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Rh the battle had continued, or what losses had occurred, he could not remember at all.

He also recollected that in the confusion of the moment he had shouted madly and had frantically brandished his sabre. Once it had glittered with the colour of fire, but he could not remember whether it had struck anything. The hilt of his sword had become grimy and greasy with sweat. At the same time he felt a terrible thirst in his throat. Then all of a sudden there appeared right in front of him, a threatening-looking Japanese horseman, with his mouth wide open, and with eyes so dilated that his eyeballs seemed to be jumping out of their sockets. From a big rip in his red-lined cap peeped the top of a head shaped like a chestnut.

Instinctively Khashoji raised his sabre and drove it down upon the ugly head and cap with all his strength. But what resisted his stroke was not the cap or the head beneath it, but the hard steel of the sword with which his assailant suddenly parried the blow with the splendid skill of a Japanese swordsman. The clashing sound of the two swords rang out with awful clarity amidst the deafening noise of the conflict, and a penetrating odour of polished steel sharply entered his nostrils. At the same time the broad sword of his opponent flashed in the sunshine, and flew widely round his head, and he felt something unspeakably cold entering the joints of his neck with a cruel hissing sound.

The horse continued to rush headlong through the almost endless millet-fields, with Khashoji on its back.