THE SHADOW ON THE LAND

                                                     Chapter 12

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It was still drizzling in the morning, with brown drifting clouds and a

damp chilly wind.  It was a queer thing for me as I opened my eyes to

think that I should be in a battle that day, though none of us ever

thought it would be such a one as it proved to be.  We were up and

ready, however, with the first light, and as we threw open the doors of

our barn we heard the most lovely music that I had ever listened to

playing somewhere in the distance.  We all stood in clusters hearkening

to it, it was so sweet and innocent and sad-like.  But our sergeant

laughed when he saw how it pleased us all.

"Them are the French bands," said he; "and if you come out here you'll

see what some of you may not live to see again."

Out we went, the beautiful music  still sounding in our ears, and stood

on a rise just outside the barn.  Down below at the bottom of the slope,

about half a musket-shot from us, was a snug tiled farm with a hedge and

a bit of an apple orchard.  All round it a line of men in red coats and

high fur hats were working like bees, knocking holes in the wall and

barring up the doors.

"Them's the light companies of the Guards," said the sergeant.  "They'll

hold that farm while one of them can wag a finger.  But look over yonder

and you'll see the camp fires of the  French."

We looked across the valley at the low ridge upon the further side, and

saw a thousand little yellow points of flame with the dark smoke

wreathing up in the heavy air.  There was another farm-house on the

further side of the valley, and as we looked we suddenly saw a little

group of horsemen appear on a knoll beside it and stare across at us.

There were a dozen Hussars behind, and in front five men, three with

helmets, one with a long straight red feather in his hat, and the last

with a low cap.

"By God!" cried the sergeant, "that's him!  That's Boney, the one with

the grey horse.  Aye, I'll lay a month's pay on it."

I strained my eyes to see him, this man who had cast that great shadow

over Europe, which darkened the nations for five-and-twenty years, and

which had even fallen across our out-of-the-world little sheep-farm, and

had dragged us all--myself, Edie, and Jim--out of the lives that our

folk had lived before us.  As far as I could see, he was a dumpy

square-shouldered kind of man, and he held his double glasses to his

eyes with his elbows spread very wide out on each side.  I was still

staring when I heard the catch of a man's breath by my side, and there

was Jim with his eyes glowing like two coals, and his face thrust over

my shoulder.

"That's he, Jock," he whispered.

"Yes, that's Boney," said I.

"No, no, it's he.  This de Lapp or de Lissac, or whatever his devil's

name is.  It is he."

Then I saw him at once.  It was the horseman with the high red feather

in his hat.  Even at that distance I could have sworn to the slope of

his shoulders and the way he carried his head.  I clapped my hands upon

Jim's sleeve, for I could see that his blood was boiling at the sight of

the man, and that he was ready for any madness.  But at that moment

Bonaparte seemed to lean over and say something to de Lissac, and the

party wheeled and dashed away, while there came the bang of a gun and a

white spray of smoke from a battery along the ridge.  At the same

instant the assembly was blown in our village, and we rushed for our

arms and fell in.  There was a burst of firing all along the line, and

we thought that the battle had begun;  but it came really from our

fellows cleaning their pieces, for their priming was in some danger of

being wet from the damp night.

From where we stood it was a sight now that was worth coming over the

seas to see.  On our own ridge was the chequer of red and blue

stretching right away to a village over two miles from us.  It was

whispered from man to man in the ranks, however, that there was too much

of the blue and too little of the red; for the Belgians had shown on the

day before that their hearts were too soft for the work, and we had

twenty thousand of them for comrades.  Then, even our British troops

were half made up of militiamen and recruits; for the pick of the old

Peninsular regiments were on the ocean in transports, coming back from

some fool's quarrel with our kinsfolk of America.  But for all that we

could see the bearskins of the Guards, two strong brigades of them, and

the bonnets of the Highlanders, and the blue of the old German Legion,

and the red lines of Pack's brigade, and Kempt's brigade and the green

dotted riflemen in front, and we knew that come what might these were

men who would bide where they were placed, and that they had a man to

lead them who would place them where they should bide.

Of the French we had seen little save the twinkle of their fires, and a

few horsemen here and there upon the curves of the ridge; but as we

stood and waited there came suddenly a grand blare from their bands, and

their whole army came flooding over the low hill which had hid them,

brigade after brigade and division after division, until the broad slope

in its whole length and depth was blue with their uniforms and bright

with the glint of their weapons.  It seemed that they would never have

done, still pouring over and pouring over, while our men leaned on their

muskets and smoked their pipes looking down at this grand gathering and

listening to what the old soldiers who had fought the French before had

to say about them.  Then when the infantry had formed in long deep

masses their guns came whirling and bounding down the slope, and it was

pretty to see how smartly they unlimbered and were ready for action.

