"It's all fixed, boys," replied the captain, smiling at their eagerness.

"You mean that the general has consented to the plan?" asked Hal.

"Yes."

"Hurrah!" shouted Chester.

"Hurrah!" cried Hal.

"Yes," continued the captain, "you are ordered to hold yourselves subject to the command of your superior officer," and he concluded smilingly, "which is me."

"And we couldn't have a better!" exclaimed both lads in a single voice.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHESTER SAVES THE DAY.

The day was at its noon!

From the first break of dawn the battle had raged; now, at mid-day, it was at its height. Hour after hour the fighting had continued under a shadowless sky, blue as steel, hard as a sheet of bra.s.s. The Germans had attacked the Belgians and French with the first streak of light.

Circling, sweeping, silently, swiftly, a marvelous whirlwind of force, the Germans had rushed on. Swift, as though wind-driven, they moved. An instant, and the Allies broke into violent movement. Half-clothed sleepers poured out. Perfect discipline did the rest.

With marvelous and matchless swiftness and precision they got under arms.

There were but fifteen hundred or so in all--six squadrons of French Lancers, the only French troops yet to reach Belgian soil, and a small body of infantry, without artillery.

Yet, rapid as the action of the Allies was, it was not as rapid as the downward sweep of the German horde that rushed to meet them.

There was a crash, as if rock were hurled upon rock, as the Lancers, the flower of the French cavalry, scarce seated in the saddle, rushed forward to save the pickets, to encounter the first blind ford of the attack and to give the Belgian infantry, farther in, time to prepare for defense.

The hoofs of rearing chargers struck each other's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and these bit and tore at each other's throats and manes, while their riders reeled down dead. The outer wings of the Germans were spared the shock, and swept on to meet the bayonets of the infantry.

The cavalry was enveloped in the overwhelming numbers of the center. It was a frightful tangling of men and brutes.

The Lancers could not charge; they were hemmed in, packed between bodies of hors.e.m.e.n that pressed them together as between iron plates; now and then they cut their way through clear enough to reach their comrades, but as often as they did so, so often the overwhelming numbers of the Germans surged in on them afresh like a flood, and closed upon them, and drove them back.

It was bitter, stifling, cruel work; with their mouths choked with dust, with their throats caked with thirst, with their eyes blind with smoke; while the steel was thrust through nerve and sinew, or the shot plowed through bone and flesh.

The answering fire of the infantry kept the Germans farther at bay, and mowed them down faster--but in the Lancers' quarter of the field--parted from the rest of their comrades, as they had been by the rush of that broken charge with which they had sought to save the town and arrest the foe--the worst pressure of the attack was felt, and the fiercest of the slaughter fell.

The general in command of the cavalry had been shot dead as they had first swept out to encounter the advance of the German hors.e.m.e.n; one by one the officers had been cut down, singled out by the keen eyes of their enemy, and throwing themselves into the deadliest of the carnage with impetuous self-devotion characteristic of their service.

At the last there remained but a bare handful of the brilliant squadrons of 600 men that had galloped down in the gray of dawn to meet the whirlwind of German fury. At their head was Captain Derevaux, and beside him rode Hal.

It was not the gallant captain's fault that Hal was thus in the thick of the battle. This had been an accident, and had come about in this manner:

Late the night before Hal and Chester had been called to the quarters of the commanding general and dispatched on separate missions. Their ways led past the outposts--even beyond the farthest--where the six squadrons of French Lancers and a small body of infantry had been thrown out, under orders, to make a reconnaissance in force in the morning. Advancing beyond this line, Hal had turned east and Chester west.

His mission accomplished, Hal had just reached the Allies' line upon his return, when the Germans bore down on them. Hal saw that his one chance for safety lay in throwing in his fortunes with the troops.

Accordingly he turned his horse, just as the Lancers swept past on their first charge, and reined in beside Captain Derevaux. The latter had recognized the danger and realized that the boy's keen wit had detected his one hope of life. He had greeted him with a smile; nor had he blamed him for his choice.

And so Hal had swept forward in the charge. Seizing a sword from a falling trooper, Hal, riding at the captain's side, was soon in the thick of the terrible carnage, and, in spite of the terrible fighting, had escaped injury.

Two horses had been killed under Captain Derevaux. Twice he had thrown himself across fresh, unwounded chargers, whose riders had fallen in the fray, and at whose bridles he caught as he shook himself free of the dead animal's stirrups. His head was uncovered; his uniform, hurriedly thrown on, had been torn aside, and his chest was bare; he was drenched with blood, not his own, that had rained on him as he fought, and his face and hands were black with smoke and with powder.

Hal could not see a yard in front of him; he could not tell how the day went anywhere save in that corner where the Lancers were hemmed in. As fast as they beat the enemy back, and forced themselves to some clearer s.p.a.ce, the Germans closed in afresh.

No orders reached the little troop, and Hal could not tell whether the Belgian battalions were holding their own or had been cut utterly to pieces under the immense numerical superiority of their foes.

Glancing about the field, Captain Derevaux could see that every officer of the Lancers save himself was down, and that, unless he took the vacant place and rallied them, the few troopers still left would scatter.

With Hal at his side, he spurred the horse he had just mounted against the dense crowd opposing him--against the hard black wall of dust and smoke and steel and savage faces, which were all that either could see. He thrust his horse against the mob, while he waved his sword above his head:

"_En avant_!" he shouted.

His voice reached the troopers, clear and ringing in its appeal. Hal, turning in his saddle at this moment, caught from the hands of a reeling trooper the Eagle of France, and as he raised it aloft, the light, flashing upon the golden wings, brought an answering shout from those that remained of the troop.

"_En avant_!" came the rallying cry.

The young French captain glanced back on this little troop, guarding his head the while from the blows that were rained on him, and his voice rang out:

"Charge!"

Like arrows launched from a hundred bows they charged, Hal and the young captain still slightly in advance, Hal striking aside the steel aimed at him, as they pushed on, and with the other hand holding high the Eagle of France.

The effort was superb.

Dense bodies of Germans parted them in the front from the part of the field where the infantry still was engaged, hara.s.sed them in the rear with flying shots and forced down on them on either side, like the closing jaws of a trap.

Their fierce charge was, for a moment, irresistible; it bore headlong all before it. For a moment the Germans gave way, shaken and confused. For a moment they recoiled under the shock of that desperate charge.

As Captain Derevaux spurred his horse against the enemy, twenty blades glittered against him. The first would have pierced his chest had not Hal struck up the blade with a quick move.

To pause was impossible. Though the French horses were forced through a bristling forest of steel, the charge availed little.

Hal waved the Eagle aloft, as the captain looked around at the few who were left and shouted:

"You are the sons of the Old Guard! Die like them!"

"Surrender!" came a cry from in front.

Hal looked back once more on the fragment of the troop, and raised the flag higher aloft, as he muttered to himself: