Our Soldier Boy Part 3

"Well, where did you live before Joe Beane found you?"

"I don't know," said the boy, shaking his head, and Tom Jones stared hard with his mouth open before asking his next question.

"I say, how's your head?"

"Quite well, thank you," said the boy; "how's yours?"

Tom scratched his as if he did not know.

"Look here," he cried, after a pause, as a happy thought crossed his mind, and without pausing to state how his own head was, he fired off another question:--"I say, who did you live with before we found you?"

"I don't know," said the boy, looking at him wonderingly, and as if he felt amused by his companion's questions. "You ask mother."

"Here! Quick," whispered Tom. "Give me my bugle."

"Shan't. I want it," replied the boy coolly.

"But you must. Here's the Colonel and half the officers reined up at the side to see us go by."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the bugle away as he spoke and threw the cord over his shoulder, drawing himself up smartly, and keeping step with the guard.

Mrs Corporal Beane had caught sight of the group of officers they were approaching, and with her heart in her mouth as she called it, she hurried up to the side of the mule, catching up to it just as they came abreast of the Colonel, a quiet stern-looking officer whose hair was sprinkled with grey.

Nothing escaped his sharp eyes, and he pressed his horse's side and rode close to the baggage mule.

"What boy's that, my good woman?"

"Mine, sir," said Mrs Beane huskily.

"Indeed? Is that the little fellow who was found in the burned village?"

"Yes, sir," faltered the woman, as she gazed in the Colonel's stern frowning countenance.

"Humph!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and drew rein for the rear of the regiment to file past.

"And now my poor boy will be sent away, Joe," said the agitated woman that night; but Joe said nothing, not even when he felt his wife get up and go to where the little fellow was sleeping soundly, and he heard her utter a curious sobbing sound before she came to lie down again.

But no orders were given next day for the boy to be sent to the rear, nor yet during the next week, during which the men were still hunting frogs, as they called it--frogs which took such big leaps that the toiling British soldiers could not come up to them.

"Oh, if they only would let us," Joe used to say every night when he pulled off his boots to rest his feet. "It's my one wish, for we must give 'em a drubbing, or we shall never have the face to go back to old England again."

Joe had his wish sooner than he expected.

It was in a wild mountainous part of the beautiful country, so full of forest and gorge that there was plenty of opportunity for the French to hide their force on the mountain slopes of a lovely valley and let the English regiment get well past them before they attacked.

The result was a desperate fight which lasted a couple of hours before the 200th managed to extricate themselves with the loss of many killed and wounded, and in spite of every man fighting like a hero, they were beaten and had to suffer the miseries of a retreat as well as a defeat.

But the 200th did not fall back many miles before the major of the regiment halted the main body of the men on the slopes of a rocky mount which he determined to hold and to give the scattered and wounded a chance to return, so a stand was made. For there was no hiding the fact; the poor 200th had been badly beaten, as an English regiment might reasonably be when every man was surprised and called upon to fight six, mostly hidden from him by rocks and trees.

The enemy did not follow their advantage, so that the English had the whole of that night to rest and refresh, though there was not much of either, for upon the roll of the companies being called a hundred brave men did not answer; many were wounded; and, worst misfortune of all, the Colonel was among the missing, and had been seen last fighting like a hero as he tried with a small company of men to save the baggage and ammunition.

"And our poor boy, Joe," sobbed Mrs Corporal that night, as she sat by the watch-fire, "trampled down and killed, just as I had begun to love him as much as if he had been my own."

"Cheer up, old la.s.s," said Joe, wincing as he spoke, for a bullet had ploughed a nasty furrow in one arm; "we don't know yet that he isn't all right. Prisoner, perhaps. Let's wait till morning, and see."

Mrs Corporal sobbed, and of course waited, with the men under arms all night and expecting an attack.

But the night pa.s.sed away without any alarm, and soon after sunrise in the beautiful chestnut wood, about fifty of the missing crawled back into camp, but there was no news of the Colonel, none of d.i.c.k, and poor Mrs Corporal Beane had another terrible trouble on her mind as she nursed and held water to her husband's feverish lips, for in the terrible fight at the surprise brave stout-hearted Joe Beane had been shot close to the Colonel's side, and he remembered seeing that officer wave his sword, and hearing him cry, "Forward, my lads; this way," but he could recollect no more.