And then at a stately trot down came the cavalry, thirty regiments at

the least, with plume and breastplate, twinkling sword and fluttering

lance, forming up at the flanks and rear, in long shifting, glimmering

lines.

"Them's the chaps!" cried our old sergeant.  "They're gluttons to fight,

they are.  And you see them regiments with the great high hats in the

middle, a bit behind the farm?  That's the Guard, twenty thousand of

them, my sons, and all picked men--grey-headed devils that have done

nothing but fight since they were as high as my gaiters.  They've three

men to our two, and two guns to our one, and, by God! they'll make you

recruities wish you were back in Argyle Street before they have finished

with you."

He was not a cheering man, our sergeant; but then he had been in every

fight since Corunna, and had a medal with seven clasps upon his breast,

so that he had a right to talk in his own fashion.

When the Frenchmen had all arranged themselves just out of cannon-shot

we saw a small group of horsemen, all in a blaze with silver and scarlet

and gold, ride swiftly between the divisions, and as they went a roar of

cheering burst out from either side of them, and we could see arms

outstretched to them and hands waving.  An instant later the noise had

died away, and the two armies stood facing each other in absolute deadly

silence--a sight which often comes back to me in my dreams.  Then, of a

sudden, there was a lurch among the men just in front of us; a thin

column wheeled off from the dense blue clump, and came swinging up

towards the farm-house which lay below us.  It had not taken fifty paces

before a gun banged out from an English battery on our left, and the

battle of Waterloo had begun.

It is not for me to try to tell you the story of that battle, and,

indeed, I should have kept far enough away from such a thing had it not

happened that our own fates, those of the three simple folk who came

from the border country, were all just as much mixed up in it as those

of any king or emperor of them all.  To tell the honest truth, I have

learned more about that battle from what I have read than from what I

saw, for how much could I see with a comrade on either side, and a great

white cloud-bank at the very end of my firelock?  It was from books and

the talk of others that I learned how the heavy cavalry charged, how

they rode over the famous cuirassiers, and how they were cut to pieces

before they could get back.  From them, too, I learned all about the

successive assaults, and how the Belgians fled, and how Pack and Kempt

stood firm.  But of my own knowledge I can only speak of what we saw

during that long day in the rifts of the smoke and the lulls of the

firing, and it is just of that that I will tell you.

We were on the right of the line and in reserve, for the Duke was afraid

that Boney might work round on that side and get at him from behind; so

our three regiments, with another British brigade and the Hanoverians,

were placed there to be ready for anything.  There were two brigades of

light cavalry, too; but the French attack was all from the front, so it

was late in the day before we were really wanted.

The English battery which fired the first gun was still banging away on

our left, and a German one was hard at work upon our right, so that we

were wrapped round with the smoke; but we were not so hidden as to

screen us from a line of French guns opposite, for a score of round shot

came piping through the air and plumped right into the heart of us.

As I heard the scream of them past my ear my head went down like a

diver, but our sergeant gave me a prod in the back with the handle of

his halbert.

"Don't be so blasted polite," said he; "when you're hit, you can bow

once and for all."

There was one of those balls that knocked five men into a bloody mash,

and I saw it lying on the ground afterwards like a crimson football.

Another went through the adjutant's horse with a plop like a stone in

the mud, broke its back and left it lying like a burst gooseberry.

Three more fell further to the right, and by the stir and cries we could

tell that they had all told.

"Ah! James, you've lost a good mount," says Major Reed, just in front of

me, looking down at the adjutant, whose boots and breeches were all

running with blood.

"I gave a cool fifty for him in Glasgow," said the other.  "Don't you

think, major, that the men had better lie down now that the guns have

got our range?"

"Tut!" said the other; "they are young, James, and it will do them

good."

"They'll get enough of it before the day's done," grumbled the other;

but at that moment Colonel Reynell saw that the Rifles and the 52nd were

down on either side of us, so we had the order to stretch ourselves out

too.  Precious glad we were when we could hear the shot whining like

hungry dogs within a few feet of our backs.  Even now a thud and a

splash every minute or so, with a yelp of pain and a drumming of boots

upon the ground, told us that we were still losing heavily.

A thin rain was falling and the damp air held the smoke low, so that we

could only catch glimpses of what was doing just in front of us, though

the roar of the guns told us that the battle was general all along the

lines.  Four hundred of them were all crashing at once now, and the

noise was enough to split the drum of your ear.  Indeed, there was not

one of us but had a singing in his head for many a long day afterwards.

