I remember setting my teeth and trying to pray; for I was assured that my last hour had now come, and was surprised that I felt no fear, being yet full of the overmastering fury which had first possessed me when I saw the flight of Lord Grey's horse. But quicker than lightning Blackbird had recovered himself; and wheeling round with that dexterous agility of which he was such a master, he was off through the darkness like a flash, whither I knew not. I heard a rattle behind me; there was a whizzing and singing in my ears. The right arm, with which I was still holding my axe, dropped numb to my side, although I felt no pain. A sort of mist came round me. The sound of the battle reached my ears like a continuous hum. I found myself thinking that I was in church, and that the organ was playing; then I remember nothing more for what seemed to me an immense time, and woke to find myself lying in a ditch with Blackbird above me, and the clear light of a summer's morning breaking slowly in the east.
Where was I? what had happened? and what meant all that noise of crying and shouting, groaning and shrieking, which assailed my ears?
FATAL SEDGEMOOR.
Was I alive or dead, sleeping or waking? Was all this tumult part of a horrid dream? or was I in the midst of unknown and undreamed of horrors? With a sense of strange suffocation I strove to rise, but was unable to do so. I was lying in a dry ditch, and Blackbird was on the top of me, not crushing me by his weight, but so placed that I could not do more than lift my head and look about me.
Day had broken, the long low shafts of light fell across the plain, and I saw, as in a dream, the figures of men in hot pursuit one of another. I saw men smitten down by their fellows, falling sometimes without a groan, sometimes with shrieks of agony. I saw worse things than that too; for even as I lay and watched, scarce knowing who I was nor where I had got, nor what this fearful sight could mean, I saw fierce-faced men with bloody swords striding amongst ghastly heaps of writhing human forms, and dealing awful blows here and there with remorseless fury, sometimes even laughing at the suppliant cries and groans of the wounded wretches, but only driving home more fiercely their gory blades, with a brutal oath or the exclamation, "There goes another traitor!"
As I watched with that awful fascination which a scene of horror always inspires, shivering and shuddering lest my own turn should come next, sense and memory returned to me. I remembered the events of the previous night—the strange dark march to Sedgemoor, the attack in the dead of night, the rout, the fierce irresponsible onset that I had made, and the roar of battle which had been in my ears when I was smitten down, I knew not when nor how.
But now the battle was over. Now there was nothing but an awful carnage that was not warfare but a shambles. And I lay and watched it, and tried to pray to God to spare me, or to give me courage to die; and I kept asking in my heart how the battle had gone, though I knew all too well by the sights I saw.