CHAPTER FOUR.

d.i.c.k could remember every thing that took place then, though all that had occurred before he was hurt still remained blank. He remembered the crashing volleys fired from both sides of the gorge, and the way in which the long line of the marching regiment faced both ways and fired again, before making a brave charge forward, led by their officers, to fight their way through the enemy in front, but only to be beaten back, withered as their formation was by the terrible fire on all sides. He remembered this, and how all of a sudden, as the mule he rode was carried along in the crowd, and he clung tightly to the bundle with which it was loaded, the poor beast suddenly stood still, uttered a strange squeal, and then reared up so that d.i.c.k was nearly jerked off.

But the poor animal, which had been pierced through the lungs by a bullet, came down again on all-fours, and then dashed off at full gallop towards the clouds of smoke in front, bore off to the left as some dimly-seen men stabbed at it with their bayonets, and tore on over rock and bush, higher and higher up the side of the gorge, with d.i.c.k still clinging tightly to the ropes of the bundle, till all at once it uttered a shrill cry, reared up again, and then fell, throwing the boy down among the tangled growth, rolled over, once kicked out its legs for a few moments, and then lay perfectly still.

d.i.c.k lay as still for a few minutes, feeling too much startled to move.

Then he managed to crawl out of the rocky rift into which he had been thrown, and stood up, all ragged, with his red coatee split up the back, and one sleeve torn out at the shoulder.

For a few minutes he stood listening to the shouting and firing far below and watched the smoke curling up; his face was all puckered up, and he rubbed himself where he was p.r.i.c.ked and scratched. Then he examined his damaged clothes, and lastly he climbed up to where the mule lay, on its side with its heels higher up the slope than its stretched-out neck and head.

"Poor old fellow!" he said. "Did the shooting frighten you? Come on, get up."

But the mule did not stir, and the boy knelt down by it to raise its head a little, but only to let it sink back, and shrink away, in horror--the poor animal, who had always been ready to eat gra.s.s or pieces of unripe melon from his hand, lay dead, pierced by the bullet, and bayonetted in three places by the French.

And now the tears which the little fellow had manfully kept back began to flow fast, and he knelt down by the poor beast's side, feeling stunned.

And as he knelt there the firing went on, but in a scattered way, as the 200th fell back with the enemy in full pursuit, the boy turning at last to watch the progress of the fight far below and seeing the scarlet coats of his friends growing more and more distant in the smoke, and the blue uniforms of the French as they crowded after them, till the reports of the muskets grew faint; and the echoes from high up on either side of the gorge more soft till they died away.

d.i.c.k's first idea was to hurry off, but there was only one way, and that was down the wooded ravine; but he could not go that way, for the place between him and his friends was swarming with the French soldiers, and he shuddered at the thought of trying to get through them. He had of late seen and heard so much of their cruel acts.

What should he do?

He had hardly asked himself this question when he heard a shout, and his heart leaped--it was his friends coming back.

No; he could see below him the uniforms of the French soldiers, and their bayonets flashing in the golden light of the sinking sun, and in fear he shrank back among the thick bushes and hid below the place where he had been thrown, to lie listening as the voices came nearer, a peep or two that he stole showing that the enemy were spread out low down by the rugged track, evidently very busy, and it seemed to the boy that they were hunting for him to kill him.

He grew more and more sure of this as the voices came nearer, but at last he realised the truth--that the men were searching amongst the bushes for the wounded and dead.

This went on for an hour, and d.i.c.k's courage rose as he saw them carrying man after man down to the track, men in red and men in blue, and bearing them away, with the voices growing fewer and fewer.

"And it will soon be dark," the boy said to himself, "and then I can go back and find mother and father."

Just then he heard shouts again, and he shrank back beneath the bushes, to listen, not understanding a word; but the voices came nearer and nearer and d.i.c.k's heart sank, for there was a shout and two men ran up to within a dozen yards of where the boy lay.

"They can see me, and are going to shoot," he thought, and he shut his eyes and shivered, and thought of the corporal and his wife.

But no shot was fired; no bright keen bayonet plunged through the bushes; and taking courage the boy raised his head and peered upward towards where two French soldiers were busy doing something, and another came and joined them, to stand talking and laughing.