The Northern Iron

by George A. Birmingham

Neal lifted the wounded boy over the churchyard wall and knelt beside him on the grass.

“Where are you hit?” he said.

“It’s my leg, the calf of my leg, but it’s no that bad, I could get along a bit, yet.”

The English infantry opened a furious fire on M’Cracken’s pikemen, who stood around the cannon they captured. Hope’s musketeers replied, firing rapidly. Many of them had fallen. There were muskets to spare, and the wounded men, crawling round their comrades, loaded for them, and passed the guns up to those who still could shoot. The whole churchyard was full of smoke, and a heavy cloud of it hung in the still air before the wall. It became impossible to see plainly what was happening. Neal was aware that Felix Matier stood beside him, and that Lord Dunseveric was somewhere behind him watching, with cool interest, the progress of the fight. Suddenly Felix Matier shouted—

“We’re blinded with this smoke. We must see to shoot. We must see to aim. Follow me who dare!”

He leaped into the street, and knelt down. The air was clearer there than in the churchyard. He aimed steadily, fired, loaded, and fired again. The bullets of the infantry splashed on the ground around him like rain drops in a heavy shower. His clothes were cut by them. It seemed a miracle that he did not fall. He began to sing, and this time there was no one to forbid his “Marseillaise.” Then, while his voice rose to its highest, while he seemed, out there alone in the bullet-swept street, a very incarnation of the battle spirit—the end came for him. He flung up his arms, rose, staggered towards the shelter of the churchyard, turned half round in the direction of the men who fired at him, and dropped dead.

Lord Dunseveric stepped forward and tapped Neal on the shoulder.

“Listen,” he said.

From the Belfast Road, along which the United Irishmen had marched in the morning, came the sound of drums. Through the smoke it was possible to discern dimly that a large body of troops was approaching the town. There could be no doubt as to who they were. No reinforcements for M’Cracken’s army could be looked for from the south. Neal grasped the meaning of what he saw. Hope’s men in the graveyard, which they had held so long, were caught between the soldiers in the demesne and these fresh troops who marched on them. Others besides Neal saw what was happening. The firing slackened. Here and there a man dropped his musket and stared wildly around. At the top of the street the dragoons who had fled appeared again. They attacked M’Cracken’s pike-men once more, and this time victoriously. Shaken by the fire of the soldiers behind the wall, disheartened by the appearance of the enemy in their rear, these men, who had fought so well, could fight no more. Some fled, some, with their leader, faced the dragoons and, their pikes still forming a bristling hedge in front of them, retired sullenly eastwards from the town.

The musketeers were left alone. Their position seemed desperate. Neal stopped firing, and looked round. Hope stood bare-headed, his sword in his hand.