which had farther to go.

Worst of all, they were set in motion an hour before dawn, although
Wellington had left orders that fair daylight should be waited for,
and the artillery-men across the Urumea were still plying their guns
on the sea-wall, to dissuade the besieged from repairing it in the
darkness. To be sure a signal for the assault--the firing of a mine
against the hornwork--had been concerted, and was duly given; but in
the din and the darkness it was either not heard or not understood.

Thus it happened that the forlorn hope and the supporting companies
of the Royals had no sooner cleared the trenches than their ranks
shook under a fire of grape, and from our own guns. There was no
cure but to dash through it and take the chances, and Major Frazer,
waving his sword, called on his men to follow him at the double.
Ahead of them, along the foot of the sea-wall, the receding tide had
left a strip of strand, foul with rock and rock pools and patches of
seaweed, dark and slippery. Now and again a shell burst and
illuminated these patches, or the still-dripping ooze twinkled under
flashes of musketry from the wall above; for the defenders had
hurried to the parapet and flanking towers, and their fire already
crackled the whole length of the strand.

Sergeant Wilkes, running a pace or two behind the major, slipping and
staggering at every second yard, was aware--though he could not see
him--of young Corporal Sam close at his shoulder. The lad talked to
himself as he ran: but his talk was no more than a babble of quiet
unmeaning curses, and the sergeant, who understood how the lust of
fighting works in different men, did not trouble to answer until,
himself floundering up to his knees in a saltwater pool, he flung out