oosened a piece of his
scalp, that hung down over his forehead and waved and trembled there
like a draggled plume; his face was bathed in blood from this horrid
wound, and his armor of cotton cloth was soaked with the blood that had
run down upon it from the cut in his head, and also from a wound in his
neck. In the moment that I had free sight of him he made as fine a
sword-stroke as ever I saw, wherewith he fairly severed from its body
the head of one of his assailants; and at the very same instant, while
that head still was spinning in the air, a man directly behind him
forced back the pressing crowd by main strength and so gained a free
space in which to swing his sword. I shouted to Tizoc to warn him of the
danger, and he half turned to ward against it; but before he could turn
wholly around the blow had fallen, splitting his whole head open from
the crown to the very chin. And in the midst of the fierce yell of
triumph that went up as this cowardly stroke was delivered there passed
from earth the soul of as brave and as true a man as earth has ever
known.

A dizziness came over me as I saw Tizoc fall, and saw in the same moment
the wild rush forward of the enemy over his dead body into the Citadel;
and so I suppose that what with this dizziness and my great weariness I
must have dropped my guard. I faintly remember hearing a shout of
warning from Young, who was close beside me, which shout mingled with
the shrieks of those inside the Citadel whom the enemy everywhere were
cutting down, and the great roar of victory that went up from all the
army, both within and without the Citadel, rising tempestuously in
mighty waves of sound: and then a crash like that of a thunder-bolt
burst directly upon my head, and a sickening pain shot through me, and I
seemed to be falling through untold depths into vast gloomy chasms (so
that I thought I was dropping once more into the hollow darkness of the
canon), and there was a very dreadful surging and roaring and ringing in
my ears; and then all this horror of evil sounds grew fainter, and I
felt myself slipping quickly into the awful stillness and blackness that
I surely thought must be the entrance-way to death. And with this
thought a numb sort of gladness came over me, for in death there was
promise of restfulness and peace.

XXXI.

DEFEAT.

After all, the life that I thought was lost, and had but little sorrow
for the losing of it, slowly came back to me again. Fo