Graphic Description of the Fatal Charge.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1979, 14 March 1885, Page 2

Graphic Description of the Fatal Charge.

Foil the following extract of the battle of Almklea we aie indebted to the interesting account in the Sydney Morning Herald :— " Xosv over .ill the Arab hosts the vultures have gatheied m a cloud. Now sheikhs may be seen cm vetting in front, brandishing lance and hword ; now a hundred banners are uplifted, dusky preen and goldenlettered ; now there is a movement along the whole line. They are coming. Yea, there is a yell from below that i" answered byashtiek from above, for every vulture knows that note of war. The banner? stream out, the stones fly, the solid earth shakes. The steel created wave of 14,000 men comes on. Do you hear the bugles speak ? Do you see the white lined square move, steadily, surely, as a great whip motes to her helm? Do you see tlie curved head of that Arab host .strike its aiigle, now its front, and the three hundred rifles pour their first volley into it-, hollow hide ? There is a deeper and a biokeu hollow then. Horsemen fall backward. Footmen by icores make the familiar death-leap. The whole force reels backvrard and swings round upon the left side of the square, when the lefortned head is once more charging. Burnaby is there in merrier mode than ever in hi-, life before ; and Ins sword drips and his beard is powder-singed, and the tumult in his ears is glorious in its strength. He has forced a long sti aight sword from a tall sheikh's hand, and has cloven his tin ban and his skull ; he se«-s thiough the black skins and tlie white smoke something that looks like a crusader's chain armour ; he is disposed to dash at it, but must not move. There is trouble with a gun there, home tumult. Ah, they aie in. A broken side. ' Strike now ; out with them ; back with them !' And they hulled them back. But as the last went down, he dashed up that long keenspju, and B'liniby w.'iit down upon him and giappled him, and poured his bent's blood over a blight blown face that laughed at him as he died. '