Warpath

“ Everywhere the dead lay piled like sheaves in a cornfield, their harness glinting with a ghastly lustre to the moon--piled in all attitudes and postures, staring blankly with white faces to the sky, or prone with their lips in blood, contorted, twisted, clutching at throat and weapon, mouths agape or clenched into a grin, man piled on man, barbarian upon Briton. Dark quags chequered the grass with the sickly odour of shed blood, and sword and spear, shield and helmet, flickered impotently among the dead. ”

“ For on a sudden the conflagration blazes out, loaded with its spoils; masses of burning matter advance; mutilated lumps of falling rock roll forth and whirl dark shoals of sand. They present vague shapes in human likeness--some of the stones suggest the defeated warrior, some a gallant host armed for a standing fight, unassailed by the flames; on one side pants the enemy unwearied and deploys his forces, on another the breath of fury wanes, even as when an army, vanquished in the victor's joyous triumph, lies prostrate on the field right to the gates of the camp. ”

“ With shield and stone-axe, stride across the wold;
The voice of spears was heard, the rattling spear
Shaken by arms of mighty bone, in strength,
Long mouldered, of barbaric majesty.
I called on Darkness—but before the word
Was uttered, midnight darkness seemed to take
All objects from my sight; and lo! again
The Desert visible by dismal flames;
It is the sacrificial altar, fed
With living men—how deep the groans! the voice
Of those that crowd the giant wicker thrills
The monumental hillocks, and the pomp
Is for both worlds, the living and the dead. ”

“ The next factory we call at is engaged in the making of shot. It lies far out in the fields, and as we turn down the lane that leads to it we pass an obelisk to the memory of Warwick, the King-maker, who fought his last battle there and was slain. The earth around sleeps full of the dead who died with him that day, and over yonder, behind fires that burn through the darkness like blood-shot eyes, some of their daughters, down many centuries, are making deadlier weapons of war than Warwick's men ever knew. ”

“ We could only see the flash of the enemy's firelocks while we were perfectly visible to them, standing as we did in the midst of their camp fires. It was a grand and beautiful sight. No one who has not witnessed a night engagement can form any idea of the awful sublimity of the scene. The first volley from the enemy, coming from a spot as 'dark as Erebus,' seemed like the bursting forth of a volcano. Then again all was dark and still, save the moans of the wounded, the confused click! click!—noise made by our men in adjusting their flints, and the ring of the enemy's ramrods in reloading. ”

“ The strength of the spear has destroyed the earls,
100 War-greedy weapons, Wyrd inexorable;
And the storms strike down on the stony cliffs;
The snows descend and seize all the earth
In the dread of winter; then darkness comes
And dusky night-shade. Down from the north
105 The hated hail-storms beat on heroes with fury.
All on earth is irksome to man;
Oft changes the work of the fates, the world under the firmament.
Here treasure is fleeting; here true friends are fleeting;
Here comrades are fleeting; here kinsmen are fleeting. ”

“ And many a fully-armed one, whom the warriors shunned fighting with, neither a hastener in flight, nor a surrenderer;
My hands were generous to him by a quick point with a straightened spear strong in the joints; Inflicting a wound wide of its two sides, the sound of the flow of blood from it leads at night the prowling wolves, burning with hunger.
I rent his vesture with a rigid spear, for the noble one is not forbidden to the spears. ”

“ Shouts run all along the battlemented walls; ringing bows are drawn and javelin thongs twisted: all the ground is strewn with missiles. Shields and hollow helmets ring to blows; the battle swells fierce; heavy as the shower lashes the ground that sets in when the Kids are rainy in the West; thick as hail pours down from storm-clouds on the shallows, when the rough lord of the winds congeals his watery deluge and breaks up the hollow vapours in the sky. ”

“ At first the warriors seem to be creeping along the forest trail with every faculty alert; and then with fearful whoops they whirl their tomahawks through the air at a senseless post, springing back as if in self-defence, falling again upon the imaginary foe, hacking with violence, and mingling shrieks with their victorious shouts, till in the flickering light of the fire and the weird shadows of surrounding objects, the assembled crowd, completely carried away by the vividness of the pantomime, see human victims falling beneath their strokes. ”

