doubts, four times were they
hurled back again with ever-decreasing numbers, and when at last they
found themselves, as the fire slackened, masters of the position, the
men looked at each other as if waking from some terrible dream, filled
with surprise that they were still alive and breathing, and faint and
trembling, now that the exertion was over and the tremendous strain
relaxed. When they had time to look round, they saw that but one-fourth
of those who had, some hours before, advanced to the attack of the
redoubt of Chewardino remained. The ground around the little earthworks
was piled thickly with dead Frenchmen and Russians, and ploughed up by
the iron storm that had for eight hours swept across it. Dismounted
guns, ammunition boxes, muskets, and accoutrements were scattered
everywhere. Even the veterans of a hundred battles had never witnessed
such a scene, had never gone through so prolonged and terrible a
struggle. Men were differently affected, some shook a comrade's hand
with silent pressure, some stood gazing sternly and fixedly at the lines
where the enemy still stood unconquered, and tears fell down many a
bronzed and battle-worn face; some sobbed like children, exhausted by
their emotions rather than their labours.

The loss of the officers had been prodigious. Eight generals were killed
and thirty wounded, and nearly two thousand officers. The colonel and
majors of Julian's regiment had fallen, and a captain, who was but sixth
on the list when the battle began, now commanded. Between three o'clock
and dusk the men were engaged in binding up each other's wounds, eating
what food they carried in their haversacks, and searching for more in
those of the fallen. Few words were spoken, and even when the order came
to evacuate the position and retire to the ground they had left that
morning, there was not a murmur; for the time no one seemed to care what
happened, or what became of him. Once on the ground where they were to
bivouac, fresh life was infused into their veins. The chill evening air
braced up their nerves; great fires were lighted with brushwood, broken
cartridge-boxes, and the fragments of gun-carriages and waggons; and
water was brought up from the stream. Horse-flesh was soon being
roasted, and as hunger and thirst were appeased, the buzz of
conversation rose round the fires, and the minds as well as the tongues
of men seemed to thaw from their torpor.

"Well, comrade, so you too have gone thr