“I tell you, Chidley,” cried one of the speakers, “if he had been a Frenchman there would have been no end of boasting amongst our amiable allies, and he 'd have had Heaven knows what grade of the Legion and a pension, besides! Show me the fellow amongst them could have done the feat! I don't speak of the pluck of it,—they have plenty of pluck; but where's the rider could have sat his horse over it?”
“What height was it?” asked another, as he leisurely puffed his cigar.
“Some say six feet,—call it five, call it four, anything you please: it was to go at a breastwork with two nine-pounders inside, that was the feat; and I say, again, I don't know another fellow in the army that would have thought of it but himself!”
“Dick Churchill once jumped into a square and out again!”
A hearty roar of laughter announced the amount of credit vouchsafed to the story; but the speaker most circumstantially gave time and place, and cited the names of those who had witnessed the fact.
“Be it all as you say,” interposed the first speaker, “Churchill did a foolhardy thing, without any object or any result; but Conway sabred three gunners with his own hand.”
If the story, up to this moment, had only interested our two travellers by its heroic claims, no sooner was the name of Conway uttered than each started with astonishment. As for Classon, he arose at once, and, drawing near the narrator, politely begged to know if the Conway mentioned was a one-armed man.
“The same, sir,—Charley the Smasher, as they used to call him long ago; and, by George, he has earned some right to the title!”