Page:Randall Parrish--My Lady of the South.djvu/18

MY LADY OF THE SOUTH bank. I heard the wild yells of the excited drivers, the blows, the crunching of heavy wheels over the stones; I saw the leap of the caissons, the rush of the men. Panting for breath, stumbling over the rough ground, I raced beside Number Two for the crest, vaguely wondering why Wyatt was lashing his leaders so like a demon. I saw Somers go tumbling forward in a shapeless heap, and one of the straining wheelers on Number One drop dead in the traces, dragged remorselessly onward by his team-mates. Yet I was there, my hands hard on the spokes, sluing the heavy guns into position, the very instant the released caissons were trotted to the rear down the protecting slope. Then it instantly became all clockwork, mechanism, discipline. I could scarcely distinguish faces or even forms; all was rush, riot, seeming confusion; yet I knew it must be Keane to right of me and Parkhurst at left. A sharp order hurtled into my numbed brain, and I echoed it automatically even as I heaved, the hot perspiration blinding my eyes, the mad lust of the fight throbbing through my veins. With one bound backwards I was at the breech, the slim muzzle deflected downward into the valley. I marked the vague figure of a man, unrecognizable, spring hastily back from the mouth of the gun, crouching down, rammer in hand; over that deadly smooth barrel I caught one glimpse of low tangled bushes, of drifting smoke clouds, of a solid gray mass breaking through, of sunlight shimmering along a front of levelled steel—then I jerked the lanyard, and mingled smoke and flame burst forth. All that followed was pandemonium, rush, roar, leaping, shapeless figures. I could [ 10 ]