
first volleys of the answering musketry pealed over the plain.
For once the Desert avenged, in like, that terrible inexhaustibility
of supply wherewith the Empire so long had crushed them beneath the
overwhelming difference of numbers. It was the Day of Mazagran once
more, as the light of the morning broke--gray, silvered, beautiful--in
the far, dim distance, beyond the tawny seas of reeds. Smoke and sand
soon densely rose above the struggle, white, hot, blinding; but out from
it the lean, dark Bedouin faces, the snowy haicks, the red burnous, the
gleam of the Tunisian muskets, the flash of the silver-hilted yataghans,
were seen fused in a mass with the brawny, naked necks of the Zouaves,
with the shine of the French bayonets; with the tossing manes and
glowing nostrils of the Chasseurs' horses; with the torn, stained silk
of the raised Tricolor, through which the storm of balls flew thick and
fast as hail, yet whose folds were never suffered to fall, though again
and again the hand that held its staff was cut away or was unloosed in
death, yet ever found another to take its charge before the Flag could
once have trembled in the enemy's sight.
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