"They came down singing," said the unofficial report of the enemy,
borne from village to village the next day. "They continued to
sing, and it was written that our men could not abide when they
came. It is believed that there was magic in the aforesaid song."
Dan and Horse Egan kept themselves in the neighbourhood of
Mulcahy. Twice the man would have bolted back in the confusion.
Twice he was heaved, kicked, and shouldered back again into the
unpaintable inferno of a hotly contested charge.
At the end, the panic excess of his fear drove him into madness
beyond all human courage. His eyes staring at nothing, his mouth
open and frothing, and breathing as one in a cold bath, he went
forward demented, while Dan toiled after him. The charge checked
at a high mud wall. It was Mulcahy who scrambled up tooth and nail
and hurled down among the bayonets the amazed Afghan who barred
his way. It was Mulcahy, keeping to the straight line of the rabid
dog, who led a collection of ardent souls at a newly unmasked
battery and flung himself on the muzzle of a gun as his companions
danced among the gunners. It was Mulcahy who ran wildly on from
that battery into the open plain, where the enemy were retiring in
sullen groups.
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