By midday the tide of battle had begun to roll southwards, though only by a very little. The British lines were forced back, a mile here, half a mile there, but they still held on with superhuman energy and determination. And not only did they hold on, but, wherever there was the least chance, a regiment or cavalry squadron would launch a counter-attack. But it all seemed so hopeless, just as one might throw pebbles into the waves of the sea as they break upon a beach. Some day it is to be hoped that an adequate record will be published of the remarkable work which the cavalry performed during the Retreat. Sir John French, perhaps because he was himself a cavalry leader, hardly mentions them in his first dispatch. Wherever they were most wanted, there they were in the thick of the fighting. How the horses "carried on" and where and how fresh animals were obtained remains a mystery, in view of the muddle in which everything was. But where every unit and every man worked as they did, it seems almost invidious to single out for mention any particular regiment or episode. Take a single half-hour of the fighting on the left, and you have an example of what was repeated fifty times that day across the whole British front. A blue-grey mass of enemy infantry appears advancing with steady, swinging pace. At 500 yards or a trifle more one of our regiments opens rapid fire upon them. You can actually see the lanes in the German ranks ploughed through by the British rifle-fire. Still they advance, for the gaps are filled almost immediately. Nearer and nearer, until that regiment which began the advance has almost ceased to exist. The remnant breaks and scatters in confusion, and as they break away another new regiment is disclosed behind them. Such is the method of the German massed attack, overwhelming by sheer numbers. But rarely did they get near enough to the British lines for a hand-to-hand fight. Regiment after regiment would be held at bay by the murderous rifle-fire of the little handful of British; regiment after regiment would appear to fill the gap. Now and again the weight of the attack would tell, and the Germans would get close enough for a final rush on the British trench. Then, at the critical moment, a British company, slightly forward on the flank, pours in a withering enfilade fire, and while the German infantry stagger under this unexpected attack the British cavalry charge through our own lines straight on the front and flank of the enemy. There are a few minutes of mad cut and thrust, and the Germans, who always dread the cold steel as a Chinese dreads rain, break and run as though all the fiends of hell were after them.