The firing languished as usual after sunset, and before nightfall had completely ceased. I clasped on my cuirass and gorget, buttoning over them the doublet of a Lorrainer who had been killed last night in the trenches. It was of dark cloth, faced and trimmed with the colours of duke Charles. I put on a light helmet, stuck four pistols in my girdle, and leaving my sword, took only a dagger. I had a light ladder, ten feet long; a rope, a hammer, and a pocketful of spike nails; and with this apparatus, when the miners were at work, and the out-guards or covering parties sleeping in their blankets, capôtes, or rocquelaures, I issued from the camp, and leaving all behind, advanced on my solitary and desperate enterprise towards the Bastion de Louise.
Frequently I paused to listen; but no sound came from the town, the ramparts and church spire of which—for it had but one—towered above me in the dark and moonless sky, across which the clouds were hurrying in black and broken masses.
As I crept on my mission, strange thoughts of home and of other times would force themselves vividly upon me; and I remembered the green breezy braes, and the grassy dells, where the mountain runnel brawled under the broad-leaved water docks or the purple heather, and bright yellow broom, where as a boy I had played among the lambs, and gathered the white daisy and the golden buttercup, or watched the white smoke curling from the huge hall chimney of my father's old grey tower. To-night I might be slain—slain far, far away; and I thought of the quiet green grave where my father and mother slept so peacefully side to side in the old kirkyard at Glenkens, and a wild, deep wish rose from my heart to my lips that I was at rest beside them, and away from the selfish hurry of life and all the horror of war!
Anon came hope of success, and prouder thoughts arose within me, and grasping my dagger, I continued to creep stealthily forward.
Rearward, I heard the grating sound of the shovel and pickaxe in the trenches, as the sappers of the Chevalier de Ville replaced the gabions, or batted down the earthen banks, which the cannonade of the past day had disturbed. Perhaps a lantern might throw out a momentary gleam; but even momentary was too much; for then a lurid flash would break from the citadel, lighting all the sky with instantaneous redness, and a ball would whiz over my head towards the miner's lamp; or a shell would curve high in air, distinctly traceable, as it soared from the mouth of the mortar and sunk downward to its destination, by the fuse that flamed upward through its touch-hole, and now the terrible Bastion de Louise arose before me in massive strength, with its row of twenty brass guns frowning en-barbette, over the slope of the rampart.
Anxiety and shame filled my heart on finding that the bastion was full of men; sentinels, too, were on the parapet, as their outline, with helmet and arquebuse, were distinctly visible. For me to proceed was impossible, as the least sound might draw a volley towards the spot where I was lurking; but to return to the camp, merely to report that I had failed, and that my attempt, however rash and gallant, had proved a mere bravado, was more than I could think of, or endure with patience.
Creeping on, I came close to a stockade, which rose at the angle of forty-five degrees to the height of five feet in front of the ditch before the bastion, some shrubs and bushes grew at its base, and among these I lay close; so close, indeed, that I heard the words of command given, as the Lorrainers marched into the town, and, to my inexpressible relief, left none in the bastion, save the four sentinels. Four men were more easily to be met than four hundred; but even by this reckoning how was I to dispose of them? To pistol them all in succession was next to an impossibility, situated as I was; moreover, the discharge of a single shot would suffice to rouse the whole town, and man the walls from flank to flank in five minutes.
The darkness had increased, and fortunately for me the night bore every indication of becoming a stormy one. A high wind swept the side of the mountain; the river hurried over its bed of rocks with a hoarse brawl towards the Maese; and the gusty blasts, as they came in fierce and fitful squalls, piled the clouds in black and inky masses above La Mothe, the black outline of which—tower, spire, and rampart—stood forth black and sharply, at times as broad glares of sheet lightning flashed across the sky, seeming to whiten the summits of the distant hills, and to tip with fire the dewy leaves of the shrubs that covered all the rocky ground; and now, to my joy, came a broad, blinding, and united torrent of rain, falling slowly but surely, as if it would last for hours.
The frightful and oppressive stench of the partially-buried slain that lay before the stockade was not the least of my troubles; for in some of the places I had crept over, the men of Ramsay and of Hepburn were interred only a foot deep; and where the rain had washed away the soil, their toes and fingers, and more horrible still, their white skulls and ghastly teeth, were visible among the soft mould and sprouting grass!
I crept through a small aperture formed by some chance bullet in the stockade, and drawing my ladder after me reached the edge of the fosse that engirt the bastion; and now I could perceive that the dark figures of the four sentinels had disappeared; they had withdrawn to their stone turrets, one of which terminated each angle of the ravelin.