"Sad as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless _fancy_ feigned On lips that are for others--deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret, O death in life--the days that are no more!"
From all this I was thoroughly roused by a voice crying, "Up, up, wounded--all you who are able! Cavalry are coming this way--you will be trod to death. Arrah, get out of _that_, every man-jack of yees!"
The excited speaker was an Irish hussar, picking his way across the field at a quick trot.
It was a false alarm; but the rumble of wheels certainly came next day, and an ambulance-wagon passed slowly, picking up the wounded, who groaned or screamed as their fractured limbs were handled, and their wounds burst out afresh through the clotted blood. I waved an arm, and the scarlet sleeve attracted attention.
"There is a wounded officer--one of the 23rd Fusileers," cried a driver from his saddle.
"Where?" asked a mounted officer in the blue cloak and cap of the Land Transport Corps.
"Under that dead horse, sir."
"One of the 23rd; let us see--Hardinge, by all the devils!" said the officer, who proved to be no other than Hawkesby Guilfoyle. "So-ho--steady, steady!" he added, while secretly touching his horse with the spurs to make it rear and plunge in three several attempts to tread me under its hoofs; but the terrible aspect of the dead animal smashed by the cannon-shot so scared the one he rode, that he bore on the curb in vain.
"Coward! coward!" I exclaimed, "if God spares me you shall hear of this."
"The fellow is mad or tipsy," said he; "drive on."
"But, sir--sir!" urged the driver in perplexity.
"Villain! you are my evil fate," said I faintly.
"I tell you the fellow is mad--drive on, I command you, or by----, I'll make a prisoner of you!" thundered Guilfoyle, drawing a pistol from his holster, while his shifty green eyes grew white with suppressed passion and malice; so the ambulance-cart was driven on, and I was left to my fate.
Giddy and infuriated by pain and just indignation, I lay under my cold and ghastly load, perishing of thirst, and looking vainly about for assistance.
Scarcely were they gone, when out of the dense thick brushwood, that grew in clumps and tufts over all the valley, there stole forth two Russian soldiers, with their bayonets fixed, and their faces distorted and pale with engendered fanaticism and fury at their defeat. There was a cruel gleam in their eyes as they crept stealthily about. Either they feared to fire or their ammunition was expended, for I saw them deliberately pass their bayonets through the bodies of four or five wounded men, and pin the writhing creatures to the earth. I lay very still, expecting that my turn would soon come. The dead horse served to conceal me for a little; but I panted rather than breathed, and my breath came in gasps as they drew near me; for on discovering that I was an officer, my gold wings and lace would be sure to kindle their spirit of acquisition. I had my revolver in my right hand, and remembered with grim joy that of its six chambers, three were yet undischarged. Just as the first Russian came straight towards me, I shot him through the head, and he fell backward like a log; the second uttered a howl, and came rushing on with his butt in the air and his bayonet pointed down. I fired both barrels. One ball took him right in the shoulder, the other in the throat, and he fell wallowing in blood, but not until he had hurled his musket at me. The barrel struck me crosswise on the head, and I again became insensible. Moonlight was stealing over the valley when consciousness returned again, and I felt more stiff and more helpless than ever. Something was stirring near me; I looked up, and uttered an exclamation on seeing our regimental goat, Carneydd Llewellyn, quietly cropping some herbage among the débris of dead bodies and weapons that lay around me. Like Caradoc, I had made somewhat a pet of it. The poor animal knew my voice, and on coming towards me, permitted me to stroke and pat it; and a strong emotion of wonder and regard filled my heart as I did so, for it was a curious coincidence that this animal, once the pet of Winifred Lloyd, should discover me there upon the field of Inkermann.
After a little I heard a voice, in English, cry, "Here is our goat at last, by the living Jingo!" and Dicky Roll, its custodian--from whose tent it had escaped, when a shot from the batteries broke the pole--came joyfully towards it.
"Roll, Dicky Roll," cried I, "for God's sake bring some of our fellows, and have me taken from here!"
"Captain Hardinge! are you wounded, sir?" asked the little drummer, stooping in commiseration over me.
