r breath.

"This wouldn't have happened," says a voice, "if my advice had been
taken. I wish the black scoundrels had been shot. Where's Captain
Dyer?"

There was no answer, and a dead chill fell on me as I seemed to realise
that things had come now to a bad pass.

"Where's Sergeant Williams?" said Lieutenant Leigh again; but it seemed
to me that he spoke in a husky voice.

"Here!" said some one faintly, and, turning, there was the sergeant
seated on the ground, and supporting himself against the breastwork.

"Any one know the other men who went out on this mad sally?" says the
lieutenant.

"Where's Harry Lant?" I says.

There was no answer here either, and this time it was my turn to speak
in a queer husky voice as I said again: "Where's Measles? I mean Sam
Bigley."

"He's gone too, poor chap," says some one.

"No, he ain't gone neither," says a voice behind me, and, turning, there
was Measles tying a handkerchief round his head, muttering the while
about some black devil. "I ain't gone, nor I ain't much hurt," he
growled; "and if I don't take it out of some on 'em for this chop o' the
head, it's a rum un; and that's all I've got to say."

"Load!" says Lieutenant Leigh shortly; and we loaded again, and then
fired two or three volleys at the niggers as they came up towards the
gate once more; when some one calls out: "Ain't none of us going to make
a sally party, and bring in the captain?"

"Silence there, in the ranks!" shouts Lieutenant Leigh; and though it
had a bad sound coming from him as it did, and situated as he was, no
one knew better than I did how that it would have been utter madness to
have gone out again; for even if he were alive, instead of bringing in
Captain Dyer, now that the whole mob was roused, we should have all been
cut to pieces.

It was as if in answer to the lieutenant's order that silence seemed to
fall then, both inside and outside the palace--a silence that was only
broken now and then by the half-smothered groan of some poor fellow who
had been hurt in the sortie--though the way in which those men of ours
did bear wounds, some of them even that were positively awful, was a
something worth a line in history.

Yes, there was a silence fell upon the place for the rest of that night,
and I remember thinking of the wounds that had been made in two poor
hearts by that bad hour's work; and I can say now, faithful and true,
that there was not a selfish thought in my heart as