For us, a mere "handful," opposed to a column so powerful, there could be no rest; thus, while one half of our slender force remained under arms, the others worked hard at the repair and further strengthening of the works, by means of cannon-baskets filled with earth, sandbags, beds and mattresses, taken from the houses, and chandeliers made of roofs and flooring sawn into billets, trussed up in bundles, and banked over with turf. We made the utmost exertion, because, though unmolested, we augured, by the constant report of fire-arms in the Imperial bivouac, that the troops were busy discharging, cleaning, and preparing their fire-arms for a second attack.
In one deep grave, within the sconce, we buried our dead, placing more than forty of them side by side, and so covered them up. The last we put in was the sergeant, Ronald Gorm.
"Poor Ronald!" said Phadrig Mhor; "'tis thou must perform the faire-chloidh;" for it is a Highland superstition that the soul of the last person buried in any place, must keep watch there until another corpse is brought, whose spirit relieves the former.
"Ronald's ghost will not be long on guard," said Ian; "for I am much mistaken if more heads will not be broken before to-morrow." The piper played a sweet and sad lament at this unseemly funeral; in the old Highland fashion, we placed four large stones above that ghastly tomb, and, in the language of the bards, bade them speak to other years, and to the men of other times.
The wounded we sent off to Glückstadt in rough country carts, through the open joints of which their blood ran dripping on the dusty road. As a protection, a small guard of pikes accompanied them; for our stragglers and sick were frequently murdered by the boors, whose cupidity their silver buttons and ornaments served to excite.
A ration of skeidam was served round to us all; and about sunrise, after doubling the guards and seeing that the Imperialists, though within cannon-shot, were not intending to molest us, Dunbar ordered our men to "pile arms," and take some repose. Poor fellows! they lay down to sleep in their armour, and with their bare legs on the gory platforms or cold earth; and there, amid the scattered shot, the exploded shells, the blood gouts, and the broken weapons, I enjoyed the sound sleep of a wearied soldier, and undisturbed by the reflection that it might be the last I should ever enjoy; and you, good reader, would have slept sound also, after the toil, the carnage, and excitement of such a night as that at Boitzenburg.
Anxious to defend his post with honour, Dunbar—that brave old cavalier—never slept, but remained watching every movement of the enemy, whom we permitted, without molestation, to bear away their wounded from under the very muzzles of our cannon; but the moment this was over, the pipes sounded, the drums beat, and we were again roused to man the ramparts, for again they were coming on, and with renewed vigour, for three battalions of Spanish Imperialists had joined the Count in the night.
"Pikes and pistols—here they are again!" cried our veteran major, or sergeant-major, for according to the Danish etiquette we called him both; "but fear not, my brave hearts, for God is with us, and His hand is over us. Believe me, gentlemen, our cannon are noway inferior to theirs for not having Latin mumbled, and holy water sprinkled, over them by the superior of the Jesuits. So to your guns, my wight cannoniers—to them again with handspike and linstock—with rammer and quoin!"
About the closing in of the evening, a dense column of Spanish infantry, with pikes and musketeers intermingled, suddenly debouched upon the roadway from behind the little eminence which had sheltered them, and poured impetuously forward, to assail again the stockades of the graff; while a brigade of Austrians rushed towards the sluice which admitted into it the water of the Elbe; and though thrice, by sheer dint of cannon and musketry, we drove them back, they forced a passage to the angle of the ditch, and climbing literally over piles of their own dead and dying, cut the chains by their axes, and, closing the sluice by sledge-hammers, retired with a loud hurrah; for immediately the water in the ditch began to subside. On this the furious Spaniards redoubled their efforts to carry the palisades; but as these projected at the angle of forty-five degrees from a steep bank, and were swept by our fire, it was a task of the greatest danger and difficulty; yet these valiant hearts accomplished it, and reached the inner edge of the ditch, but as fast as they mounted they were shot down, and when struck we could see the blood spouting from their buff coats and corslets as if ejected from a syringe.
"Fire on the sluice!" cried Dunbar to Captain Learmonth, whose pikemen still worked our cannon; "break through the planks—admit the Elbe, and fill the graff again."