“Well enough,” said Edrington.
The deep voice was intoning again; like marionettes all on the same string the company that had fired now reloaded, every man biting out his bullet at the same instant, every man ramming home his charge, every man spitting his bullet into his musket barrel with the same instantaneous inclination of head. Edrington looked keenly at the cavalry collecting together in a disorderly mob down the valley.
“The 43rd will advance!” he ordered.
With solemn ritual the square opened up again into two columns and continued its interrupted march. The detached company came marching up to join them from out of a ring of dead men and horses. Someone raised a cheer.
“Silence in the ranks!” bellowed the sergeant-major. “Sergeant, take that man’s name.”
But Hornblower noticed how the sergeant-major was eyeing keenly the distance between the columns; it had to be maintained exactly so that a company wheeling back filled it to make the square.
“Here they come again,” said Edrington.
The cavalry were forming for a new charge, but the square was ready for them. Now the horses were blown and the men were less enthusiastic. It was not a solid wall of horses that came down on them, but isolated groups, rushing first at one face and then at another, and pulling up or swerving aside as they reached the line of bayonets. The attacks were too feeble to meet with company volleys; at the word of command sections here and there gave fire to the more determined groups. Hornblower saw one man — an officer, judging by his gold lace — rein up before the bayonets and pull out a pistol. Before he could discharge it, half a dozen muskets went off together; the officer’s face became a horrible bloody mask, and he and his horse fell together to the ground. Then all at once the cavalry wheeled off, like starlings over a field, and the march could be resumed.
“No discipline about these Frogs, not on either side,” said Edrington.
The march was headed for the sea, for the blessed shelter of the Indefatigable, but it seemed to Hornblower as if the pace was intolerably slow. The men were marching at the parade step, with agonizing deliberation, while all round them and far ahead of them the fugitive émigrés poured in a broad stream towards safety. Looking back, Hornblower saw the fields full of marching columns — hurrying swarms, rather — of Revolutionary infantry in hot pursuit of them.
“Once let men run, and you can’t do anything else with them,” commented Edrington, following Hornblower’s gaze.
Shouts and shots over to the flank caught their attention. Trotting over the fields, leaping wildly at the bumps, came a cart drawn by a lean horse. Someone in a seaman’s frock and trousers was holding the reins; other seamen were visible over the sides firing muskets at the horsemen hovering about them. It was Bracegirdle with his dung cart; he might have lost his guns but he had saved his men. The pursuers dropped away as the cart neared the columns; Bracegirdle, standing up in the cart, caught sight of Hornblower on his horse and waved to him excitedly.
“Boadicea and her chariot!” he yelled.
“I’ll thank you, sir!” shouted Edrington with lungs of brass, “to go on and prepare for our embarkation.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
The lean horse trotted on with the cart lurching after it and the grinning seamen clinging on to the sides. At the flank appeared a swarm of infantry, a mad, gesticulating crowd, half running to cut off the 43rd’s retreat. Edrington swept his glance round the fields.
“The 43rd will form line!” he shouted.
Like some ponderous machine, well oiled, the half battalion fronted towards the swarm; the columns became lines, each man moving into his position like bricks laid on a wall.
“The 43rd will advance!”
The scarlet line swept forward, slowly, inexorably. The swarm hastened to meet it, officers to the front waving their swords and calling on their men to follow.
“Make ready!”
Every musket came down together, the priming pans clicked.
“Present!”
Up came the muskets, and the swarm hesitated before that fearful menace. Individuals tried to get back into the crowd to cover themselves from the volley with the bodies of their comrades.