III
Marching at ease in the cheerful air, on duty and daring bent,
In quest of the dragon,
The fateful dragon,
The fierce four hundred went:
Over the hills and through the plain,
And up the slopes of the hills again.
The sleek rooks, washed in the morning's dew,
Rose at their coming and flapped and flew
In a black procession athwart the blue;
And the plovers circled about on high
With many a querulous piping cry.
And the cropping ewes and the old bell-wether
Looked up in terror and pushed together;
And still with a grim unbroken pace
The men moved on to their battle-place.
Softly, silently, all tip-toeing,
With their lips drawn tight and their eyes all glowing,
With gleaming teeth and straining ears
And the sunshine laughing on swords and spears,
Softly, silently on they go
To the hidden lair of the fearful foe.
They have neared the stream, they have crossed the bridge,
And they stop in sight of the rugged ridge,
And it's "Flankers back!" and "Skirmishers in!"
And the summit is theirs to lose or win--
To win with honour or lose with shame;
And so to the place itself they came,
And gazed with an awful thrill
At the ridge of omen,
Beset by foemen,
At the arduous summit, the gorse-clad summit,
the summit of Winter Hill.
But where was the dragon, the scale-clad dragon,
the dragon that Dickon saw,
The genuine dragon,
The pitiless dragon,
The dragon that knew no law?
Lo, just as the word to charge rang out,
And before they could give their battle shout,
On a stony ledge
Of the ridge's edge,
With its lips curled back and its teeth laid bare,
And a hiss that ripped the morning air,
With its backbone arched
And its tail well starched,
With bristling hair and flattened ears,
What shape of courage and wrath appears?
A cat, a tortoiseshell mother-cat!
And a very diminutive cat at that!
And below her, nesting upon the ground,
A litter of tiny kits they found:
Tortoiseshell kittens, one, two, three,
Lying as snug as snug could be.
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