The dynamite had dug a ditch more than a hundred feet wide, all around us, and cast up an embankment some twenty-five feet high on both borders of it.

As to destruction of life, it was amazing.

Moreover, it was beyond estimate.

Of course, we could not _count_ the dead, because they did not exist as individuals, but merely as homogeneous protoplasm, with alloys of iron and buttons.
No life was in sight, but necessarily there must have been some wounded in the rear ranks, who were carried off the field under cover of the wall of smoke; there would be sickness among the others--there always is, after an episode like that.

But there would be no reinforcements; this was the last stand of the chivalry of England; it was all that was left of the order, after the recent annihilating wars.