No man of all the throng who had ever seen war doubted the truth for
one moment after the first of the wild riders was in sight, and the
older and more experienced men instinctively looked into each other's
faces and came forward together. But even had they been warned in time,
they could have done nothing against the fright that seized the younger
men and the women at the throat like a bodily enemy, choking out hope
and strength and youth in the dreadful premonition of untimely death.
The squires pressed upon the knights, the boys and young men-at-arms
and the followers of the camp forced their weight inward next, and the
inner circle yielded and allowed itself to be crushed in upon the troop
of ladies, whose horses began to plunge and rear with their riders'
fright; and still, on one side, the crowd tried to part before the
coming fugitives. The first came tearing down, his horse's nostrils
streaming with blood, himself wild-eyed, with foam-flecked lips that
howled the words of terror. "The Seljuks! The Seljuks!"
A dozen lengths before the terror-stricken wall of human beings that
could not make way to let him in, without warning, without a death-
gasp, the horse doubled his head under himself as he galloped his last
stride, and falling in a round heap rolled over and over forwards with
frightful violence, till he suddenly lay stiff and stark with twisted
neck and outstretched heels, within a yard of the shrinking crowd, his
rider crushed to death on the grass behind him.
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