“ The heroes and their friends had a long and hard pull up the mountain side, over snow fields and glaciers, in the midst of which great crevasses yawned in unexpected places, but they were cheered on their way by catching from every height a glimpse of Jeraspunt. At length they came so near that they heard shrieks and howls, and other sounds of battle. A few minutes later the terrible scene was visible. Some of the palace guard were killed and mangled, others were yet defending themselves. Gigantic dogs, monsters of every sort, and hordes of savage warriors formed the enemy’s ranks. ”

“ Under cover of the pitchy darkness, five hundred Danákil warriors, passing silently through the gloomy defile, fell suddenly in the dead of night upon the marauders, when, in addition to the multitude slain by the spear and creese, numbers in the panic created by the surprise, leapt in their flight over the steep lava cliffs, and perished in the deep waters of the briny basin. ”

“ Five hours later we sailed from the roofs of the dock buildings with a fleet of two hundred and fifty battleships, carrying nearly one hundred thousand green warriors, followed by a fleet of transports with our thoats.
Behind us we left the stricken city in the fierce and brutal clutches of some forty thousand green warriors of the lesser hordes. They were looting, murdering, and fighting amongst themselves. In a hundred places they had applied the torch, and columns of dense smoke were rising above the city as though to blot out from the eye of heaven the horrid sights beneath. ”

“ The guns looked old, mailed, dead warriors; the gunboats sleeping forms; the grey troops battle-lines in a great war picture, the three horsemen by the cross-roads a significant group in the same; the dead and wounded over all the fields, upon the slope, in the woods, by the marshes, the jetsam, still and heavy, of war at its worst. For a moment longer the wide and dreary stretch rested so, then with a wild suddenness sound and furious motion rushed upon the scene. ”

“ Then, as they drew nearer, the spears began to hurtle through the air and join the arrows, and the Valkyrs—those grim storm sisters who love the battlefield and who wait to carry the souls of the heroes to the storm-land—gathered, and floated above the field of slaughter, where the thirsty earth already began to turn red as the victims fell. ”

“ Being beheaded by my swords like unto the flaming fire and besmeared with blood resembling the clouds with lightning, my enemies shall fall down to the ground. Who is there, proud of his own prowess, that shall be able to withstand me when I shall appear at the battle field with bows and leathern fences of fingers. Killing one with a number of arrows, and sometimes many with a single one, I shall drive shafts into the vital organs of men, horses and elephants. ”

“ The darkness was in our favour, and the assaulting troops were able to form up for attack very close to the enemy's lines—lines of shell-craters in fields of craters from which our storms of fire had swept away all trenches, all buildings, and all trees. The enemy held these forward positions lightly by small groups of men, who knew themselves to be doomed, and waited for that doom in their pits like animals in death-traps. ”

“ One solid, impenetrable mass now bore down, like a mighty avalanche, upon the congregated Britons; a vast sea of spears, and shields, and swords, all heaving onward without resistance, Cæsar heralding the way, like the God of the storm, the armed cavalry thundering onward like the foremost wave, until the whole mass struck upon the iron stems of the gnarled oaks, which stood at the edge of the forest, then rolled back again into the plain, leaving a ridgy line of wounded and dead to mark their destructive course. ”

“ Presently the noise of their armies shall be as the roaring of the sea; the dazzling of their arms shall blind the eyes like lightning; their battle-fields shall be as the dissolution of the world; and the slaughter-ground shall resemble a garden of plantain trees after a storm. At length they shall spread like the march of a host of ants over the land. ”

“ Surely enough before long a hoarse, sullen roar arose, becoming louder and louder, till from the parapet surrounding the enclosure the great avenues that led to it could be seen dark with masses of warriors rolling on in a confused tide towards the fortress, while at the same time the flat roofs of the neighbouring houses were suddenly covered, as if by magic, with swarms of menacing figures, brandishing their weapons—a sight to appal the stoutest heart. ”

