CHAPTER XXXVII.--THE ANGEL OF HORROR.

When consciousness returned, I found the dull red evening sun shining

down the long valley of Inkermann, and that, save moans and cries for

aid and water, all seemed terribly still now.

A sense of weakness and oppression, of incapacity for action and

motion, were my first sensations. I feared that other shot must have

struck me after I had fallen, and that both my legs were broken. The

cause of this, after a time, became plain enough: a dead artillery

horse was lying completely over my thighs, and above it and them lay

the wheel of a shattered gun carriage; and weak as I was then, to

attempt extrication from either unaided was hopeless. Thus I was

compelled to lie helplessly amid a sickening puddle of blood,

enduring a thirst that is unspeakable, but which was caused by

physical causes and excitement, with the anxiety consequent on the

battle. The aspect of the dead horse, which first attracted me, was

horrible. A twelve-pound shot had struck him below the eyes, making a

hole clean through his head; the brain had dropped out, and lay with

his tongue and teeth upon the grass. The dead and wounded lay thickly

around me, as indeed they did over all the field. Some of the former,

though with eyes unclosed and jaws relaxed, had a placid expression in

their white waxen faces. These had died of gun-shot wounds. The

expressions of pain or anguish lingered longest in those who had

perished by the bayonet. Over all the valley lay bodies in heaps,

singly or by two and threes, with swarms of flies settling over them;

shakoes, glazed helmets, bearskin-caps, bent bayonets, broken muskets,

swords, hairy knapsacks, bread-bags, shreds of clothing, torn from the

dead and the living by showers of grape and canister, cooking-kettles,

round shot and fragments of shells, with pools of noisome blood, lay

on every hand.

Truly the Angel of Horror, and of Death, too, had been there. I saw

several poor fellows, British as well as Russian, expire within the

first few minutes I was able to look around me. One whose breast bore

several medals and orders, an officer of the Kazan Light Infantry,

prayed very devoutly and crossed himself in his own blood ere he

expired. Near me a corporal of my own regiment named Prouse, who had

been shot through the brain, played fatuously for a time with a

handful of grass, and then, lying gently back, passed away without a

moan. A Zouave, a brown, brawny, and soldier-like fellow, who seemed

out of his senses also, was very talkative and noisy.

"Ouf!" I heard him say; "it is as wearisome as a sermon or a funeral

this! Were I a general, the capture of Sebastopol should be as easy as

a game of dominoes.--Yes, Isabeau, ma belle coquette, kiss me and hold

up my head. Vive la gloire! Vive l'eau de vie! A bas la mélancolie! A

bas la Russe!" he added through his clenched teeth hoarsely, as he

fell back. The jaw relaxed, his head turned on one side, and all was

over.

Of Volhonski I could see nothing except his gray horse, which lay

dead, in all its trappings, a few yards off; but I afterwards learned

that he had been retaken by the Russians on their advance after the

fall of poor Sir George Cathcart.

There was an acute pain in the arm that had been

injured--fractured--when saving Estelle; and as a kind of stupor,

filled by sad and dreamy thoughts, stole over me, they were all of

her. The roar of the battle had passed away, but there was a kind of

drowsy hum in my ears, and, for a time, strangely enough, I fancied

myself with her in the Park or Rotten-row. I seemed to see the

brilliant scene in all the glory of the season: the carriages; the

horses, bay or black, with their shining skins and glittering

harness; the powdered coachmen on their stately hammer-cloths; the

gaily-liveried footmen; the ladies cantering past in thousands, so

exquisitely dressed, so perfectly mounted, so wonderful in their

loveliness--women the most beautiful in the world; and there, too,

were the young girls, whose season was to come, and the ample

dowagers, whose seasons were long since past, lying back among the

cushions, amid ermine and fur; and with all this Estelle was laughing

and cantering by my side. Then we were at the opera--another fantastic

dream--the voices of Grisi and Mario were blending there, and as its

music seemed to die away, once more we were at Craigaderyn, under its

shady woods, with the green Welsh hills, snow-capped Snowdon and

Carneydd Llewellyn, in the distance, and voices and music and

laughter--some memory of Dora's fête--seemed to be about us. So while

lying there, on that ghastly field of Inkermann, between sleeping and

waking, I dreamed of her who was so far away--of the sweet

companionship that might never come again; of the secret tie that

bound us; of the soft dark eyes that whilom had looked lovingly into

mine; of the sweetly-modulated voice that was now falling merrily,

perhaps, on other ears, and might fall on mine no more. And a vague

sense of happiness, mingled with the pain caused by the half-spent

shot and the wild confusion and suffering of the time, stole over me.

Waking, these memories became

"Sad as remembered kisses after death,

And sweet as those by hopeless _fancy_ feigned

On lips that are for others--deep as love,

Deep as first love, and wild with all regret,

O death in life--the days that are no more!"

From all this I was thoroughly roused by a voice crying, "Up, up,

wounded--all you who are able! Cavalry are coming this way--you will

be trod to death. Arrah, get out of _that_, every man-jack of yees!"

The excited speaker was an Irish hussar, picking his way across the

field at a quick trot.

