“There is no danger of our leaving it, captain,” said Cochrane; “never fear!”
Then the scaling ladders were brought, the rush was made, and the castle taken. But Reid had been the very first man under its walls.
When the war was over, Captain Reid resigned his commission in the American army, and organised a body of men in New York to go and fight for the Hungarians, but news reached him in Paris that the Hungarian insurrection was ended, so he returned to England.
Here he settled down to literary work, publishing “The Scalp Hunters,” and many wonderful stories of adventure and peril.
The great African explorer, the good Dr Livingstone, said in the last letter he ever wrote, “Captain Mayne Reid’s boys’ books are the stuff to make travellers.”
Captain Mayne Reid died on the twenty-first of October, 1883, and the “Land of Fire” is his unconscious last legacy to the boys of Great Britain, and to all others who speak the English language.