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A few merry, naughty boys, attracted by their squealing and bleating, likewise ventured into the black sea of the cathedral square, but, finding that they forthwith sank in the same, they had called for help, shouting, screaming, and laughing, thereby attracting still other boys and idlers, who now with prudent caution stood on certain less saturated spots, and with shrieks of mockery and laughter watched the vain efforts of the sunken boys, who were striving to work themselves out of the morass.
These arguments, together with the nature of the ground on which we stood, so ill calculated for a proper distribution of troops in case of attack, and so well calculated to hide the movements of an army acquainted with all the passes and tracks which, for aught we knew, intersected the morass, induced our leader to push forward at once into the open country.
Life was a constant alert, a plugging away of weary men, worn-out horses, bogged-down wagons, relieved now and then from the morass of exhaustion by sharp spurts of fighting, the satisfaction of rounding up a Yankee patrol or blockhouse squad, the taking of some supply train and finding in its wagons enough to give them all mouthfuls of food.
Many of our camps were hardly better than the trenches. Only by duck-boards could one walk about the morass in which huts were built and tents were pitched. In the wagon lines gunners tried in vain to groom their horses, and floundered about in their gum boots, cursing the mud which clogged bits and chains and bridles, and could find no comfort anywhere between Dickebusch and Locre.
"The track leads here plainly enough, and it wouldn't come to an end just in the middle of the morass." "I shouldn't think so," said Alzura. "I wonder whether they've missed us yet. How old Barriero will grin on seeing us back again!" "We aren't back yet," I replied. "Look at that hump yonder. It seems solid, doesn't it? Lend me the pole. Ah, too short! What d'you think, Alzura?"
Now the torrent rages below, and they see its white waters tumbling over a ledge of rock; now they pass over the brow of a hill; now skim over a dreary waste and dangerous morass.
Such a study will prevent us from being overwhelmed by the uglinesses of life, or from becoming sunk in a morass of material pleasures, and will open up ways of escape into the heavenly realms. The true teaching of Jesus has, as a matter of fact, never yet been realised in practice.
The grey, dank mists came down on him, his footsteps sank deeper and deeper, and ever the cries, as of damned spirits, grew in his ears. Mocking shapes flitted past him, the wings of obscene birds buffeted him, the morass grew up about him; and now it was all a red moving mass like a dead sea heaving about him.
The effect seemed almost supernatural. The Spanish cavalry those far-famed squadrons of Guzman and Basta broke at the first onset and galloped off for the pass as if they had been riding a race. Most of them escaped through the hollow into the morass beyond. The musketeers of Sultz's regiment hardly fired a shot, and fell back in confusion upon the thickly clustered pikemen.
History, true history, whose cold clearness contrasted so strongly with that intricate morass of miracles in the chronicles that he had read in his childhood, beat down the greater part of his beliefs.
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