CHAPTER XVII.

TIMELY AID.

Meanwhile the Hungarian army had advanced to meet the enemy; but being ill officered and poorly drilled, with no experience whatever of actual fighting, it was easily routed. The Austrians had but to sweep the highway with their twelve-pounders, and the opposing centre gave way at once. It was a shameful defeat: all turned tail and ran before the enemy; and when the Congreve rockets were sent, ricochetting, hissing, and spitting fire, to explode among the panic-stricken fugitives, the chaos became complete.

On such trying occasions, one man with his nerves under control is invaluable. A-dAśn Baradlay was no soldier, no born tactician, but he possessed that first requisite of success in any calling, self-control. As soon as he saw that the battle was going against his countrymen, although his place was in the rear as commissary-general, he threw himself on his horse and made an attempt to save the day. To rally the fugitives, demoralised as they were by the bursting of shells on every side, was hopeless. Along the highway he saw advancing a troop of the enemy's cavalry, sweeping everything before it.

"Let us give them something to do," said he to himself, scanning the fleeing troops in quest of a few young men who might respond to his call. "Look here, boys," he shouted, "shall we let the enemy capture all our cannon without our striking a blow?"

A little knot of sturdy lads paused in their flight at this call. They were only common soldiers, but they shouted to one another: "Let us die for our country!" and therewith faced about against the cavalry that came charging down upon them.

Suddenly help appeared from an unexpected quarter: out of the acacia hedge that lined the highway such a raking fire was opened upon the cavalry that it was thrown into disorder and forced to beat a hasty retreat, leaving the road strewn with its dead and wounded. With loud huzzas there now sprang out from behind the hedge the Death's Head Legion, its leader, the long-legged Mausmann, waving his hat and calling to A-dAśn: "Hurrah, patron! That's what we call barricade tactics."

A-dAśn welcomed the madcap student who had saluted him as "patron." The German students regarded him as their patron, because he saw to it that they received as good care as the rest of the army, and would not allow his countrymen to put any slight upon them. And they deserved all his kindness, the gallant lads; resolute under fire and always good-humoured, they were ever ready to fight and feared neither death nor the devil,--no, nor Congreve rockets, for that matter. They knew their foe, too, from many a sharp encounter in the past. A hundred such lads were of untold value at a critical moment like the present.

The students and the other volunteers whom A-dAśn had rallied around him amounted to about two hundred in all,--a small but determined band. When the enemy saw that this handful of young men was holding the cavalry in check, they caused their rocket-battery to play upon the little band of patriots. And the lads took it for play indeed.

"Aha, old friend!" cried Mausmann, as a rocket came shrieking through the air. "See, boys, the first has stuck in the mud; up with a whiz and down with a thud! The second there bursts in mid-air; the third comes nearer, but we don't care. Here comes the fourth; its course is straight." (Indeed, the rocket was so well aimed that it landed in their very midst, whereupon Mausmann stepped forward, coolly took it by its stick, although it was spitting fire in an alarming manner, and hurled it into the ditch beside the road, where it exploded harmlessly; then he finished his rhyme.) "It bursts at last; too late, too late!" The young recruits laughed aloud.

Perceiving that their rockets were effecting nothing, the enemy planned another cavalry charge, this time sending a troop of cuirassiers to open the road. The little company of patriots drew up, three deep, clear across the highway, and awaited the assault. During this pause Mausmann started the German student song:

"_Wer kommt dort von der HAśh?_ _Wer kommt dort von der HAśh?_ _Wer kommt dort von der HAśh?_ _Sa sa, ledernen HAśh_-- _Wer kommt dort von der HAśh?_"

His comrades joined in, and then with a loud hurrah they gave the oncoming horsemen a volley from their rifles at twenty paces distance. Aha! how they broke and turned tail and scampered back, leaving their dead and wounded behind!

Then the gallant band reloaded, shouldered their pieces, and marched back to join their comrades. But presently the sound of approaching cavalry was again heard on the road behind them. The horsemen divided to right and left, hoping to surround their foe. The latter, however, closed in about their leader, and then faced outward, presenting a bristling wall of bayonets on every side, like a monstrous hedgehog; and again their merry student song rang out defiantly. Once more the attacking cavalry was forced to fall back before the lively volleys of this determined band, which seemed ignorant of the meaning of fear, and proof against all modes of assault. Its method was to let the enemy advance until a rifle-volley was sure to do the most execution. The student song had many stanzas, one for each attack from the pursuing cavalry; it was sung to the end, and the enemy repulsed at each onset. The slightly wounded bound up their wounds, while those who had fared the worst were laid across their comrades' rifle-barrels and so carried along, marking their path with their life-blood, and ever shouting hurrahs for the cause of liberty.

At last the cartridges ran low.

"Look here, patron," said Mausmann to A-dAśn, "we have but one round of ammunition left, and when that is gone we are lost. But there's a bridge yonder which we can easily hold, and the cavalry can't get through the bog to surround us. And now, boys, swear that you'll save this last shot, and from now on receive the enemy with your bayonets."

Thereupon the still undaunted students knelt on the highway, and, with upraised right hands, sang an oath from some opera chorus--perhaps it was from "Beatrice"--resolved to play their parts well till the ringing down of the curtain. Then they took possession of the bridge, and were preparing to receive the enemy's cavalry on the points of their bayonets, when all at once the horsemen slackened their pace and seemed stricken with a sudden panic. Out from the thicket that bordered the road broke a squadron of hussars, and by a flank attack scattered the cuirassiers in all directions.

The fight was over for that day. The enemy sounded the retreat, and the Hungarians were left to go their way unmolested. The hussars turned back to the bridge, led by their captain, a tall and muscular young man with flashing eyes and a smile that played constantly about his mouth. Two of the young men on the bridge recognised that face and form. Those two were A-dAśn and Mausmann.

"Hurrah! Baradlay! Richard Baradlay!" cried the student, throwing his cap high in the air, and rushing to meet his old acquaintance. In the warmth of his welcome he nearly pulled the other from his horse.

Then A-dAśn came forward, and the two brothers, who had not met for six years, fell into each other's arms, while hussars and legionaries embraced and kissed one another, each with words of praise on his tongue for the other.

"Heaven must have sent you to us!" exclaimed A-dAśn. "If you hadn't come when you did, you would have been by this time the head of the family."

"God forbid!" cried Richard. "But what are you doing here? The secretary of war bade me give you a good scolding for exposing your life when you are commissary-general and your place is with the transport wagons. You were not sent out to fight, and you have a young wife and infant children dependent on you. Have you forgotten them, unfeeling man? Just wait till I tell mother what you are up to!" As he spoke he grew suddenly serious. "Dear mother!" he exclaimed; "she must have foreseen this when she came to me and bade me hasten hither to your side."