Arthur afterwards went to have a chat with Roper. "Well, Roper, we have had our first battle; what did you think of it?"
"I had no time to think about it at all. It was just load and fire, and 'Go at them, lads!', then falling back, and then trying again. It was certainly a good deal worse than I had expected. I don't think that I was frightened. My one idea was that I wanted to get at them."
"That is a good deal like what I felt, Roper. I know I wondered occasionally that I lived through such a storm of musket balls. Sometimes it seemed as if nothing could exist in it."
"All the time I was astonished at the courage the Carlists showed. We had so made up our minds that they would not stand against us for a moment that I was quite taken aback when I found that they were fighting just as hard as ourselves."
"Not quite so hard, Roper," Arthur said. "They fought hard, I admit, but when we got among them with the bayonet we always had the best of it. The beggars could stand bullets, but they did not like steel."
"We lost heavily, sir."
"I am sorry to say that we did. We lost particularly heavily among the officers."
"Yes, sir. Everyone was saying how gallantly they showed the way. I hardly expected some of them to do so well. Of course one has no means of knowing; but there is a sort of general idea that an officer who doesn't look after his men, or seem to take any interest in them, is not the sort of fellow who would lead them well in a fight."
"I don't see why that should be so, Roper. A man may be very kind-hearted, and yet not extraordinarily plucky; while, on the other hand, a pretty hard sort of man may have any amount of courage."
"I suppose that is so, sir; but somehow one seems to think that a man who is a good fellow one way will be a good fellow another."