However inconvenient the position, it was now necessary to attack in order to cut away through for themselves.

The squadron in which Rostov was serving had scarcely time to mount before it was halted facing the enemy.

Again, as at the Enns bridge, there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and again that terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear--resembling the line separating the living from the dead--lay between them.

All were conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether they would cross it or not, and how they would cross it, agitated them all.