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At about 1-0 a.m. on this morning, Privates Culpeck and Johnson were sentries together at one of "D" Company's Lewis gun posts. Hearing a noise in the wire, one of them challenged, and, receiving no answer, fired his Lewis gun. Two minutes later, two Boche, one an unwounded warrant officer, the other a wounded soldier, were being escorted down Railway Alley to Headquarters.
In vain did the French reserves mix with the struggling multitude to sustain the fight; their efforts only increased the irremediable confusion, and the mighty mass breaking off like a loosened cliff, went headlong down the steep; the rain flowed after in streams discolored with blood, and eighteen hundred unwounded men, the remnant of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers, stood triumphant on the fatal hill."
Not wishing to lose it, he could yet find no way to hold it but between his legs; and so he went on, loading, firing, advancing, halting, always with the goose writhing and struggling and hissing in this natural pair of stocks. Both happily came off unwounded, and retired in good order at the signal, or some time after it; but I have hardly a cooler thing to put on record.
The minister shook his head sadly. "Alas, Madame!" he said, "to sally were to waste life. They outnumber us three to one. If Count Hannibal could do no more than break through last night, with scarce a man unwounded " "He had the women!" "And we have not him!" "He would not have left us!" she cried hysterically. "I believe it." "Had they taken me, do you think he would have lain behind walls?
Nothing was real, except his overwhelming sense of horror. Men fell around him, and he wondered why he did not fall too, but he was untouched, and Willet and Tayoga also were unwounded. He saw near him young Stuart who had lost his horse long since, but who had snatched a rifle from a fallen soldier, and who was fighting gallantly on foot. "Who would have thought it?" exclaimed the Virginian.
The second lieutenant one of the few officers unwounded volunteered to work his way along the hawser, and a midshipman and several of the men offered to accompany him; Ronald begged leave to go also. In those days, strange as it may seem, many seamen could not swim. The boarding-party commenced their somewhat hazardous passage from one ship to the other.
Almost the last survivor was old Vlacco; and exerting all the remaining strength which age had left him, for he was still unwounded, he fixed his death grasp on the arm of one of the foremost of his assailants; slowly he stepped back, as he was forced to retreat, enticing his antagonist on, till, feeling his left foot over the edge, he sprang forward to grasp him.
"Stay where you are, don't come here!" cried the armed Makkabesku, in an agony of terror, "or I'll shoot you through," and as the mask continued to advance, he hurriedly fired off the left barrel of the gun. The smoke of the powder cleared away, Fatia Negra stood there unwounded, he was coming nearer and nearer!
Those who were unwounded fled; those who fell were bayoneted on the spot. I took my niece's arm and led her quietly away. Even the French soldiers drew back before us. You should have seen her face. Madre de Dios! I see it now I see it always. She died that night. Not one word passed her lips from the moment when her father and her affianced husband fell dead before her eyes.
Major Tempe at once sent forward the unwounded men; to assist the villagers to put out the fire, and to save property. Their efforts were, however, altogether unavailing; the Germans had scattered large quantities of petroleum, before leaving, upon the beds and such other furniture as they could not carry away, or destroy.
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