Close by, with the medals of many an honourable battle on his breast, lay a grey-haired grenadier of the Garde Impériale, who had died about twenty minutes before, and the calm of dissolution was smoothing out the wrinkles that care, it might be a hidden sorrow, had traced upon his now ghastly face—so smoothly then that he became in aspect almost young again, as when, perhaps, a conscript he left his father's cottage and his mother's arms.
As Quentin rode on many called to him for succour that he was unable to yield, and to their piteous cries he was compelled to turn a deaf ear. Many lay wounded, faint and unseen, among the long rich grass, where they were lulled alike by weakness and the hum of insect life awaking with the rising sun; and these scarcely noticed him as he trotted slowly past, carefully guiding his horse among them.
Tormented by thirst, many crawled, like bruised worms, to where a little runnel ran down the green slope from San Cristoval, and drank thirstily of its water in the hollow of their hands, and without a shudder, though the purity of the stream was tainted by blood, for further up lay a soldier of the Cameron Highlanders, dead, with his head buried in the stream. He, too, had crawled there; but the weight of his knapsack had pressed his head and shoulders below the water, and thus, unable to rise from weakness, the poor fellow had actually been choked in a hole about twelve inches deep.
No stragglers were visible, and an awful stillness had succeeded to the roar of sound that rung there yesternight; and now from his reverie Quentin was roused by the boom of a cannon at a distance. Others followed rapidly, and at irregular intervals. It was the French guns above St. Lucia firing over the flat point of San Diego on the last of the transports and the last of our troops who were embarking. Hill's brigade had now left the citadel, and Beresford, with the rearguard, had already put off from the shore.
Such were the startling tidings Quentin received from a mounted Spaniard, a fellow not unlike a contrabandista, who passed, spurring with his box-stirrups recklessly over the field towards Santiago. On hearing this, Quentin instantly galloped towards the harbour.
It was too late now to think of getting his horse off, so he resolved to abandon it and take the first boat he could obtain. The last of the troops were gone now in the English launches, and not a single Spanish barquero could he prevail upon to put off; and so furious was the cannonade which the French had opened from the headland to the southward of Corunna, that many of the masters of our crowded transports cut their cables; four ran foul of each other and went aground in shoal water. Then, amid the cries, cheers, uproar, and a thousand other sounds on land and sea, the troops were removed from them to others, and they were set on fire, while the first ships of the fleet were standing out to sea, and had already made an offing.
This delay nearly proved favourable to Quentin. A Spanish boatman at last offered for ten duros to take him off to the nearest ship, which lay about a mile distant; but just as he dismounted to embark, a yell of rage and terror was uttered by the crowd upon the mole, and a party of French light dragoons rode through them recklessly, treading some under foot and sabreing others.
At the risk of being pistolled, Quentin was about to spring into the sea, when an officer made an attempt to cut him down, but his cap saved his head from the first stroke. In wild desperation, with one hand he clung to the chasseur's bridle, and with the other strove to grasp his uplifted sword-arm.
"Rendez-vous!" cried the Frenchman, furiously.
"Eugene—sauvez-moi!" was all that Quentin could utter, ere his assailant, whom at that moment he recognised, cut him over the head, and he fell, blinded in his own blood.