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Then we recall our regiment in full gallop over field and plain; we hear the clank of swords and bits; we see once more the flash of the blades, the motley line of the horses; we evoke the well-known figures of our chiefs on their chargers.
The fierce and martial spirit of the warrior poet runs throughout the play; his descriptions are animated as with the zeal and passion of battle; the chorus of Theban virgins paint in the most glowing colours the rush of the adverse hosts the prancing of the chargers the sound of their hoofs, "rumbling as a torrent lashing the side of cliffs;" we hear the creak of the heavy cars the shrill whiz of the javelins, "maddening the very air" the showers of stones crashing over the battlements the battering at the mighty gates the uproar of the city the yells of rapine the shrieks of infants "strangled by the bubbling blood."
Struggling, snorting chargers, iron-shod feet, staggering figures rising and falling, wild, hatless, bewildered men half stunned by a fall, and not knowing which way to turn that was the foreground of the picture, while behind them the remainder of the troop were riding furiously back, wounded and hale, all driven by the one desire of getting to a place of safety where they might rally their shattered formation.
And they told him all that had passed, whereupon he cried out to Sahim, "Saddle me one of the chargers that King Mura'ash gave me." Said Sahim, "O my brother, wilt thou do battle with the Jinn?" So Sahim saddled him a sorrel horse of the horses of the Jinn, as he were a castle strong among castles, and he armed and mounting, rode out with the legions of the Jinn, hauberk'd cap-a-pie.
Stirling, Edward's chief stronghold in central Scotland, was so hardly pressed that the men-at-arms were forced to eat their chargers. Yet when the English barons assembled about the beginning of winter, in obedience to Edward's summons, they stubbornly declared that they would not endure the hardships of a winter campaign until the king had fulfilled his pledges as regards the charters.
And, as some of the subordinates of a man-of-war captain are apt to invoke his good wishes and mollify his conscience by making him friendly gifts, it would perhaps have been an excellent thing for him to adopt the plan pursued by the President of the United States, when he received a present of lions and Arabian chargers from the Sultan of Muscat.
I am sure that five minutes had not passed before I was galloping Violette out of the town with the bridle of one of the Emperor's own Arab chargers in either hand. They wished me to take three, but I should have never dared to look my Violette in the face again.
"Ours are no hirelings trained to the fight, With cymbal and clarion, all glittering and bright; No prancing of chargers, no martial display; No war-trump is heard from our silent array. O'er the proud heads of our freemen our star-banner waves; Men, firm as their mountains, and still as their graves." T. Graves.
The only interest in animals which survived his change of heart was that which he now took in horses as chargers. He would ride the farm-horses bare-back to the trough, holding the halter in one hand and a tin sword in the other with the air of a field-marshal.
By this time the horses were well breathed, and the leader holding up his sword and giving rein, the whole troop of chargers broke into the gallop and thundered, with their double load of fighting men, down the remainder of the hill and across the snow-covered plain that still divided them from Shoreby. The whole distance to be crossed was not above a quarter of a mile.
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