58 A 
SOME SITES OF BATTLE. 
embankment by which the high road crosses the deep ravine between 
the French and German positions, nor yet the ravine itself, were visible. 
Bnt Hans soon grasped that friends had got across and held the big 
house, where they seemed sore beset. 
An hour or two of steady pounding followed without one single 
casualty in the battery. Then suddenly to the left rear arose a mighty 
clatter, much shouting and sharp clank of sabres. Cavalry were 
mustering, noisily as is their wont. Pausing but a moment where 
they formed up, the horsemen defiled at a quick trot down the road 
into the cutting. Then the order came to limber-up. Another ba ttery 
from the left, a field battery, came up and followed the cavalry down. 
And then, Hans leading, the battery moved off at a walk, heading for 
the cutting, and halted just where it began. It was all blocked with 
guns and horsemen in confusion, a shocking sight. The French had 
got the range and were not silenced yet. Their fire enfiladed the defile 
and not a shot was lost. Ho practised soldier’s eye was needed to see 
that there was tough work in hand for all of them. The halt was not 
of long duration. Gradually the throng dissolved, and the road grew 
passable. Hans and the others instinctively shortened reins. The 
captain gave the signal to advance. “ Mit Gott /” said the corporal. 
And they rode down the hill for their lives. 
Scarcely were the horses fairly in their stride when a shell burst with 
startling crash almost at the leaders’ feet. Another struck the bank 
just to the left, spurting up the earth and stones. Savagely the enemy 
was pouring in his fire on this bit of hollow road, dealing destruction, 
as riderless horses and the dead and wounded here and there shewed 
but too well. Gathering speed, they came, just where at the bottom 
the road sweeps out on to the embankment over the ravine, upon a 
struggling mass of men and horses. A gun of the battery ahead had 
somehow come to grief. The defile was all but choked up. There was 
no time to take a pull. It was the closest thing that ever was, but they 
got by. And then—Hans was new to the sort of thing, it gave him 
quite a turn—out on the embankment, with a queer kind of hunted 
look upon his face, there was an Uhlan on foot coming towards them. 
He did not heed them nor seem indeed to see them; for though Herr 
Lieutenant warned him with a cry and the corporal screamed a curse, 
they rode over him, and Hans heard afterwards there had been merely 
one convulsive tremor as the gun-wheel went over his back. 
But the captain was already waving to them to strike off the road on 
the other side, to the right. There was a sharp bit of rise for a yard 
or two, and they put their horses at it with a shout. Just when they 
reached the top, the riding leader plunged wildly forward and came 
down heavily on his head; and when Hans, dizzy from his fall, had 
struggled up, the limber-gunners had got Gretchen clear and tossed to 
him her reins. The riding horse was badly hit and struggling help¬ 
lessly. Then, at a foot’s pace, the gun moved on, past the rear of the 
field battery now in action along the road near the big house, and 
unlimbered a stone’s throw further on. The other guns formed up on 
its left, and soon all were hard at work, blazing away at short range 
into the French, who were quite close at hand and in great force. 
For a time Hans was employed bringing up ammunition from th@ 
