"Yes, that's Boney," said I.

"No, no, it's he. This de Lapp or de Lissac, or whatever his devil's
name is. It is he."

Then I saw him at once. It was the horseman with the high red feather
in his hat. Even at that distance I could have sworn to the slope of
his shoulders and the way he carried his head. I clapped my hands upon
Jim's sleeve, for I could see that his blood was boiling at the sight of
the man, and that he was ready for any madness. But at that moment
Bonaparte seemed to lean over and say something to de Lissac, and the
party wheeled and dashed away, while there came the bang of a gun and a
white spray of smoke from a battery along the ridge. At the same
instant the assembly was blown in our village, and we rushed for our
arms and fell in. There was a burst of firing all along the line, and
we thought that the battle had begun; but it came really from our
fellows cleaning their pieces, for their priming was in some danger of
being wet from the damp night.

From where we stood it was a sight now that was worth coming over the
seas to see. On our own ridge was the chequer of red and blue
stretching right away to a village over two miles from us. It was
whispered from man to man in the ranks, however, that there was too much
of the blue and too little of the red; for the Belgians had shown on the
day before that their hearts were too soft for the work, and we had
twenty thousand of them for comrades. Then, even our British troops
were half made up of militiamen and recruits; for the pick of the old
Peninsular regiments were on the ocean in transports, coming back from
some fool's quarrel with our kinsfolk of America. But for all that we