He was screeching "_Vive le roi! Vive le roi!_" at the pitch of his
lungs, which was as much as to say that he was a deserter, since we were
for the king and they for the emperor. As he passed us he roared out in
English, "The Guard is coming! The Guard is coming!" and so vanished
away to the rear like a leaf blown before a storm. At the same instant
up there rode an aide-de-camp, with the reddest face that ever I saw
upon mortal man.

"You must stop 'em, or we are done!" he cried to General Adams, so that
all our company could hear him.

"How is it going?" asked the general.

"Two weak squadrons left out of six regiments of heavies," said he, and
began to laugh like a man whose nerves are overstrung.

"Perhaps you would care to join in our advance? Pray consider yourself
quite one of us," said the general, bowing and smiling as if he were
asking him to a dish of tea.

"I shall have much pleasure," said the other, taking off his hat; and a
moment afterwards our three regiments closed up, and the brigade
advanced in four lines over the hollow where we had lain in square, and
out beyond to the point whence we had seen the French army.

There was little of it to be seen now, only the red belching of the guns
flashing quickly out of the cloudbank, and the black figures--stooping,
straining, mopping, sponging--working like devils, and at devilish work.
But through the cloud that rattle and whirr rose ever louder and louder,
with a deep-mouthed shouting and the stamping of thousands of feet.