It was a false alarm; but the rumble of wheels certainly came next

day, and an ambulance-wagon passed slowly, picking up the wounded, who

groaned or screamed as their fractured limbs were handled, and their

wounds burst out afresh through the clotted blood. I waved an arm, and

the scarlet sleeve attracted attention.

"There is a wounded officer--one of the 23rd Fusileers," cried a

driver from his saddle.

"Where?" asked a mounted officer in the blue cloak and cap of the Land

Transport Corps.

"Under that dead horse, sir."

"One of the 23rd; let us see--Hardinge, by all the devils!" said

the officer, who proved to be no other than Hawkesby Guilfoyle.

"So-ho--steady, steady!" he added, while secretly touching his horse

with the spurs to make it rear and plunge in three several attempts to

tread me under its hoofs; but the terrible aspect of the dead animal

smashed by the cannon-shot so scared the one he rode, that he bore on

the curb in vain.

"Coward! coward!" I exclaimed, "if God spares me you shall hear of

this."

"The fellow is mad or tipsy," said he; "drive on."

"But, sir--sir!" urged the driver in perplexity.

"Villain! you are my evil fate," said I faintly.

"I tell you the fellow is mad--drive on, I command you, or by----,

I'll make a prisoner of you!" thundered Guilfoyle, drawing a pistol

from his holster, while his shifty green eyes grew white with

suppressed passion and malice; so the ambulance-cart was driven on,

and I was left to my fate.

Giddy and infuriated by pain and just indignation, I lay under my cold

and ghastly load, perishing of thirst, and looking vainly about for

assistance.

Scarcely were they gone, when out of the dense thick brushwood, that

grew in clumps and tufts over all the valley, there stole forth two

Russian soldiers, with their bayonets fixed, and their faces distorted

and pale with engendered fanaticism and fury at their defeat. There

was a cruel gleam in their eyes as they crept stealthily about. Either

they feared to fire or their ammunition was expended, for I saw them

deliberately pass their bayonets through the bodies of four or five

wounded men, and pin the writhing creatures to the earth. I lay very

still, expecting that my turn would soon come. The dead horse served

to conceal me for a little; but I panted rather than breathed, and my

breath came in gasps as they drew near me; for on discovering that I

was an officer, my gold wings and lace would be sure to kindle their

spirit of acquisition. I had my revolver in my right hand, and

remembered with grim joy that of its six chambers, three were yet

undischarged. Just as the first Russian came straight towards me, I

shot him through the head, and he fell backward like a log; the second

uttered a howl, and came rushing on with his butt in the air and his

bayonet pointed down. I fired both barrels. One ball took him right in

the shoulder, the other in the throat, and he fell wallowing in blood,

but not until he had hurled his musket at me. The barrel struck me

crosswise on the head, and I again became insensible. Moonlight was

stealing over the valley when consciousness returned again, and I felt

more stiff and more helpless than ever. Something was stirring near

me; I looked up, and uttered an exclamation on seeing our regimental

goat, Carneydd Llewellyn, quietly cropping some herbage among the

débris of dead bodies and weapons that lay around me. Like Caradoc, I

had made somewhat a pet of it. The poor animal knew my voice, and on

coming towards me, permitted me to stroke and pat it; and a strong

emotion of wonder and regard filled my heart as I did so, for it was a

curious coincidence that this animal, once the pet of Winifred Lloyd,

should discover me there upon the field of Inkermann.

After a little I heard a voice, in English, cry, "Here is our goat at

last, by the living Jingo!" and Dicky Roll, its custodian--from whose

tent it had escaped, when a shot from the batteries broke the

pole--came joyfully towards it.

"Roll, Dicky Roll," cried I, "for God's sake bring some of our

fellows, and have me taken from here!"

"Captain Hardinge! are you wounded, sir?" asked the little drummer,

stooping in commiseration over me.

"Badly, I fear, but cannot tell with certainty."

Dicky shouted in his shrill boyish voice, and in a few minutes some of

our pioneers and bandsmen came that way with stretchers. I was

speedily freed from my superincumbent load, and very gently and

carefully borne rearward to my tent, when it was found that a couple

of contusions on the head were all I had suffered, and that a little

rest and quiet would soon make me fit for duty again.

"You must be more than ever careful of our goat, Dicky," said I, as

the small warrior, who was not much taller than his own bearskin cap,

was about to leave me (by the bye, my poor fellow Evans had been cut

in two by a round shot). "But for Carneydd Llewellyn, I might have

lain all night on the field."

"There is a date scratched on one of his horns, sir," said Roll; "I

saw it to-day for the first time."

"A date!--what date?"

"Sunday, 21st August."

"Sunday, 21st August," I repeated; "what can that refer to?"

"I don't know, sir--_do you?_"

The drummer saluted and left the tent. I lay on my camp-bed weak and

feverish, so weak, that I could almost have wept; for now came

powerfully back to memory that episode, till then forgotten--the

Sunday ramble I had with Winifred Lloyd when we visited the goat, by

the woods of Craigaderyn, by the cavern in the glen, by the Maen Hir

or the Giant's Grave, and the rocking stone, and all that passed that

day, and how she wept when I kissed her. Poor Winifred! her pretty

white hand must have engraved the date which the little drummer

referred to--a date which was evidently dwelling more in her artless

mind than in mine.