"Sir John Moore, most severely wounded," replied Quentin.
On hearing this, the good colonel, though bleeding fast, insisted on letting his general have the waggon; but the Highlanders urged that they would carry him easier in the blanket, "so they proceeded with him to his quarters in Corunna, weeping as they went."
Still the echoing musketry pealed through the murky air, and still the death-dealing blaze reddened the dusk of the coming evening. Heavily it volleyed at times in the intervals between the cannon on the rocks, and through the mingled haze up came the blood-red disc of the winter moon. Great clouds of white powder smoke crept sluggishly along the earth, and through it the flashes of the French guns above Elvina came redly and luridly out.
On being brought to his billet in Corunna, Sir John Moore was laid on a pallet and examined, and then all could see the terrible nature of his wound.
The entire left shoulder was shattered; the arm hung by a piece of skin; the ribs over the heart were stripped of flesh and bruised to pieces, and the muscles of the breast were torn in long strips that had become interlaced by the recoil of the fatal cannon-ball.
In the dusk of the gloomy apartment, where he lay rapidly dying on a poor mattrass, he recognised the face of Colonel Anderson, an old friend and comrade of twenty years and more. It was the third time Anderson had seen him borne from a field thus steeped in blood, but never before so awfully mangled. Moore pressed the hand of his old friend, who was deeply moved.
"Anderson," said he, with a sad smile, "you know I have always wished to die in this way."
Anderson answered only with his tears, yet he was a weather-beaten soldier, who had looked death in the face on many a hard-fought field.
"Are the French beaten?" Moore asked of all who came in, successively, and the assurances that they were retiring fast soothed his dying moments.
"I hope the people of England will be satisfied—I hope my dear country will do me justice!" said he, with touching earnestness; "oh, Anderson, you will see my friends at home as soon as you can—tell them everything—my poor mother——" Here his voice completely failed him; he became deeply agitated; but after a pause said, "Hope—Hope—I have much to say to him, but am too weak now! Are all my aides-de-camp well?"