"I am going to heaven, I hope, Harry--if I have not done much good in the world, I have not done much harm; and in heaven I'll meet with more red coats, I believe, than black ones . . . . and tell her . . . tell Winny----"
What I was to tell her I never learned; his voice died away, and he never spoke again; for just as the contest became fiercer between the French and the masses of Russians--temporarily released from the Redan or drawn from the city--his head fell over on one side, and he expired. I closed his eyes, for there was yet time to do so. Poor Phil Caradoc! I looked sadly for a minute on the pale and stiffening face of my old friend and jovial chum, and saw how fast the expression of bodily pain passed away from the whitening forehead. I could scarcely assure myself that he was indeed gone, and so suddenly; that his once merry eyes and laughing lips would open never again. Turning away, I prepared once more for the assault, and then, for the first time, I perceived Lieutenants Dyneley and Somerville of ours lying near him; the former mortally wounded and in great pain, the latter quite dead.
My soul was full of a keen longing for vengeance, to grapple with the foe once more, foot to foot and face to face. The blood was fairly up in all our hearts; for the Russians had now relined their own breastworks, where a tall officer in a gray capote made himself very conspicuous by his example and exertions. He was at last daring enough to step over the rampart and tear down a wooden gabion, to make a kind of extempore embrasure through which an additional field-piece might be run.
"As you are so fond of pot-firing," said Colonel Windham to the soldiers, with some irritation at the temporary repulse, "why the deuce don't you shoot that Russian?"
On looking through my field-glass, to my astonishment I discovered that he was Tolstoff. Sergeant Rhuddlan of ours now levelled his rifle over the bank of earth which protected the parallel, took a steady aim, and fired. Tolstoff threw up his arms wildly, and his sword glittered as it fell from his hand. He then wheeled round, and fell heavily backward into the ditch--which was twenty feet broad and ten feet deep--dead; at least, I never saw or heard of him again.
Just as a glow of fierce exultation, pardonable enough, perhaps, at such a time (and remembering all the circumstances under which this distinguished Muscovite and I had last met and parted), thrilled through me, I experienced a terrible shock--a shock that made me reel and shudder, with a sensation as if a hot iron had pierced my left arm above the elbow. It hung powerless by my side, and then I felt my own blood trickling heavily over the points of my fingers!
"Wounded! My God, hit at last!" was my first thought; and I lost much blood before I could get any one, in that vile burly-burly, to tie my handkerchief as a temporary bandage round the limb to stanch the flow.
I was useless now, and worse than useless, as I was suffering greatly, but I could not leave the parallel for the hospital huts, and remained there nearly to dusk fell. Before that, I had seen Caradoc interred between the gabions; and there he lay in his hastily-scooped grave, uncoffined and unknelled, his heart's dearest longings unfulfilled, his brightest hopes and keenest aspirations crushed out like his young life; and the evanescent picture, the poor photo of the girl he had loved in vain, buried with him; and when poor Phil was being covered up, I remembered his anecdote about the dead officer, and the letter that was replaced in his breast.
Well, my turn for such uncouth obsequies might come soon enough now. In the affair of the Redan, if I mistake not, 146 officers and men of ours, the Welsh Fusileers, were killed and wounded; and every other regiment suffered in the same proportion.
The attack was to be renewed at five in the morning by the Guards and Highlanders, under Lord Clyde of gallant memory, then Sir Colin Campbell; but on their approaching, it was found that the Russians had spiked their guns, and bolted by the bridge of boats, leaving Sebastopol one sheet of living fire. Fort after fort was blown into the air, each with a shock as if the solid earth were being split asunder. The sky was filled with live shells, which burst there like thousands of scarlet rockets, and thus showers of iron fell in every direction. Columns of dark smoke, that seemed to prop heaven itself, rose above the city, while its defenders in thousands, without beat of drum or sound of trumpet, poured away by the bridge of boats. When the last fugitive had passed, the chains were cut, and then the mighty pontoon, a quarter of a mile in length, swung heavily over to the north side, when we were in full possession of Sebastopol!