The surgeon felt his ribs and limbs, repeatedly asking him if it hurt him. When he finished the examination, he said:
"You are doubtless badly bruised, but I don't think anything is broken. Our Cossack horses are little more than ponies. Had they been heavy horse, they would have trod your life out."
A few moments later there was a sound of trampling horses. They halted close by. The officers drew back, and a moment later Marshal Scheremetof, the commander of the Russian army, came up to Charlie's side.
"Which of you speaks Swedish?" he asked the officers, and one of them stepped forward.
"Ask him what force was this that attacked us, and with what object."
As Charlie saw no reason for concealment, he replied that it was a body of four hundred Swedish infantry, and a troop of horse, with four guns, and that their object was to enter the town.
"They must have been mad to attempt to cut their way through our whole army," the general said, when the answer was translated to him; "but, by Saint Paul, they nearly succeeded. The Swedes are mad, but this was too much even for madmen. Ask him whence the force came. It may be that a large reinforcement has reached Vyburg, without our knowing it."
"We arrived two days since," Charlie replied, when the question was put to him. "We came in a ship together from Revel."
"Did others come with you?" was next asked, at the general's dictation.
"No other ship but ours has arrived."