Page:Aladdin O'Brien (1902).pdf/221

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by fours, stretched away through the wet lands for forty miles. A fly-bitten tail of ambulances and wagons, with six miserable horses or six perfectly happy mules attached to each, added another twenty miles. At the not always attained rate of fifteen miles a day the army could pass a given point in four days. To the gods in Olympus it would have appeared to have all the characteristic color and shape of an angleworm, without, however, enjoying that reptile's excellent good health. If the armies of Washington, Cornwallis, Clive, Pizarro, Cortés, and Christian de Wet had been added to it, they would have passed unnoticed in the crowd. And the recurring fear of the general in command of this army was that the army he sought would prove to be twice as big. So speculation was active between the York and James rivers.

In the minds of the soldiers a thousand years passed, and then there was a little fight, and they learned that they were soldiers. And so did the other army. An-