73/77 Out flashed the colonel's sword like steel lightning. He pointed to the battery. At the same moment up went the colors waving, and the colonel's clarion voice pealed high above all:-- "Twenty-fourth brigade--FORWARD!" They went so swiftly out of the trenches that they were not seen through their own smoke until they had run some sixty yards. As soon as they were seen, coming on like devils through their own smoke, two thousand muskets were levelled at them from the Prussian line. It was not a rattle of small arms--it was a crash, and the men fell fast: but in a moment they were seen to spread out like a fan, and to offer less mark, and when the fan closed again, it half encircled the bastion. |