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They were charged right and left by the Life Guards and Blues, but the Somersetshire clowns, with their scythes and butt-ends of their muskets, fought to the last. At length their powder and ball were spent, and cries were heard of "Ammunition; for God's sake give us ammunition!" But no ammunition was at hand.
Farm implements were of the crudest kind; scythes and sickles did the work of mowing machines; plows were made of wood, occasionally shod with iron; and threshing was done with flails. After the grain had been harvested, cattle were turned out indiscriminately on the stubble, on the supposition that the fields were common property.
The grasshoppers darted right and left from the brown patches where the scythes had left their marks; the butterflies fled in their butterfly fashion.
Then he lay down to sleep behind Barebarrow, and while he slept the enraged shepherds and work-folk bound him with a thousand cart-ropes, and slew him with a thousand scythes and forks and other homely implements.
From the wide, hot field, stretching away on the opposite side, came the clear metallic ring of the scythes, as the mowers sharpened them; the mellow whistle of the driver lying on top of the huge hay mass, beneath which the oxen crawled toward the lowered bars; and the sweet gurgling laughter of two romping, sunburned children, who swung on at the back of the wagon.
They mended their weapons, greased their hair, and washed their bloodstained arms in the sea; the tents were closed; the beasts of burden were feeding; and in the distance the scythes of the chariots, which were all ranged in a semicircle, looked like a silver scimitar lying at the base of the mountains. Schahabarim's talk recurred to her memory. She was waiting for Narr' Havas, her betrothed.
The white shirt-sleeves of the mowers glistened in the sun, the scythes flashed, voices echoed, snatches of song floated about, and there were glimpses of red waggon-wheels, purple gowns, and many-coloured handkerchiefs. The Baron had been told that the haymaking was to be followed by the wedding, and had he gone down the vale to the dairy he would have had evidence to that effect.
Then the women rushed to the scythes, which on each side defended the cart, and plied them with such vigor and harmony, that the Romans, seeing a great number of their men killed or disabled, conceived a wholesome fear for such terrible arms, so intrepidly plied.
A feudal fortress this, and, like those of the hills round Rome which these ruins mimic, raising its gardens and pompous rooms above the squalor of the mediæval village. Immediately below, the corridors of the theatre; below that, the shops, where pack-saddles, ploughs, scythes, wooden pails the things of a village are for sale in the midst of those black arches.
The turf which covered the small portion of level ground on the sides of the stream, was as close and verdant as if it had occupied the scythes of a hundred gardeners once a-fortnight; and it was garnished with an embroidery of daisies and wild flowers, which the scythes would certainly have destroyed.
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