Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/48

32 no sign. It was five o'clock when authentic information arrived. A party of four commanded by young Gell had followed up the course of the river, the other scouts having preferred to take any other direction, and when about twelve miles above the city had come upon the machines, advancing in a line that appeared to be five miles in length, and steaming their hardest. Gell and his companions had galloped back, but reckoned that the foe could not be more than three or four miles behind them.

No time was to be lost. I paraded the men and briefly addressed them. Their fathers, I said, both in the old country and at home, had ever fought bravely, but never so desperately as when their homes and families were at stake. Now was the time to show they were no degenerate sons of such sires. Who doubted that a man with his intelligent power and many-sided craft was more than a match for any machine, or any number of machines? One bold stand would sweep the whole brood from the face of the earth.

The men answered with a cheer, and we marched out of the town across the bridge, which I had