He-'sprang clear, but heard a voice call out: "Hi! Don't mask my guns! Anything I can do for you, sir?"
"You can give me a horse!" replied the Colonel, trying to recover his breath. He looked into a lean, humorous face, shaded by the jut of a black, crested helmet, and asked: "Who are you?"
"G Troop - Colonel Dickson's, under the command of Captain Mercer at your service!"
"Oh yes! I know." The Colonel's eyes travelled past him to a veritable bank of dead cuirassiers and horses, not twenty paces in front of his guns. He gave an awed whistle. "Good God!"
"Yes, we're having pretty hot work of it here," replied Mercer. A shell came whizzing over the crest, and fell in the mud not far from his troop, and lay there, its fuse spitting and hissing. He broke off to admonish his men, some of whom had flung themselves down on the ground. The shell burst at last, without doing much damage; and the nonchalant Captain turned back to Colonel Audley, resuming as though only a minor interruption had occurred: "- pretty hot work of it here. We wait till those steel-clad gentry come over the rise, and then we give 'em a dose of roundshot with a case over it. Terrible effect it has. I've seen a whole front rank come down from the effects of the case."
"Do you mean that you stand by your guns throughout?"
"Take a look at those squares, sir," recommended Mercer, jerking his head towards the Brunswickers, who were lying on the ground to the right and left of his rear. "You can't, at the moment, but if you care to wait you'll see them form squares, huddled together like sheep. If we scuttled for safety among them, they'd break and run. They're only children - not one above eighteen, I'll swear. Gives 'em confidence to see us here."
"You're a damned brave man!" said the Colonel, taking the bridle of the trooper which a driver had led up.
"Oh, we don't give a button for the cavalry!" replied Mercer. "The worst is this infernal cannonading. It plays the devil with us. We've been pestered by skirmishers, too, which is a damned nuisance. Only way I can stop my fellows wasting their charges on them is to parade up and down the bank in front of my guns. That's nervous work, if you like!"
"I imagine it might be," said the Colonel, with a grin. "Don't get your troop cut up too much, or his lordship won't be pleased."