Chapter Xii.
THE column that had butted stoutly at the obstacles in the roadway was barely out of the youth's sight before he saw dark waves of men come sweeping out of the woods and down through the fields. He knew at once that the steel fibers had been washed from their hearts. They were bursting from their coats and their equipments as from entanglements. They charged down upon him like terrified buffaloes.

Behind them blue smoke curled and clouded above the treetops, and through the thickets he could sometimes see a distant pink glare. The voices of the cannon were clamoring in intermi- nable chorus.

The youth was horrorstricken. He stared in agony and amazement. He forgot that he was engaged in combating the universe. He threw aside his mental pamphlets on the philoso- phy of the retreated and rules for the guidance of the damned.

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The fight was lost. The dragons were com- ing with invincible strides. The army, helpless in the matted thickets and blinded by the over- hanging night, was going to be swallowed. War, the red animal, war, the blood-swollen god, would have bloated fill.