How many men had fallen one might not even guess, but the corpses of warriors and horses lay so thick that the living mounts could but climb and stumble over them and sometimes barriers of them nearly man-high lay between me and the nearest foeman so that I was forced to jump Red Lightning over the gory obstacle to find new flesh for my blade. And then, slowly, night descended until man could not tell foe from friend, but I called to my tribesmen about me to pass along the word that we would not move from our ground that night, staying on for the first streak of dawn that would permit us to tell a Kalkar from a Yank. All through the night we heard a considerable movement of men and horses among the Kalkars, and we judged that they were reforming for the dawn’s attack, and then quite suddenly and without warning of any sort, we saw a black mass moving down upon us. It was the Kalkars—the entire body of them—and they rode straight for us, not swiftly, for the corpse-strewn, slippery ground prevented that; but steadily, overwhelmingly, like a great, slow-moving river of men and horses. They swept into us and over us, or they carried us along with them. Their first line broke upon us in a bloody wave and went down and those behind passed over the corpses of those that had fallen. We hacked until our tired arms could scarce raise a blade shoulder high. Kalkars went down screaming in agony, but they could not halt, they could not retreat, for the great, ever-moving mass behind them pushed them onward, nor could they turn to right or left because we hemmed them in on both flanks, nor could they flee ahead, for there, too, were we. Borne on by this resistless tide I was carried with it. It surrounded me. It pinioned my arms at my sides. It crushed my legs. It even tore my sword from my hand. At times, when the force ahead stemmed it for a moment, and the force behind continued to push on, it rose in the center until horses were lifted from the ground, and then those behind sought to climb over the backs of those in front, until the latter were borne to earth and the others passed over their struggling forms, or the obstacle before gave way and the flood smoothed out and passed along again between the flashing banks of Julian blades, hewing, ever hewing, at the Kalkar stream. Never have I looked upon such a sight as the moon revealed that night—never in the memory or the tradition of man has there been such a holocaust. Thousands upon thousands of Kalkars must have fallen upon the edge of that torrent as it swept its slow way between the blades of my painted warriors, who hacked at the living mass until their arms fell numb at their sides, and then gave way to the eager thousands pressing from behind.