Meanwhile the rebel cavalry advanced at a walk, one of their leaders on a gray horse endeavouring with all his might to induce his men to charge the guns. But the guns had unlimbered, and their very first shot swept away the gray horse. Some few rebels dismounted to pick up their chief, and the remainder of the force moved away to the British left. Then up came half a dozen of the 92nd on their camels; and then from each side of the village appeared the two troops of the Seventeenth. They numbered between eighty and ninety men all told, and came on in rank entire with lances at the “carry”--two small slender lines of pennons four hundred yards apart. “It was a pretty sight,” says one who was there, “and the odds (4000 to 90) were so great that it became exciting also.” Straight onward they galloped; and then suddenly the pennons swept forward like a flash of light, every lance came down to the “engage,” and the Seventeenth with a yell dashed on to the charge. The rebels slackened pace, halted, and, before the lances had reached them, broke and fled; and the Seventeenth, plunging headlong among them, was swallowed up in the huge mass, and fairly vanished out of sight. Presently they appeared again, every lance still busy, and for seven miles the chase and the slaughter continued till men and horses could do no more. [Sidenote: 1859. 1st Jan.] Thus did the one squadron, so far unengaged, of the Seventeenth obtain its opportunity at last and take brilliant advantage thereof. A single man of the Seventeenth, wounded, summed up in himself the casualties of the whole column; but every soul was fairly worn out. Before the rebels were overtaken at Barode (for by this name the action is known), Somerset’s column had marched a hundred and forty-seven miles without a halt except to feed the horses: the last fifty-two miles had been covered in thirty hours. The action with its pursuit of twelve miles made, with the return to camp, twenty-four miles more. All baggage and European supplies were left hopelessly in the rear: the nights were bitterly cold; and to bring discomfort to a climax, rain fell heavily for three days and three nights. Yet no one complained. On the morning after Barode men and horses were so numbed and stiff through cold and rain that they could hardly rise from the mud in which, through sheer fatigue, they had slept; and when after a few hours’ painful march the sun at last broke through the clouds, the men gave him three cheers.