But the line of Hessians, as soon as they had fired, turned and fled, passing between the two lines of the second force, and stopping at some further distance to reform and reload. The second force, being thus cleared by the first, wheeled quickly into the road, and formed a second barrier against Peyton's oncoming troop. Peyton's men, intoxicated by the powder-smell that filled their nostrils as they passed through the smoke of the Hessians' first volley, bore down on this second barrier with furious force. They were the best riders in the world, and many a one of them held his broadsword aloft in one hand, his pistol raised in the other, the rein loose on his horse's neck; while those with long-barrelled weapons aimed them on the gallop. The Hessians and Peyton's foremost men fired at the same moment. The Hessians had not time to turn and flee, for the Americans, unchecked by this second greeting of fire, came on at headlong speed. "At 'em, boys!" yelled Peyton, discharging his pistol at a tall yager, who fell sidewise from his horse with a fierce German oath. The light horse men dashed between the Hessians' steeds, and there was hewing and hacking. A Hessian officer struck with a sabre at Peyton's left arm, but only knocked the pistol from his hand. Peyton then found himself threatened on the right by a trooper, and slashed at him with broadsword. The blow went home, but the sword's end became entangled somehow with the breast bones of the victim. A yager, thinking to deprive Peyton of the sword, brought down a musket-butt heavily on it. But Peyton's grip was firm, and the sword snapped in two, the hilt in his hand, the point in its human sheath. At that instant Peyton felt a keen smart in his left leg. It came from a second sabre blow aimed by the Hessian officer, who might have followed it with a third, but that he was now attacked elsewhere. Peyton had no sooner clapped his hand to his wounded leg than he was stunned by a blow from the rifle-butt of the yager who had previously struck the sword. Harry fell forward on the horse's neck, which he grasped madly with both arms, still holding the broken sword in his right hand; and lapsed from a full sense of the tumult, the plunging and shrieking horses, the yelling and cursing men, the whirr and clash of swords, and the thuds of rifle-blows, into blind, red, aching, smarting half-consciousness.