Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 127]
8
All these sounds come to our ears, each distinct and clear at times but always through a ceaseless rumbling concert from them all.
The clomping marching rumble clatters and loudens and the darkness immediately in front of us thickens and begins to move. We are conscious of a changing rugged outline, a phantasmagorid of gloom darker than than the darkness. Bulging masses linked together by low ribbon-like stretches creep past us and vanish as similar masses follow in their wake link after link. A dragon of shadow accompanied by the clomping rumble and the treading of feet is entering the city.
From the unseen curb of the narrow footway on which we stand we put forth our hands plunging the darkness. We reach the moving shadows. We touch the bulging baggage of a wagon, the cold side of a limber. We feel the steamy breath of a horse, the flapping
a name="a4990128">
[Page 128]
9.
coat of a soldier, the equipment of another. We dimly see that the lower stretches of a shadow are bristling with sloping thickets of rifles. We see the head of a horse, the outline of a rider, the edges of a thousand shapes that are familiar to our sight.
By reflection of the silvery sky overhead we can see the crown of a steel helmet. A spark flashes from an iron-shod hoof. We can see the legs of a horse, dangling harness the spokes of a wheel.
All that we hear and the little that we touch and see is enough to inform us that a battalion is marching into the bombarded city under cover of darkness. This stealing in at night is a military necessity for every move in the game of war is to avoid death that death may be dealt. No man in that night-protected battalion is allowed to strike a match; no man attempts to.