Claymore's mixed brigade, still holding together, closed the rear
of Porter's powder-scorched _corps d'armee_.
The Zouaves of the 3rd Regiment--what was left of them--marched as
flankers; McDunn's battery, still intact, was forced to unlimber
every few rods; and the pouring rain turned to a driving golden
fire in the red glare of the guns, which lighted up the halted
squadrons of the Lancers ranged always in support.
Every rod in retreat was a running combat. In the darkness the
discharge of the Zouaves' rifles ran from the guns' muzzles like
streams of molten metal spilling out on the grass. McDunn's guns
spirted great lumps of incandescence; the fuses of the shells in
the sky showered the darkness with swarming sparks.
Toward ten o'clock the harried column halted on a hill and
bivouacked without fires, food, or shelter. The Zouaves slept on
their arms in the drenched herbage; the Lancers, not daring to
unsaddle, lay down on the grass under their patient horses, bridle
tied to wrist. An awful anxiety clutched officers and men. Few
slept; the ceaseless and agonised shrieking from an emergency
hospital somewhere near them in the darkness almost unnerved them.
At dawn shells began to plunge downward among the Dragoons.
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