"Keep
your guns served to the utmost!"
Six-and-twenty horsemen, riding full-tilt at a thousand men, may look
like a trifle, but they are disconcerting. What they hit, they kill;
and if they succeed in striking home, they play old Harry with formations.
And Risaldar Mahommed Khan did strike home. He changed direction
suddenly and, instead of using up his horses' strength in outflanking
the enemy, who had marched to intercept him, and making a running target
of his small command, he did the unexpected--which is the one best
thing to do in war. He led his six-and-twenty at a headlong gallop
straight for the middle of the crowd--it could not be called by any
military name. They fired one ragged volley at him and then had no
time to load before he was in the middle of them, clashing right and
left and pressing forward. They gave way, right and left, before him,
and a good number of them ran. Half a hundred of them were cut down
as they fled toward their firing-line. At that second, just as the
Risaldar and his handful burst through the mob and the mob began
rushing wildly out of his way, the British bugles blared out the
command to advance in echelon.
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