e and untouched during
that long afternoon of carnage, fell now, under a stray musket-shot,
and lay helpless and exposed upon the ground undiscerned by his men,
who were recalled to help in the hot reception which had been
planned for the French; who, descending the city walls into the
Pacha's garden, were attacked with sabre and dagger, and lay
headless corpses under the flowering rose-bushes, and by the
fountain side.

Kinraid lay beyond the ravelins, many yards outside the city walls.

He was utterly helpless, for the shot had broken his leg. Dead
bodies of Frenchmen lay strewn around him; no Englishman had
ventured out so far.

All the wounded men that he could see were French; and many of
these, furious with pain, gnashed their teeth at him, and cursed him
aloud, till he thought that his best course was to assume the
semblance of death; for some among these men were still capable of
dragging themselves up to him, and by concentrating all their
failing energies into one blow, put him to a speedy end.

The outlying pickets of the French army were within easy rifle shot;
and his uniform, although less conspicuous in colour than that of
the marines, by whose sides he had been fighting, would make him a
sure mark if he so much as moved his arm. Yet how he longed to turn,
if ever so slightly, so that the cruel slanting sun might not beat
full into his aching eyes. Fever, too, was coming upon him; the pain
in his leg was every moment growing more severe; the terrible thirst
of the wounded, added to the heat and fatigue of the day, made his
lips and tongue feel baked and dry, and his whole throat seemed
parched and wooden. Thoughts of other days, of cool Greenland seas,
where ice abounded, of grassy English homes, began to make the past
more real than the present.

With a great effort he brought his wandering senses back; he knew
where he was now, and could weigh the chances of his life, which
were but small; the unwonted tears came to his eyes as he thought of
the newly-made wife in her English home, who might never know how he
died thinking of her.

Suddenly he saw a party of English marines advance, under shelter of
the ravelin, to pick up the wounded, and bear them within the walls
for surgical help. They were so near he could see their faces, could
hear them speak; yet he durst not make any sign to them when he lay
within range of the French picket's fire.

For one moment he could not resist raising his head