FullReads

“It was while things were this way that I was on picket early one morning on our extreme left, close over the edge of the Carenage Ravine. I had come on with the midnight relief, and by five o’clock in the morning, when day wras just breaking, my teeth were chattering and I was stiff with cold. Name of a name, but it was cold those winter mornings! We have nothing like it, even when the worst mistral is blowing, in our winters here in Provence. Down in the ravine there was a thick mist, into which I could not see at all; but every now and then a whiff of wind would come in from the seaward and thin it a little, and then I would give a good look below me, for it was along the ravine that any party sent out to surprise us almost certainly would come.

“It was while the light still was faint that I thought I heard, coming up through the mist, a little rattling sound, such as might be made by a man stumbling and dropping his musket among the broken rocks. Just then the mist was too thick for me to see twenty feet below me. I was sure that something bad was going on down there, but I did not want to make a fool of myself by giving a false alarm. All that I could do was to cock my musket and to hold it pointed towards where the sound seemed to come from, all ready, should there be need for it, to give the alarm and get in a shot at the enemy at the same time. Truly, Monsieur, it seemed to me that I stood that way, while my heart went pounding against my ribs, for a whole year! I was no longer cold: the blood was racing through my veins, and I was everywhere in a glow. Suddenly there came a puff of wind, and as the mist thinned for a moment I saw that the whole ravine was full of Russians. Their advance already was half-way up the bank nearest to our works. In less than ten minutes the whole of them would be dashing into our outlying redoubts. As I pulled the trigger of my musket I tried to shout, but my throat was as dry as a furnace and I could only gasp. And–will you believe it?–my musket missed fire! Name of a name, what a state I was in! There was the enemy coming on under cover of the mist; and there was I, the only man who could save our army, standing dumb like a useless fool!

“What I must do came to me like a flash. If I ran back inside of our lines to give the alarm, the chances were a thousand to one that the enemy would have the outlying redoubt, very likely would have them both, and would turn the guns before help could come. But I knew, at least I hoped, that there was time for me to get to the more exposed redoubt ahead of them and give the word to spike the guns. It was all in an instant, I say, that I found this thought in my mind, and my musket and cartridge-box thrown I don’t know where, and myself dashing off through the mist across the broken ground like a deer.

“As I rushed into the redoubt our men thought that I was the Russians; and when they knew me by my uniform for a Frenchman, and heard me crying in a hoarse whisper, ‘Spike the guns!’ they thought that I was mad. But the lieutenant in command of the battery had at least a little sense, even if he did not have much courage, and he looked towards where I pointed–and then he saw the shakos, as the mist lifted again, not a hundred feet away.