Sergeant Treherne shot the second and bayoneted the third, a thrust from whose lance he narrowly escaped; but the fourth, whom a stray shot from the still retiring square had dismounted and wounded in the sword-arm, cried imploringly on his knees,
"Aman! aman!" (quarter—quarter), so Denzil arrested the charged bayonet of Treherne, which in another moment would have pinned him to the earth.
"Retire—retire, I command you both," cried Waller, whose voice was distant now.
"Thank heaven, Audley Trevelyan, I have repaid Sybil's debt to you—we are quits at last," was Denzil's thought, and he was turning away to hasten after the Company, for not a moment could be lost now, if he wished to save his own life, when suddenly he received a dreadful blow on the back part of the head—he heard the explosion of a pistol—the light went out of his eyes, or a darkness seemed to descend upon him; he fell forward on the snow with outspread hands, and remembered no more.
The wretch whose life he had just spared, had felled him to the earth by a stroke from a ponderous iron-butted pistol, and then discharged it at Audley, without effect, however, as the ball missed its object.
Treherne, who by this time had reloaded, shot the Afghan through the head, and then he and Audley Trevelyan had to run for their lives, as by this time the six Ressallahs of advancing Horse were close at hand, and cries of "Ullah ul Alla" loaded the frosty air.
"Poor Devereaux—gone with the rest!" exclaimed Polwhele.
"Yes," said Waller, "how many a poor fellow, gayer and happier than he apparently was, goes into action, confidently believing the bullet is not yet cast that shall floor him, and is shot for all that."
"Well—it may be our turn next, sir," said Sergeant Treherne, philosophically.
Fain would Waller and the rest have made a rally to bring him off dead or alive, at the bayonet's point, together with the body of Trecarrel; but the bugles of the rear-guard—first two, then four at once—were sounding, as if angrily, the order to retire so, to "retire" he was compelled, or sacrifice perhaps his whole Company; and with tears in his eyes, where tears had not been since he was a child, in a white pinafore, at school, he drew off the survivors of the futile skirmish, and rejoined his brigade.