Past the grey infantry, frantically yelling its welcome, swept a tremendous charge. Knee to knee, shouting, chanting, horse and man one war shaft, endued with soul and lifted to an ecstasy, they went by, flecked with foam, in a whirlwind of dust, in an infernal clangour, with the blare and fury, the port and horror of Mars attended. The horses stretched neck, shook mane, breathed fire; the horsemen drained to the lees the encrusted heirloom, the cup of warlike passion. Frenzied they all rode home. The small cavalry force opposed, gasped at the apparition. Certainly their officers tried to rally the men, but certainly they knew it for futility! Some of the troopers fired their carbines at the approaching tide, hoar, yelling, coming now so swiftly that every man rode as a giant and every steed seemed a spectre horse--others did not. All turned, before the shock, and fled, in a mad gallop of their own. Kenly's infantry, yet in column, was packed in a road none too wide, between ragged banks topped by rail fences. Two panels of these had been taken down preparatory to deploying in the fields, but the movement was not yet made. Kenly had his face turned to the west, straining his eyes for the guns or for the reinforcements which happily General Banks might send. A shout arose. "Look out! Look out! Oh, good Lord!" First there was seen a horrible dust cloud, heard a great thunder of hoofs. Then out of all came bloodshot eyes of horses, stiffened manes, blue figures downward bent on the sweat-gleaming necks, oaths, prayers, sounds of unnerved Nature, here and there of grim fury, impotent in the torrent as a protesting straw. Into the blue infantry rode the blue cavalry. All down the soldier-crammed road ensued a dreadful confusion, danger and uproar. Men sprang for their lives to this side and that. They caught at jutting roots and pulled themselves out of the road up the crumbling banks. Where they could they reached the rail fences, tumbled over them and lay, gasping, close alongside. The majority could not get out of the road. They pressed themselves flat against the shelving banks, and let the wedge drive through. Many were caught, overturned, felt the fierce blows of the hoofs. Regardless of any wreck behind them, on and over and down the Winchester road tore the maddened horses, the appalled troopers.