"Don't you understand? He meant to fire on the attacking column if it
gave any sign of wavering. He did it once in Spain at the siege of
Tarragona."

There was another scene of war at the opposite end of the town from the
breach at the Kasbah. During the assault all the non-combatant Mussulman
population had taken refuge there, crowding and cramming it up to the
very edge of the ramparts that crowned the precipices of the Rummel, and
either from sheer terror or by dint of the pressure of the crowd, a
cascade of human beings fell from the ramparts on to the rocks and
terraces of the precipice. Heaps of corpses, men, women and children,
but especially women, were caught here and there, and on one of the
heaps an old white-bearded Arab was turning over the dead, one by one,
seeking doubtless for some one who was dear to him.

Having no official position in the army, and as I could not well rest on
laurels I had not won, I spent my time sketching. I began, of course,
with the breach, and installed myself, for that purpose, beside a human
head severed from the trunk, which lay on the ground alongside of a dead
horse in the torn open belly of which a dog had made its lair. While I
was drawing, I heard a bugle sounding a march and soon I saw the bugler
coming out. Upon the breach; behind him marched a sub-lieutenant, sword
in hand, and then in place of men, a string of donkeys, led by about a
dozen Zouave irregulars. Puzzled, I went up to the bugler and, stopping
him, I asked what he was blowing for. "Why," he replied rocking from one
foot to another with his bugle on his hip, "this is the volunteer
company from Bougie going back to headquarters."

"What?"