A triumphant shout—the true wild scraigh of the Scottish Highlandmen—mingled with the shrill notes of the pibroch ringing from the four angles of our fort, announced that, baffled in their efforts to reach the bridge, the Imperialists had fallen back, and we redoubled our efforts.
Many of our finest men lay dead or bleeding profusely around us. Ian and I took the muskets of two, turned over their bodies, and emptying their cases of bandoliers, fell into the front rank, and fired like private men; but in silence, for our gallant Highlanders required neither voice nor action to urge them to the performance of their duty as soldiers; for they were all stanch men and true, of that old race which, as our bards say, sprang from the soil, and which in other years had tamed "the eagles of the kings of the world."
The assailants were now so close to us that the musket-balls pierced breastplates and buff coats like silken vests; and as many of our poor fellows who were unable to crawl away, bled to death just where they fell, the planks of the platforms soon became plastered with a horrid and slippery mire of blood and earth, for every moment the cannon-balls of the Austrians tore the latter from the faces of the embrasures, and cast it in showers about us. There were some frightful wounds received by our comrades that night.
Ronald Gorm, a sergeant of pikes (in other times a rich gentleman-drover from the braes of Lochaber), had his face shot away by a ball from a basilisk; another had his lower-jaw torn off by the ball of a falconet; and a piper, Red Fergus of the Clan Vurich, was shot through the nose and eyes, but lived for three days in blindness, and such agony that it would have been a mercy under God to have pistoled him outright.
This was my first bout with an enemy, and that these horrors impressed me I am not ashamed to own. More than once my heart shrank within me on seeing a strong and stately fellow doubled up like a tartan plaid, and hurled out of the ranks, with a cannon-ball fairly through his body. The cries of the wounded were piteous, but there was no time to heed them; though every instant we had to drag away the fallen men, whose bodies encumbered the wheels of the cannon and parapets, through the embrasures of which we suffered severely from the fire of the assailants.
At last, seeing probably the futility of attempting to storm a work so resolutely defended, until he had prepared means to effect the passage of the ditch which encircled it, and which was both deep and broad, the baffled Count of Carlstein, about midnight, and just when the moon was waning, made his trumpets sound a retreat. The fire of the artillery ceased on the eminence; the infantry retired under cover of some rising grounds beyond it, where they bivouacked, lighted their fires, and set about cooking, acting true to the soldier's proverb—"The dead to their graves, and the quick to their suppers;" the smoke cleared away, and we saw the shattered stockades; the Reinsdorf road heaped with bodies piled over each other, swords, pikes, drums, helmets and muskets; and by the light of the sinking moon, we could see the miserable maimed, crawling on their hands and knees towards the Elbe, seeking water to quench that fiery thirst, which the exhaustion of the assault and the agony of their wounds made more poignant.
I was gazing dreamily at this sudden change in the prospect from the redoubt, and still seeming to hear the united roar of the attack in my ears, when the loud clear voice of Dunbar aroused me.
"Piper—blow the gathering! M'Farquhar, Kildon, brave gentlemen, muster your companies, call the roll, and number the dead!"