Chapter I

The gabion was ours. After two hours’ fighting we were in possession of the first embrasure, and made ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would admit. Jack Delamere, Tom Delancy, Jerry Blake, the Doctor, and myself, sat down under a pontoon, and our servants laid out a hasty supper on a tumbrel. Though Cambaceres had escaped me so provokingly after I cut him down, his spoils were mine; a cold fowl and a Bologna sausage were found in the Marshal’s holsters; and in the haversack of a French private who lay a corpse on the glacis, we found a loaf of bread, his three days’ ration. Instead of salt, we had gunpowder; and you may be sure, wherever the Doctor was, a flask of good brandy was behind him in his instrument-case. We sat down and made a soldier’s supper. The Doctor pulled a few of the delicious fruit from the lemon-trees growing near (and round which the Carabineers and the 24th Leger had made a desperate rally), and punch was brewed in Jack Delamere’s helmet.

“‘Faith, it never had so much wit in it before,” said the Doctor, as he ladled out the drink. We all roared with laughing, except the guardsman, who was as savage as a Turk at a christening.

“Buvez-en,” said old Sawbones to our French prisoner; “ca vous fera du bien, mon vieux coq!” and the Colonel, whose wound had been just dressed, eagerly grasped at the proffered cup, and drained it with a health to the donors.

How strange are the chances of war! But half an hour before he and I were engaged in mortal combat, and our prisoner was all but my conqueror. Grappling with Cambaceres, whom I knocked from his horse, and was about to despatch, I felt a lunge behind, which luckily was parried by my sabretache; a herculean grasp was at the next instant at my throat—I was on the ground—my prisoner had escaped, and a gigantic warrior in the uniform of a colonel of the regiment of Artois glaring over me with pointed sword.

“Rends-toi, coquin!” said he.

“Allez an Diable!” said I: “a Fogarty never surrenders.”

I thought of my poor mother and my sisters, at the old house in Killaloo—I felt the tip of his blade between my teeth—I breathed a prayer, and shut my eyes—when the tables were turned—the butt-end of Lanty Clancy’s musket knocked the sword up and broke the arm that held it.

“Thonamoundiaoul nabochlish,” said the French officer, with a curse in the purest Irish. It was lucky I stopped laughing time enough to bid Lanty hold his hand, for the honest fellow would else have brained my gallant adversary. We were the better friends for our combat, as what gallant hearts are not?

The breach was to be stormed at sunset, and like true soldiers we sat down to make the most of our time. The rogue of a Doctor took the liver-wing for his share—we gave the other to our guest, a prisoner; those scoundrels Jack Delamere and Tom Delaney took the legs—and, ‘faith, poor I was put off with the Pope’s nose and a bit of the back.

“How d’ye like his Holiness’s FAYTURE?” said Jerry Blake.

“Anyhow you’ll have a MERRY THOUGHT,” cried the incorrigible Doctor, and all the party shrieked at the witticism.

“De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” said Jack, holding up the drumstick clean.

“‘Faith, there’s not enough of it to make us CHICKEN-HEARTED, anyhow,” said I; “come, boys, let’s have a song.”

“Here goes,” said Tom Delaney, and sung the following lyric, of his own composition—

“Dear Jack, this white mug that with Guinness I fill,And drink to the health of sweet Nan of the hill,Was once Tommy Tosspot’s, as jovial a sot,As e’er drew a spigot, or drain’d a full pot—In drinking all round ’twas his joy to surpass,And with all merry tipplers he swigg’d off his glass.
“One morning in summer, while seated so snug,In the porch of his garden, discussing his jug,Stern Death, on a sudden, to Tom did appear,And said, ‘Honest Thomas, come take your last bier;’We kneaded his clay in the shape of this can,From which let us drink to the health of my Nan.”

“Psha!” said the Doctor, “I’ve heard that song before; here’s a new one for you, boys!” and Sawbones began, in a rich Corkagian voice—

“You’ve all heard of Larry O’Toole,Of the beautiful town of Drumgoole;He had but one eye,To ogle ye by—Oh, murther, but that was a jew’l!A foolHe made of de girls, dis O’Toole.
“’Twas he was the boy didn’t fail,That tuck down pataties and mail;He never would shrinkFrom any sthrong dthrink,Was it whisky or Drogheda ale;I’m bailThis Larry would swallow a pail.
“Oh, many a night at the bowl,With Larry I’ve sot cheek by jowl;He’s gone to his rest,Where there’s dthrink of the best,And so let us give his old sowlA howl,For twas he made the noggin to rowl.”

