the Eagle of the Bonapartes.

The effort was superb.

Dense bodies of Arabs parted them in the front from the camp where the
battle raged, harassed them in the rear with flying shots and hurled
lances, and forced down on them on either side like the closing jaws of
a trap. The impetuosity of their onward movement was, for the moment,
irresistible; it bore headlong all before it; the desert horses
recoiled, and the desert riders themselves yielded--crushed, staggered,
trodden aside, struck aside, by the tremendous impetus with which the
Chasseurs were thrown upon them. For the moment the Bedouins gave way,
shaken and confused, as at the head of the French they saw this man,
with his hair blowing in the wind, and the sun on the fairness of his
face, ride down on them thus unharmed, though a dozen spears were aimed
at his naked breast; dealing strokes sure as death, right and left as
he went, with the light from the hot, blue skies on the ensign of France
that he bore.

They knew him; they had met him in many ; and wherever the
"fair Frank," as they called him, came, there they knew of old the
battle was hard to win; bitter to the bitterest end, whether that