'Thanks—acceptable indeed in this chill atmosphere.'
'If I get knocked on the head to-day—' began Pelham, who was rather a reckless fellow.
'A cheerful beginning!' said Stanley, sharply; 'I wish you would shut up, old man. But well, suppose you were so?'
'My tragic fate would be mourned sincerely, at least by many a sorrowful West-end trader, in whose books my later annals have been noted. But, ta, ta, Falconer—there goes our bugle. Advance!'
Shot dead by a Snider bullet in his heart, poor Pelham, within an hour after this, lay cold and stiff on the slope of the Djunis, while his regiment took up its position in front of the fast-advancing Turkish lines.
With the three days' fighting that now ensued we shall not trouble the reader, further than with that portion which cannot be omitted—the part that Cecil saw, and that he bore in it, with what befell him there.
Though Tchernaieff, on this day, placed the management of the troops chiefly in the hands of General Dochtouroff, he seemed to be ubiquitous, and was seen everywhere in rapid succession all over the Servian position, assisting in the placing of brigades here and there, on the most advantageous ground, and, as an officer who was present has recorded, 'he placed the troops exactly where they were most needed, for the Turks made their attack upon the very positions he had fixed upon.'
'Good-morning, Herr Capitan,' said he, as he passed Cecil's squadron, which had halted near some glassy steeps most difficult of ascent, in rear of the Servian position; 'but it seems to me that the enemy has got very correct information about all the points of our ground.'
'They have evidently been furnished with a plan, excellency,' remarked a Russian aide-de-camp, whose breast was covered with Crimean and Khivan medals.
'A plan!' exclaimed Cecil; 'how can they have got it?'