Kuropatkin, apprised of Orloff’s error, was thundering his divisions up the railroad at double-time toward the Collieries, but, despairing to reach the blundering Orloff in time, had ordered his cavalry railway-guards to charge the enemy.... They came on now with mediæval grandeur, a dream of chivalry, breaking through gaps of Orloff’s disordered infantry--to turn the point of the Japanese flanker. Splendid squadrons!... A curse dropped from Feeney’s gray lips. “They’re going to murder the cavalry to put red blood into that rotten foot-outfit,” he said. Finacune’s face was colorless. He did not answer. The sound of bullets in the air was like the winging of a plague of locusts. Often the two huddled together, allowing a gasping battalion to leap past them toward the front. Kuroki was breaking his command into fragments and rolling them forward like swells of the sea. His front-rankers dropped to their knees to fire; then dashed forward a little way to repeat--all with inhuman precision. Feeney’s field-glass brought out their work. In a mile-long dust-cloud, the Russian cavalry thundered forward like a tornado. The Cossacks swept into Kuroki’s zone of fire. Feeney heard his companion breathe fast, and turned his head. The _Word_ man was staring into the heart of the Cossack charge, his fears forgotten, fascinated unto madness. The earth roared with hoofs, and the air was rent with guns. On came the cavalry until it reached Kuroki’s point and halted it; but upon the Cossacks now from the countless Japanese skirmish-lines were hurled waves of flying metal--waves that dashed over the Russian horsemen as the sundered seas rushed together upon Pharaoh’s hosts. “It’s like a biograph,” came from Finacune. Kuroki was checked; his van ridden down. The Russian horse, cumbered with its dead, and taking an enfilading fire from half the Japanese command, was now ordered to retire. Only the skeletons of the glorious squadrons obeyed. Kuroki was stopped indeed--stopped to thrust an impediment aside. He rose from his knees, fastened a new point to his plow, and bored in toward the railway upon the strewn and trampled grain-fields. Already the hospital corps was gathering in the endless sheaves of wounded. “One can tell the dead by the way they lie,” Finacune said vaguely. “They lie crosswise and spoil the symmetry.” Orloff was steadied a trifle by the cavalry sacrifice, and turned an erratic but deadly fire upon the Japanese.... At this instant Major Inuki pounced upon the two correspondents and carried them back toward headquarters. He made very many monkey-sounds; was quite unintelligible from excitement; in fact, at the thought of these two being suffered to see so much alone. If their heads had been cameras, straightway would they have been smashed....