“No man died that night with more glory—yet many died, and there was much glory.” So writes the Thucydides of this war; not about Hilary (as good-luck willed it), but one of his senior officers. And that such a sentence should ever have been written, is a thing to think about. With all that dash of bright carnage fresh on the page of one who did his duty so grandly both with sword and pen, peaceful writers (knowing more of sandy commons and the farm-house fagot than of fascines and gabions, of capons than of caponnières, and of shot grapes than of grapeshot) wisely may stick to the gardening-knife, or in fiercest moments the pruning-hook; and have nothing to say to the stark sword-blade.
Such duty becomes tenfold a pleasure, when the sword-blades not only swing overhead or glitter at the unarmed breast; but, bolted into great beams of wood at the most offensive angles, are flashing in the dark at the stomach of a man, like a vast electric porcupine; while bursting shells and powder-barrels, and blasts of grapeshot thick as hail (drowning curses, shrieks, and wails), sweep the craggy rampart clear, or leave only corpses roasting. Such, and worse by a thousandfold than words may render or mind conceive, was the struggle of that awful night at the central breach of Badajos; and here was Hilary Lorraine, wounded, spent with fruitless efforts, dashed backward on spikes and on bayonet-points, trampled under foot, and singed by the beard of a smouldering comrade, yet glad even to lie still for a minute in the breathless depths of exhaustion. “All up with me now” he was faintly thinking—“perhaps my father will be satisfied. Good-bye, dear Alice, and darling Mabel—and good night to this poor Hilary!”
And here his career—of fame or of shame—must have been over and done with, if he had not already won good-liking among the men of his company. For one of them with his next step ready to be planted on the young officer’s breast, caught a view of his face, by the light of a fire-ball, stopped short, and stooped over him.
“Blow me!” he exclaimed, while likely to be blown into a thousand pieces; “if this bain’t the very young chap as saved me when I wur a dropping upon the road. One good turn desarves another. Here, Bob, lend a hand, my boy.”
“A hand! I can’t lend thee a hinch,” cried Bob; “they be squazing me up like a squatting match.”
For while all the front men were thus lying dead, the men from the rear would not stop from shoving, and bodily heaving the others before them, as buffaloes rush when they lose their wits. They thrust, every man his front man on the chevaux de frise, as if it were a joke, with that bitter recklessness of life and readiness to take their own turn at death which drive in one solid mass all true Britons, and their cousins across the Atlantic, whenever the strong blood is churned within them. And yet all this time they know what they are about.
And so did these two soldiers now. Neither time nor room had they to lift poor Hilary out of the bed of shattered granite where he lay, with wedged spikes sticking into him. And the two men who wanted to do it were swept by the surge of living bodies upwards. But first they did this—which saved his life—they threw two muskets across him. Loaded or empty, they knew not; and of course it could not matter so long as the climbing men (clambering hard to their death) found it readier for their feet to tread on the bridge of these muskets (piered with blocks of granite) than on the ribs of poor Hilary. So the struggle went on; and there he lay, and began to peep under other people’s legs.
In this rather difficult position he failed to make out anything at all to satisfy or to please him. Listeners hear little good of themselves, and lurking gazers have about the same luck. Not that Hilary was to be blamed for lying in this groove, inasmuch as he really had no chance or even time to get out of it. A great hulking Yorkshireman (as he turned out) had fallen obliquely upon Hilary’s bridge, and was difficult to push aside, and quite impossible to lift up. He groaned a good deal, but he was not dead—if he had not been a Yorkshireman the one fact might have implied the other, but Yorkshiremen do groan after death: however, he was not dead; and he keeps a mill on the Swale at this minute.
Hilary, under these disadvantages, naturally tried to lessen them; and though he was pretty safe where he lay—unless a shell came through the Yorkshireman, and that would have needed a very strong charge—still he became discontented. What with the pain of his wound or wounds (for he knew to his cost that he had several of them), also the violent thirst which followed, as well as the ache of his cramped position, and a piece of spiked plank that worried him, he began to grow more and more desirous of a little change of air.
“Now, my dear sir,” he said, with his usual courtesy, to the Yorkshireman, “you do not mean to be in my way of course, but the fact is that I can’t get out of this hole by reason of your incumbency. If you could only, without inconvenience, give a little roll to the right or left, you would be in quite as good a position yourself; or if you have grown attached to this particular spot, I would try to replace you afterwards.”