Great was the disappointment among officers and men of the Mayo Fusiliers that they had taken no part whatever in the actual fighting, beyond driving in the French skirmishers at the beginning of the operations.
"Divil a man killed or wounded!" Captain O'Grady remarked, mournfully, as the regiment halted at the conclusion of the fight. "Faith, it is too bad, entirely; there we are left out in the cold, and scarce a shot has been fired!"
"There are plenty of others in the same case," Captain O'Driscol said. "None of our three brigades on the left have had anything to do with the matter, as far as fighting went. I don't think more than four thousand of our troops were in action; but you see if it had not been for our advance, Hill and Nightingale might not have succeeded in driving Laborde off the hill. There is no doubt that the French fought well, but it's our advance that forced him to retire, not the troops in front of him; so that, even if we have not had any killed or wounded, O'Grady, we have at least the satisfaction of having contributed to the victory."
"Oh, bother your tactics! We have come here to fight, and no fighting have we had at all, at all. When we marched out this morning it looked as if we were going to have our share in the divarshon, and we have been fairly chated out of it."
"Well, O'Grady, you should not grumble," Terence said, "for we had some fighting on the way out, which is more than any of the other troops had."
"That was a mere skirmish, Terence. First of all we were shot at, and could not shoot back again; and thin we shot at the enemy, and they could not shoot back at us. And as for the boarding affair, faith, it did not last a minute. The others have had two hours of steady fighting, clambering up the hill, and banging away at the enemy, and shouting and cheering, and all sorts of fun; and there were we, tramping along among those bastely stones and rocks, and no one as much as took the trouble to fire a shot at us!"
"Well, if we had been there, O'Grady, we should have lost about a hundred and twenty men and officers--if we had suffered in the same proportion as the others--and we should now be mourning their loss--perhaps you among them. We might have been saying: 'There is O'Grady gone; he was a beggar to talk, but he meant well. Faith, the drink bill of the regiment will fall off.'"
"Well, it might have been so," O'Grady said, in a more contented voice; "and if I had been killed going up the hill, without even as much as catching a glimpse of the Frenchies, I would niver have forgiven them--niver!"
There was a roar of laughter at the bull.
"Phwat is it have I said?" he asked, in surprise.