“ Few of the renowned warriors of ancient or modern times, would, I presume, have nerve enough to maintain their ground, if they beheld the hosts of antiquity coming shouting from the skies in battle array, and, with thundering artillery, burnished chariots, galloping steeds, clanging armor, and terrifying aspects, rushing upon them with the fury of the tempest, when, from the bursting heavens, the deadly lightning shoots in all directions and mingles with the roar of the warring elements. ”

“ He is in a sector of great commotion, where ruins pile upon ruins; where the very earth under his feet explodes; where a fresh drive is being pushed; where no minute is without its danger. There is the patrol toward the enemy’s lines, the life underground, the sky shot with airplanes, the shrapnel overhead and the mine under feet. There is the torpedo coming with its ugly growl; there are all the changing forms in which death beckons—the Grim Monster which prowls and shrieks; there is the agony renewed. ”

“ And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.
O my brave brown companions, when your souls
Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead
Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,
Death will stand grieving in that field of war
Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent.
And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
The unreturning army that was youth;
The legions who have suffered and are dust. ”

“ The pieces stood ranged in the order in which they had so often stood in battle, and the gray, thin fog rising slowly and silently from the river deep down between the cliffs, and wreathing the mountain-side above, might have been the smoke from some unearthly battle fought in the dim pass by ghostly guns, yet posted there in the darkness, manned by phantom gunners, while phantom horses stood behind, lit vaguely up by phantom camp-fires. ”

“ From point to point, like rabbits hanging on the lips of their warrens, men were revealed, half exposed, half hidden. But no murderous fire despatched them. The enemy too slumbered. We looked that way. The ground over which our eyes searched eastward and northward, was ploughed with the horrid ruts of shells, beaten into mud slowly drying in barren cankerous tracts of dust, or gouged with holes, while mounds rose intermittently, whose washed sides disclosed the limbs of buried men. ”

“ The undulating country around was covered with warriors—Griquas, Mantatees and Bechuanas, all in motion—so that it was impossible to say who were enemies and who were friends. Clouds of dust rose from the immense masses, some flying, others pursuing; and to their screams and yells were added the bellowing of the oxen, the shouts of the yet unvanquished warriors, the groans of the dying, and the wails of women and of children. At last the enemy retreated to the town, which they set in flames, to add to the horror of the scene. ”

“ Hundreds of warriors, with spear and shield, their naked forms the only dark objects in the landscape, showed out in bold contrast and picturesque relief against the green ground-work of their surroundings as they stood and squatted in dense groups or stretched in long, irregular lines along the opposite brink of the cañon. ”

“ But what of the others who were hit outside the trenches and who lay even now, this Christmas Eve, in that dreadful No Man's Land swept by the enemy's fire, whither no stretcher-bearer can go [Pg 205] —lying among the dead and dying, a field of creeping forms, some quivering in the barbed wire, where dead men hang as on a gibbet, hoping only for a cleanly death from a bullet before their wounds fester and poison the blood in their veins.
Whereon—the Saviour—of mankind—was—born.
The measured cadence fell on my ear as I left the ward and passed beyond the annexe. ”

“ The vibrant barking slogan seems to shatter the world, as the destroyers, apparently starting up from nowhere, pour over the silent camp, and each affrighted sleeper leaps up, only to meet the slash of the broad shearing blade which rends his vitals, and hurls him back to the earth, a deluging corpse. Huge figures, fell and dark, hundreds and hundreds of them, and yet more and more, with streaming adornments and mighty shields and short-handled, broad-bladed spears—this is what the captives behold in that terrible hour of lightening dawn. ”

“ Howbeit when this storm had endured a while, and we moved but little, and not an inch aback, and gave them shot for shot, then was another horn winded from amongst the aliens; and thereat the bowmen cast down their bows, and the slingers wound their slings about their heads, and they all came on with swords and short spears and feathered darts, running and leaping lustily, making for our flanks, and the horsemen set spurs to their horses and fell on in the very front of our folk like good and valiant men-at-arms. ”