Just opposite us on the slope of the hill was a French gun, and we could

see the men serving her quite plainly.  They were small active men, with

very tight breeches and high hats with great straight plumes sticking up

from them; but they worked like sheep-shearers, ramming and sponging and

training.  There were fourteen when I saw them first, and only four left

standing at the last, but they were working away just as hard as ever.

The farm that they called Hougoumont was down in front of us, and all

the morning we could see that a terrible fight was going on there, for

the walls and the windows and the orchard hedges were all flame and

smoke, and there rose such shrieking and crying from it as I never heard

before.  It was half burned down, and shattered with balls, and ten

thousand men were hammering at the gates; but four hundred guardsmen

held it in the morning and two hundred held it in the evening, and no

French foot was ever set within its threshold.  But how they fought,

those Frenchmen!  Their lives were no more to them than the mud under

their feet.  There was one--I can see him now--a stoutish ruddy man on a

crutch.  He hobbled up alone in a lull of the firing to the side gate of

Hougoumont and he beat upon it, screaming to his men to come after him.

For five minutes he stood there, strolling about in front of the

gun-barrels which spared him, but at last a Brunswick skirmisher in the

orchard flicked out his brains with a rifle shot.  And he was only one

of many, for all day when they did not come in masses they came in twos

and threes with as brave a face as if the whole army were at their

heels.

So we lay all morning, looking down at the fight at Hougoumont; but soon

the Duke saw that there was nothing to fear upon his right, and so he

began to use us in another way.

The French had pushed their skirmishers past the farm, and they lay

among the young corn in front of us popping at the gunners, so that

three pieces out of six on our left were lying with their men strewed in

the mud all round them.  But the Duke had his eyes everywhere, and up he

galloped at that moment--a thin, dark, wiry man with very bright eyes, a

hooked nose, and big cockade on his cap.  There were a dozen officers at

his heels, all as merry as if it were a foxhunt, but of the dozen there

was not one left in the evening.

"Warm work, Adams," said he as he rode up.

"Very warm, your grace," said our general.

"But we can outstay them at it, I think.  Tut, tut, we cannot let

skirmishers silence a battery!  Just drive those fellows out of that,

Adams."

Then first I knew what a devil's thrill runs through a man when he is

given a bit of fighting to do.  Up to now we had just lain and been

killed, which is the weariest kind of work.  Now it was our turn, and,

my word, we were ready for it.  Up we jumped, the whole brigade, in a

four-deep line, and rushed at the cornfield as hard as we could tear.

The skirmishers snapped at us as we came, and then away they bolted like

corncrakes, their heads down, their backs rounded, and their muskets at

the trail.  Half of them got away; but we caught up the others, the

officer first, for he was a very fat man who could not run fast.

It gave me quite a turn when I saw Rob Stewart, on my right, stick his

bayonet into the man's broad back and heard him howl like a damned soul.

There was no quarter in that field, and it was butt or point for all of

them.  The men's blood was aflame, and little wonder, for these wasps

had been stinging all morning without our being able so much as to see

them.

And now, as we broke through the further edge of the cornfield, we got

in front of the smoke, and there was the whole French army in position

before us, with only two meadows and a narrow lane between us.  We set

up a yell as we saw them, and away we should have gone slap at them if

we had been left to ourselves; for silly young soldiers never think that

harm can come to them until it is there in their midst.  But the Duke

had cantered his horse beside us as we advanced, and now he roared

something to the general, and the officers all rode in front of our line

holding out their arms for us to stop.  There was a blowing of bugles, a

pushing and a shoving, with the sergeants cursing and digging us with

their halberts; and in less time than it takes me to write it, there was

the brigade in three neat little squares, all bristling with bayonets

and in echelon, as they call it, so that each could fire across the face

of the other.

It was the saving of us, as even so young a soldier as I was could very

easily see; and we had none too much time either.  There was a low

rolling hill on our right flank, and from behind this there came a sound

like nothing on this earth so much as the beat of the waves on the

Berwick coast when the wind blows from the east.  The earth was all

shaking with that dull roaring sound, and the air was full of it.

"Steady, 71st! for God's sake, steady!" shrieked the voice of our

colonel behind  us; but in front was nothing but the green gentle slope

of the grassland, all mottled with daisies and dandelions.

