“Straight for the fort, there!” said the commanding officer, “the shortest way you can take your men!”
It was an order that meant certain death to scores of those brave fellows; yet when they had heard it they cheered as schoolboys cheer for a holiday.
Again we stood waiting. The officers with their swords drawn stepped in front. The men quickly loaded and fixed bayonets, and then came the shout,—
“Forward!”
As we cleared the trees we burst full in the face of the enemy’s fire. For a moment the balls whizzed harmlessly over our heads, then there was a crash on the ground before us, and, as we rushed on, the men parted on either side to avoid stepping over a dying man. It was awful; and every step we took grew more and more fatal. Under that withering fire men went down by the dozen; yet still the column rushed on. The front rank broke into gaps, which the rear rank men dashed forward to fill, till they themselves fell. And still on we rushed. Officers, too, everywhere to the front, dropped one by one; but still we never checked our pace. The sullen walls of the fort stood clear before us and poured upon us an unceasing shower of bullet and ball. In a minute our foremost men would be at the walls.
“Forward now! follow me!” I heard Charlie cry; and looking round noticed for the first time that the captain of his company was missing. The men cheered by way of answer, and their run broke into a rush as they followed him under the guns. Others were at the fort before us, and the storm had already begun. Heedless of wounds, heedless of peril, the men swept towards the breach, and called on those behind to come on. Charlie was one of the earliest of our battalion there, and already his feet were in the place, and he was waving to his men to come up when—
I felt a dull crushing sensation. My nerves collapsed; my senses left me. Speech, sight, hearing, all failed me in an instant; a strange darkness came over me, and then I was conscious of nothing.
When my senses slowly and wearily recovered I was still lying in my master’s pocket in the place where he had fallen at the storming of the breach. Firing was still going on all around, but the shouts of our men rose now from inside the fort instead of outside. And what shouting it was! The enemy’s guns ceased as if by magic, and the distant sounds of firing showed plainly enough that the main body, now that we had silenced the fort, was resuming its march on Lucknow.
All this flashed through me as my senses gradually returned, and before even I had time to contemplate my own condition. What a wreck I was! A helpless cripple past all healing, of no use to any one, and utterly incapable of resuming the ordinary duties of life. But almost before I could realise this, another care flashed through my mind and drove out every other.