"I am wounded, colonel, and have the honour to request you will order another officer to take command of the left." He then ambled away on his old nag towards Corunna.
"Close in, men—fill up the gaps," was the incessant cry of the officers and sergeants; "close up the rear ranks—close up!" and cheerily they did so, those brave hearts and true.
As it was, the sparks of the flints, the burning of priming (many of the muskets being bushed with brass), caused many of the front rank men to have their cheeks bleeding by splinters or scorched by powder; but these were constant occurrences before the days of percussion locks and caps.
The fire of the enemy was terrible, and all who were not wounded had narrow escapes. Quentin had no less than three during the first hour; a ball struck one of his holster pipes, another tore through his havresack, smashing his ration biscuits, and a third perforated his shako, and had he been an inch taller, he had been a dead man. The first tightening of the heart relaxed—the first wild thrill of anxiety over, and Quentin felt as cool as the oldest veteran there.
The light field guns as they retired from Elvina came tearing past with blood and human hair upon their wheels and on the hoofs of their galloping horses, showing the carnage through which they had passed; but they were again unlimbered and brought into action to check the dragoons of Lorge, who menaced the right with pistol and sabre.
Sir John, who, with eagle eye, had been watching the movements of the enemy through the openings in the white smoke which rolled along the slopes and filled all the hollows, observed that no more infantry were coming on than those which outflanked the right of Baird's division, now commanded by his successor.
"Kennedy," said he to Quentin, whose coolness delighted and even amused him, "ride to my friend Paget, and order him to wheel to the right of the French advance, to menace and attack their gun battery. Stanhope, spur on to Fraser and order him to support Paget."
While his aides rode off with these orders, he threw back the 4th Regiment in person, and opened a heavy fire on the French, now pouring along the valley on his right, while the old "Half Hundred" and the Black Watch confronted those who were breaking through Elvina.
"Well done, 50th—well done, my majors!" he exclaimed to two favourite officers who led the corps; but in the deadly struggle that ensued, one, Major Charles Napier, was taken prisoner, and the other, the Honourable Major Stanhope, was mortally wounded.
Strewed with killed and wounded, the field was now a veritable hell upon earth, all along the lines in the valley and on the hills.