And then suddenly over the curve we saw eight hundred brass helmets rise

up, all in a moment, each with a long tag of horsehair flying from its

crest; and then eight hundred fierce brown faces all pushed forward, and

glaring out from between the ears of as many horses.  There was an

instant of gleaming breastplates, waving swords, tossing manes, fierce

red nostrils opening and shutting, and hoofs pawing the air before us;

and then down came the line of muskets, and our bullets smacked up

against their armour like the clatter of a hailstorm upon a window.  I

fired with the rest, and then rammed down another charge as fast as I

could, staring out through the smoke in front of me, where I could see

some long, thin thing which napped slowly backwards and forwards.  A

bugle sounded for us to cease firing, and a whiff of wind came to clear

the curtain from in front of us, and then we could see what had

happened.

I had expected to see half that regiment of horse lying on the ground;

but whether it was that their breastplates had shielded them, or

whether, being young and a little shaken at their coming, we had fired

high, our volley had done no very great harm.  About thirty horses lay

about, three of them together within ten yards of me, the middle one

right on its back with its four legs in the air, and it was one of these

that I had seen flapping through the smoke.  Then there were eight or ten

dead men and about as many wounded, sitting dazed on the grass for the

most part, though one was shouting "_Vive l'Empereur!_" at the top of

his voice.  Another fellow who had been shot in the thigh--a great

black-moustached chap he was too--leaned his back against his dead horse

and, picking up his carbine, fired as coolly as if he had been shooting

for a prize, and hit Angus Myres, who was only two from me, right

through the forehead.  Then he out with his hand to get another carbine

that lay near, but before he could reach it big Hodgson, who was the

pivot man of the Grenadier company, ran out and passed his bayonet

through his throat, which was a pity, for he seemed to be a very fine

man.

At first I thought that the cuirassiers had run away in the smoke; but

they were not men who did that very easily.  Their horses had swerved at

our volley, and they had raced past our square and taken the fire of the

two other ones beyond.  Then they broke through a hedge, and coming on a

regiment of Hanoverians who were in line, they treated them as they

would have treated us if we had not been so quick, and cut them to

pieces in an instant.  It was dreadful to see the big Germans running

and screaming while the cuirassiers stood up in their stirrups to have a

better sweep for their long, heavy swords, and cut and stabbed without

mercy.  I do not believe that a hundred men of that regiment were left

alive;  and the Frenchmen came back across our front, shouting at us and

waving their weapons, which were crimson down to the hilts.  This they

did to draw our fire, but the colonel was too old a soldier; for we

could have done little harm at the distance, and they would have been

among us before we could reload.

These horsemen got behind the ridge on our right again, and we knew very

well that if we opened up from the squares they would be down upon us in

a twinkle.  On the other hand, it was hard to bide as we were; for they

had passed the word to a battery of twelve guns, which formed up a few

hundred yards away from us, but out of our sight, sending their balls

just over the brow and down into the midst of us, which is called a

plunging fire.  And one of their gunners ran up on to the top of the

slope and stuck a handspike into the wet earth to give them a guide,

under the very muzzles of the whole brigade, none of whom fired a shot

at him, each leaving him to the other.  Ensign Samson, who was the

youngest subaltern in the regiment, ran out from the square and pulled

down the hand-spike; but quick as a jack after a minnow, a lancer came

flying over the ridge, and he made such a thrust from behind that not

only his point but his pennon too came out between the second and third

buttons of the lad's tunic.  "Helen! Helen!" he shouted, and fell dead

on his face, while the lancer, blown half to pieces with musket balls,

toppled over beside him, still holding on to his weapon, so that they

lay together with that dreadful bond still connecting them.

But when the battery opened there was no time for us to think of

anything else.  A square is a very good way of meeting a horseman, but

there is no worse one of taking a cannon ball, as we soon learned when

they began to cut red seams through us, until our ears were weary of the

slosh and splash when hard iron met living flesh and blood.  After ten

minutes of it we moved our square a hundred paces to the right; but we

left another square behind us, for a hundred and twenty men and seven

officers showed where we had been standing.  Then the guns found us out

again, and we tried to open out into line; but in an instant the

horsemen--lancers they were this time--were upon us from over the brae.

I tell you we were glad to hear the thud of their hoofs, for we knew

that that must stop the cannon for a minute and give us a chance of

hitting back.  And we hit back pretty hard too that time, for we were

cold and vicious and savage, and I for one felt that I cared no more for

the horsemen than if they had been so many sheep on Corriemuir.  One

gets past being afraid or thinking of one's own skin after a while, and

you just feel that you want to make some one pay for all you have gone

through.  We took our change out of the lancers that time; for they had

no breastplates to shield them, and we cleared seventy of them out of

their saddles at a volley.  Maybe, if we could have seen seventy mothers

weeping for their lads, we should not have felt so pleased over it; but

then, men are just brutes when they are fighting, and have as much

thought as two bull pups when they've got one another by the throttle.

