spair and desperation
goading them, the murderous are of the long rifles dealt death at
every discharge; and we stood among the cumbered corpses of our fellow
comrades. By this time we were attacked in rear as well as front; and
now, all hope gone, it only remained to sell life as dearly as we could.
One infuriated rush to break through the barricade had forced a kind of
passage, through which, followed by a dozen others, I leaped, shouting
to my men to follow. The cry of my triumph was, however, met by a
wilder still, for the same instant a party of Tyrolese, armed with the
two-handed sword of their country, came down upon us. The struggle was
a brief and bloody one; man for man fell at either side, but overcome
by numbers I saw my companions drop dead or wounded around me. As for
myself, I clove the leader through the skull with one stroke. It was the
last my arm ever dealt; the next instant it was severed from my body.
I fell covered with blood, and my assailant jumped upon my body, and
drawing a short knife from his belt was about to plunge it in my bosom,
when a shout from a wounded Tyrolese at my side arrested the stroke, and
I saw an uplifted arm stretched out as if to protect me. I have little
memory after this. I heard--I think I hear still--the wild shouts and
the death-cries of my comrades as they fell beneath the arm of their
enemies. The slaughter was a dreadful one; of eight hundred and forty
men, I alone survived that terrible night.

'Towards daybreak I found myself lying in a cart upon some straw, beside
another wounded man dressed in the uniform of the Tyrolese Jagers.
His head was fearfully gashed by a sabre-cut, and a musket-ball had
shattered his forearm. As I looked at him, a grim smile of savage glee
lit up his pale features, and he looked from my wound to his own with
a horrid significance. All my efforts to learn the fate of my comrades
were fruitless; he could neither comprehend me nor I him, and it
was only by conjecturing from the tones and gestures of those who
occasionally came up to the cart to speak to him, that I could learn the
fearful reality.

'That day and the following one we journeyed onwards, but I knew naught
of time. The fever of my wound, increased by some styptic they had used
to stop the bleeding, had brought on delirium, and I raved of the fight,
and strove to regain my legs and get free. To this paroxysm, which
lasted many days, a low lingering fever succeeded, in which al