I.


The gabion was ours. After two hours' fighting we were in possession of
the first embrasure, and made ourselves as comfortable as circumstances
would admit. Jack Delamere, Tom Delancy, Jerry Blake, the Doctor, and
myself, sat down under a pontoon, and our servants laid out a hasty
supper on a tumbrel. Though Cambaceres had escaped me so provokingly
after I cut him down, his spoils were mine; a cold fowl and a Bologna
sausage were found in the Marshal's holsters; and in the haversack of a
French private who lay a corpse on the glacis, we found a loaf of bread,
his three days' ration. Instead of salt, we had gunpowder; and you may
be sure, wherever the Doctor was, a flask of good brandy was behind him
in his instrument-case. We sat down and made a soldier's supper. The
Doctor pulled a few of the delicious fruit from the lemon-trees growing
near (and round which the Carabineers and the 24th Leger had made a
desperate rally), and punch was brewed in Jack Delamere's helmet.

"'Faith, it never had so much wit in it before," said the Doctor, as he
ladled out the drink. We all roared with laughing, except the guardsman,
who was as savage as a Turk at a christening.

"Buvez-en," said old Sawbones to our French prisoner; "ca vous fera
du bien, mon vieux coq!" and the Colonel, whose wound had been just
dressed, eagerly grasped at the proffered cup, and drained it with a
health to the donors.

How strange are the chances of war! But half an hour before he and