Now the 75th and 18th Field Batteries came rattling and dashing to the front, and unlimbered at one thousand yards.

The naval guns were working at four thousand, but the two combined were insufficient to master the fire of the pieces of large calibre which were opposed to them.

Lord Methuen must have prayed for guns as Wellington did for night, and never was a prayer answered more dramatically.

A strange battery came lurching up from the British rear, unheralded, unknown, the weary gasping horses panting at the traces, the men, caked with sweat and dirt, urging them on into a last spasmodic trot.

The bodies of horses which had died of pure fatigue marked their course, the sergeants' horses tugged in the gun-teams, and the sergeants staggered along by the limbers.