noon
The plain ahead was filled with the clamor of battle ; a pack-train clattered by me , hurrying to the front , and but for these and for Asaf , the ragged Turk at my side , pointing mutely to the still dark heap , I might have thought myself at home , in my own valley , come suddenly on a mountain tragedy . And now I dismounted , and , raising the hat , looked into the thin brown face that I had first seen years ago so wistfully watching the little flake of cloud which hovered over the ridges . I had thought this morning that at last I was to see a pitched battle , for the Greek army was well intrenched in the hills north of Pharsala and made some show of a stand there . At noon I stood on the crest of the same hills watching the usual retreat . A few miles away , its gray houses blotched against the mountains which guard southern Thessaly , was the town , and in the valley , drawing in toward it , the Greeks , with the enemy on their rear and flanks enclosing them in a narrowing semicircle of fire . Before me stretched the road , a white band across the undulating green of the plain . In that road , a mile away , I saw the rear-guard as it retired swiftly but steadily , facing again and again to deliver its volleys into the lines of the advancing foe .