“You speak very handsomely of me—much better than I deserve, sir.”
“Not a particle, my boy. If there is a man in the army that can appreciate valor, that man is Captain de Banyan. You are modest, Lieutenant Somers—of course you are modest; all brave men are modest—and I forgive your blushes. I’ve seen service, my boy. Though not yet thirty-five, I served in the Crimea, in the Forty-seventh Royal Infantry; and was at the battles of Solferino, Magenta, Palestro, and others too numerous to mention.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Lieutenant Somers, filled with admiration by the magnificent record of the captain. “Then you are not an American?”
“Oh, yes, I am! I happened to be in England when the Russian war commenced. So, being fond of a stirring life, I entered as a private in the Forty-seventh. If the war had continued six months longer, I should have come out a brigadier-general, though. Promotion is not so rapid in the British army as in our own. I was at the storming of the Redan; I was one of the first to mount the breach. Just as I had raised my musket——”
“I thought you were an officer—a colonel at least,” interposed Lieutenant Somers.
“My sword, I should have said. Just as I had raised my sword to cut down a Russian who threatened to bayonet me, a cannon-ball struck the butt of my gun——”
“Your gun?”
“The handle of my sword, I should have said, and snapped it off like a pipe-stem.”
“But didn’t it snap your hand off too?” asked the lieutenant, rather bewildered by the captain’s statements.
“Not at all; that is the most wonderful part of the story. It didn’t even graze my skin.”