Then the colonel did a wise stroke; for he reckoned that this would

stave off the cavalry for five minutes, so he wheeled us into line, and

got us back into a deeper hollow out of reach of the guns before they

could open again.  This gave us time to breathe, and we wanted it too,

for the regiment had been melting away like an icicle in the sun.

But bad as it was for us, it was a deal worse for some of the others.

The whole of the Dutch Belgians were off by this time helter-skelter,

fifteen thousand of them, and there were great gaps left in our line

through which the French cavalry rode as pleased them best.  Then the

French guns had been too many and too good for ours, and our heavy horse

had been cut to bits, so that things were none too merry with us.

On the other hand, Hougoumont, a blood-soaked ruin, was still ours, and

every British regiment was firm; though, to tell the honest truth, as a

man is bound to do, there were a sprinkling of red coats among the blue

ones who made for the rear.  But these were lads and stragglers, the

faint hearts that are found everywhere, and I say again that no regiment

flinched.  It was little we could see of the battle; but a man would be

blind not to know that all the fields behind us were covered with flying

men.  But then, though we on the right wing knew nothing of it, the

Prussians had begun to show, and Napoleon had set 20,000 of his men to

face them, which made up for ours that had bolted, and left us much as

we began.  That was all dark to us, however; and there was a time, when

the French horsemen had flooded in between us and the rest of the army,

that we thought we were the only brigade left standing, and had set our

teeth with the intention of selling our lives as dearly as we could.

At that time it was between four and five in the afternoon, and we had

had nothing to eat, the most of us, since the night before, and were

soaked with rain into the bargain.  It had drizzled off and on all day,

but for the last few hours we had not had a thought to spare either upon

the weather or our hunger.  Now we began to look round and tighten our

waist-belts, and ask who was hit and who was spared.  I was glad to see

Jim, with his face all blackened with powder, standing on my right rear,

leaning on his firelock.  He saw me looking at him, and shouted out to

know if I were hurt.

"All right, Jim," I answered.

"I fear I'm here on a wild-goose chase," said he gloomily, "but it's not

over yet.  By God, I'll have him, or he'll have me!"

He had brooded so much on his wrong, had poor Jim, that I really believe

that it had turned his head; for he had a glare in his eyes as he spoke

that was hardly human.  He was always a man that took even a little

thing to heart, and since Edie had left him I am sure that he was no

longer his own master.

It was at this time of the fight that we saw two single fights, which

they tell me were common enough in the battles of old, before men were

trained in masses.  As we lay in the hollow two horsemen came spurring

along the ridge right in front of us, riding as hard as hoof could

rattle.  The first was an English dragoon, his face right down on his

horse's mane, with a French cuirassier, an old, grey-headed fellow,

thundering behind him, on a big black mare.  Our chaps set up a hooting

as they came flying on, for it seemed shame to see an Englishman run

like that; but as they swept across our front we saw where the trouble

lay.  The dragoon had dropped his sword, and was unarmed, while the

other was pressing him so close that he could not get a weapon.

At last, stung maybe by our hooting, he made up his mind to chance it.

His eye fell on a lance beside a dead Frenchman, so he swerved his horse

to let the other pass, and hopping off cleverly enough, he gripped hold

of it.  But the other was too tricky for him, and was on him like a

shot.  The dragoon thrust up with the lance, but the other turned it,

and sliced him through the shoulder-blade.   It was all done in an

instant, and the Frenchman cantering his horse up the brae, showing his

teeth at us over his shoulder like a snarling dog.

That was one to them, but we scored one for us presently.  They had

pushed forward a skirmish line, whose fire was towards the batteries on

our right and left rather than on us; but we sent out two companies of

the 95th to keep them in check.  It was strange to hear the crackling

kind of noise that they made, for both sides were using the rifle.

An officer stood among the French skirmishers--a tall, lean man with a

mantle over his shoulders--and as our fellows came forward he ran out

midway between the two parties and stood as a fencer would, with his

sword up and his head back.  I can see him now, with his lowered eyelids

and the kind of sneer that he had upon his face.  On this the subaltern

of the Rifles, who was a fine well-grown lad, ran forward and drove full

tilt at him with one of the queer crooked swords that the rifle-men

carry.  They came together like two rams--for each ran for the other--

and down they tumbled at the shock, but the Frenchman was below.

Our man broke his sword short off, and took the other's blade through

his left arm;  but he was the stronger man, and he managed to let the

life out of his enemy with the jagged stump of his blade.  I thought

that the French skirmishers would have shot him down, but not a trigger

was drawn, and he got back to his company with one sword through his arm

and half of another in his hand.