I observed the French Colonel’s eye glistened as he heard these well-known accents of his country but we were too well-bred to pretend to remark his emotion.

The sun was setting behind the mountains as our songs were finished, and each began to look out with some anxiety for the preconcerted signal, the rocket from Sir Hussey Vivian’s quarters, which was to announce the recommencement of hostilities. It came just as the moon rose in her silver splendor, and ere the rocket-stick fell quivering to the earth at the feet of General Picton and Sir Lowry Cole, who were at their posts at the head of the storming-parties, nine hundred and ninety nine guns in position opened their fire from our batteries, which were answered by a tremendous canonnade from the fort.

“Who’s going to dance?” said the Doctor: “the ball’s begun. Ha! there goes poor Jack Delamere’s head off! The ball chose a soft one, anyhow. Come here, Tim, till I mend your leg. Your wife has need only knit half as many stockings next year, Doolan my boy. Faix! there goes a big one had wellnigh stopped my talking: bedad! it has snuffed the feather off my cocked hat!”

In this way, with eighty-four-pounders roaring over us like hail, the undaunted little Doctor pursued his jokes and his duty. That he had a feeling heart, all who served with him knew, and none more so than Philip Fogarty, the humble writer of this tale of war.

Our embrasure was luckily bomb-proof, and the detachment of the Onety-oneth under my orders suffered comparatively little. “Be cool, boys,” I said; “it will be hot enough work for you ere long.” The honest fellows answered with an Irish cheer. I saw that it affected our prisoner.

“Countryman,” said I, “I know you; but an Irishman was never a traitor.”

“Taisez-vous!” said he, putting his finger to his lip. “C’est la fortune de la guerre: if ever you come to Paris, ask for the Marquis d’ O’Mahony, and I may render you the hospitality which your tyrannous laws prevent me from exercising in the ancestral halls of my own race.”

I shook him warmly by the hand as a tear bedimmed his eye. It was, then, the celebrated colonel of the Irish Brigade, created a Marquis by Napoleon on the field of Austerlitz!

“Marquis,” said I, “the country which disowns you is proud of you; but—ha! here, if I mistake not, comes our signal to advance.” And in fact, Captain Vandeleur, riding up through the shower of shot, asked for the commander of the detachment, and bade me hold myself in readiness to move as soon as the flank companies of the Ninety-ninth, and Sixty-sixth, and the Grenadier Brigade of the German Legion began to advance up the echelon. The devoted band soon arrived; Jack Bowser heading the Ninety-ninth (when was he away and a storming-party to the fore?), and the gallant Potztausend, with his Hanoverian veterans.

The second rocket flew up.

“Forward, Onety-oneth!” cried I, in a voice of thunder. “Killaloo boys, follow your captain!” and with a shrill hurray, that sounded above the tremendous fire from the fort, we sprung upon the steep; Bowser with the brave Ninety-ninth, and the bold Potztausend, keeping well up with us. We passed the demilune, we passed the culverin, bayoneting the artillerymen at their guns; we advanced across the two tremendous demilunes which flank the counterscarp, and prepared for the final spring upon the citadel. Soult I could see quite pale on the wall; and the scoundrel Cambaceres, who had been so nearly my prisoner that day, trembled as he cheered his men. “On, boys, on!” I hoarsely exclaimed. “Hurroo!” said the fighting Onety-oneth.

But there was a movement among the enemy. An officer, glittering with orders, and another in a gray coat and a cocked hat, came to the wall, and I recognized the Emperor Napoleon and the famous Joachim Murat.

“We are hardly pressed, methinks,” Napoleon said sternly. “I must exercise my old trade as an artilleryman;” and Murat loaded, and the Emperor pointed the only hundred-and-twenty-four-pounder that had not been silenced by our fire.

“Hurray, Killaloo boys!” shouted I. The next moment a sensation of numbness and death seized me, and I lay like a corpse upon the rampart.

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