"Badly, I fear, but cannot tell with certainty."
Dicky shouted in his shrill boyish voice, and in a few minutes some of our pioneers and bandsmen came that way with stretchers. I was speedily freed from my superincumbent load, and very gently and carefully borne rearward to my tent, when it was found that a couple of contusions on the head were all I had suffered, and that a little rest and quiet would soon make me fit for duty again.
"You must be more than ever careful of our goat, Dicky," said I, as the small warrior, who was not much taller than his own bearskin cap, was about to leave me (by the bye, my poor fellow Evans had been cut in two by a round shot). "But for Carneydd Llewellyn, I might have lain all night on the field."
"There is a date scratched on one of his horns, sir," said Roll; "I saw it to-day for the first time."
"A date!--what date?"
"Sunday, 21st August."
"Sunday, 21st August," I repeated; "what can that refer to?"
"I don't know, sir--_do you?_"
The drummer saluted and left the tent. I lay on my camp-bed weak and feverish, so weak, that I could almost have wept; for now came powerfully back to memory that episode, till then forgotten--the Sunday ramble I had with Winifred Lloyd when we visited the goat, by the woods of Craigaderyn, by the cavern in the glen, by the Maen Hir or the Giant's Grave, and the rocking stone, and all that passed that day, and how she wept when I kissed her. Poor Winifred! her pretty white hand must have engraved the date which the little drummer referred to--a date which was evidently dwelling more in her artless mind than in mine.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.--THE CAMP AGAIN.
After the living were mustered next morning, and burial parties detailed to inter the dead, Caradoc and one or two others dropped into my tent to share some tiffin and a cigar or two with me; for, as Digby Grand has it, "whatever people's feelings may be, they go to dine all the same."
Poor Phil looked as pale and weary, if not more so, than I did. He was on the sick-list also, and had his head tied up by a bloody bandage, necessitated by a pretty trenchant sword-cut, dealt, as we afterwards discovered on comparing notes, by Volhonski just before his recapture.
"I was first knocked over by Cathcart's riderless horse--"
"Poor old Cathcart--a Waterloo man!" said Gwynne, parenthetically. "Well, Phil?"
"It was wounded and mad with terror," continued Caradoc; "then the splinter of a shell struck me on the left leg. Still I limped to the front, keeping the men together and close to the colours, till that fellow you call Volhonski cut me across the head; even my bearskin failed to protect me from his sabre. Then, but not till _then_, when blood blinded me, I threw up the sponge and went to the rear."
"What news of our friends in the 19th?" I asked.
"O, the old story, many killed and wounded."
"Little Tom Clavell?"
"Untouched. Had the staff of the Queen's colours smashed in his hands by a grape shot. Tom is now a bigger man than ever," said Charley Gwynne. "By the way, he was talking of Miss Dora Lloyd last night in my bunk between the gabions, wondering what she and the girls in England think of all this sort of thing."
"Thank God, they know nothing about it!" said Caradoc, lighting a fresh cigar with a twisted cartridge paper; "the hearts of some of them would break, could they see but yonder valley."
"Poor Hugh Price!" observed Charley, with a sigh and a grimace, for he had a bayonet prod in the right arm; "he was fairly murdered in cold blood by one of those Kazan fellows--brained clean by the heel of a musket, ere our bandsmen could carry him off to the hospital tents; but I am thankful the assassin did not escape."
"How?"
"He too was finished the next moment by Evan Rhuddlan."
Other instances of assassination, especially by a Russian major, were mentioned, and execrations both loud and deep were muttered by us all at these atrocities, which ultimately caused Lord Raglan to send a firm remonstrance on the subject to Sebastopol.
"Is it true, Charley, that the Duke of Cambridge has gone on board ship, sick and exhausted?" asked I.
"I believe so."
"And that Marshal Canrobert was wounded yesterday?"
"Yes, and had his horse shot under him, too."
"The poor Coldstreamers were fearfully cut up in the redoubt!"
"I saw eight of their officers interred in one grave this morning, and three of the Grenadier Guards in another."