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Paco obeyed, and in another moment entered the apartment. "I thought you were in your grave, Paco," said Villabuena, "and so did we all. I myself saw you lying in the dust of the road, with a sabre-cut on your head that would have killed an ox." "It was not so bad as it looked," replied the Navarrese. "Nothing like a close-woven boina for turning a sabre edge.
Soon, however, the cuirassiers came galloping to the spot, and almost without exchanging a sabre-cut, the Guerillas fell back, and retired behind the Turones. This movement of Julian was more attributable to anger than to fear; for his favorite lieutenant, being mistaken for a French officer, was shot by a soldier of the Guards a few minutes before.
My head was sore, but the surgeon removed the bandage, clipped the hair about the wound, took a stitch or two that hurt worse than the original blow, and in an hour I had forgotten the sabre-cut. Singular uneasiness pervaded my thoughts. More than once I caught myself standing still as if expecting to hear something.
More than one white-haired man was within sight; but though he overtook each of them in succession, all wanted the sabre-cut.
But he was not now serving his apprenticeship in these matters; many times, during his campaigns, he had industriously repaired the damage and disorder which a day of battle always brings to the garments of the soldier; for it is not enough to receive a sabre-cut the soldier has also to mend his uniform; for the stroke which grazes the skin makes likewise a corresponding fissure in the cloth.
Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich had greatly distinguished himself in one of the lesser Indian hill wars. He it was who took the chieftain prisoner with his own hand; his gallantry was universally applauded; and when he came home, prostrated by an ugly sabre-cut and a protracted jungle-fever, society was prepared to welcome the Lieutenant as a celebrity of minor lustre.
The men had fled; Bobbachy had fled; and in his place, fancy my astonishment when I found with a rope cutting his naturally wide mouth almost into his ears with a dreadful sabre-cut across his forehead with his legs tied over his head, and his arms tied between his legs my unhappy, my attached friend Mortimer Macgillicuddy!
No sooner had he mentioned his name than the clerk produced the order in an envelope of which the address was scarcely dry. "It has been taken this moment," said the clerk. "Indeed!" said Francis. "May I ask what the gentleman was like?" "Your friend is easy to describe," replied the official. "He is old and strong and beautiful, with white hair and a sabre-cut across his face.
Well might he look sad, for the figure that met his gaze stooped like that of an aged man; the head was shorn of its luxuriant curls; the terrible sabre-cut across the cheek, from the temple to the chin, which had destroyed the eye, had left a livid wound, a single glance at which told that it would always remain as a ghastly blemish; and there were other injuries of a slighter nature on various parts of the face, which marred his visage dreadfully.
I said good-bye to Mother and the cove where I had lived since I was born, and the dear old Admiral Benbow since he was repainted, no longer quite so dear. One of my last thoughts was of the captain, who had so often strode along the beach with his cocked hat, his sabre-cut cheek, and his old brass telescope. Next moment we had turned the corner and my home was out of sight.
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