Part 43 (1/2)

The next moment he was off again with his men, directing their movements with all his accustomed skill and ac.u.men. Once again he staggered. Julian dashed to his side; but he spoke no word. If he would but think of himself! But no; his soul was in the battle. He had no care save for the issue of the day.

A sudden volley seemed to open upon them from a little unseen dip in the ground, masked by thick underwood. Julian felt a bullet whiz so near to his ear that the skin was grazed and the hair singed.

For a moment he was dizzy with the deafening sound. Then a low cry from Humphrey reached him.

”The General! the General!” he said.

Julian dashed his hand across his eyes and looked. Wolfe was sitting upon the ground. He was still gazing earnestly at the battle rus.h.i.+ng onward, but there had come into his eyes a strange dimness.

”He is struck--he is wounded!” said Humphrey in a low voice, bending over him. ”Help, Julian; we must carry him to the rear.”

Julian half expected resistance on the part of Wolfe; but no word pa.s.sed his lips. They were growing ashy white.

With a groan of anguish--for he felt as though he knew what was coming--Julian bent to the task, and the pair conveyed the light, frail form through the melee of the battlefield towards the place where the wounded had been carried, and where Fritz still lay. A surgeon came hastily forward, and seeing who it was, uttered an exclamation of dismay.

Wolfe opened his dim eyes. He saw Julian's face, but all the rest was blotted out in a haze.

”Lay me down,” he said faintly; ”I want nothing.”

”The surgeons are here,” said Julian anxiously as they put him out of the hot rays of the sun, which was now s.h.i.+ning over heights and plains.

”They can do nothing for me,” said Wolfe, in the same faint, dreamy way; ”let them look to those whom they can help.”

A death-like faintness was creeping over him. The surgeon put a stimulating draught to his lips; and when a part had been swallowed, proceeded to make a partial examination of the injuries sustained. But when he had opened the breast of his coat and saw two orifices in the neighbourhood of the heart, he shook his head, and laid the wounded man down to rest.

Julian felt a spasm of pain shoot through his heart, like a thrust from a bayonet.

”Can you do nothing?” he asked in a whisper.

”Nothing,” was the reply. ”He has not an hour to live.”

”To be cut off in the very hour of victory!” exclaimed Humphrey, with a burst of sorrow. ”It is too hard--too hard!”

”Yet it is what he desired for himself,” said Julian, in a low voice. I think it is what he himself would have chosen.”

”He has suffered more than any of us can well imagine,” said the surgeon gravely. ”We can scarcely grudge to him the rest and peace of the long, last sleep.”

Humphrey turned away to dash the tears from his eyes. In his silent, dog-like fas.h.i.+on, he had loved their young General with a great and ardent love, and it cut him to the heart to see him lying there white and pulseless, his life ebbing slowly away, without hope of a rally.

A sign from somebody at a little distance attracted his attention.

He crossed the open s.p.a.ce of ground, and bent over Fritz, who lay bandaged and partially helpless amongst the wounded, but with all his faculties clear.

”What is it they are saying all around?” he asked anxiously. ”How goes the battle? how is it with our General?”

”The battle truly is won--or so I believe,” answered Humphrey, in a husky voice. ”G.o.d grant that the gallant Wolfe may live to know that success has crowned his efforts--that the laurel wreath will be his, even though it be only laid upon his tomb!”

”Is he then wounded?”

”Mortally, they say.”