The employment of the French sentence is worthy of remark. During these troubled times, every modern language was pressed into our service; and more than one old field-officer mustered up his school reminiscences of the Anabasis and the Iliad, to compose a bulletin, curiously blended of Attic, Æolic, and Aldershot, which would have puzzled Grote or Hermann at least as much as it could possibly perplex any mutineer or highwayman who might chance to intercept the messenger.
Things had got to a terrible pass on our side of the wall. All the present sweetness of existence was long since vanished, and the last flicker of future hope had now died away. But, moved by a generous despair and an invincible self-respect, our people still fought on. By daring and vigilance, by countless shifts and unremitting labour, they staved off ruin for another day, and yet another. At rare intervals behind the earthwork they stood--gaunt and feeble likenesses of men,--clutching with muffled fingers the barrels of their muskets, which glowed with heat intolerable to the naked hand, so fierce was the blaze of the summer sun. Straining their ears to catch any fancied sounds of distant cannonading, they gazed across the plain to where the horizon faded into a fantastic mirage, which mocked their fevered eyes with fair scenes of forest, and mountain, and with infinite expanses of glassy water broken by golden islets; while in the foreground the jackals prowled about the debated space, and the pariah dogs snarled at the grey crows, and slunk away from the spots where the great vultures sat in obscene and sulky conclave. Dim must have been the thoughts, confused the images, which flitted through their wearied intellect; indistinct memories of home and youth; faint regrets, and fainter resolutions; fitful yearnings for dear beings whom they would never again behold. One would surmise how his mother in far-off England would bear her sorrow, and who would be selected to break the news. Another would calculate dates, and try to convince himself that his boy at Rugby should have got the scholarship examination off his mind before the receipt of the fatal tidings. But, whatever might be the subject of contemplation, no smile relieved the stolid apathy of their careworn features, save when dejection was for an instant charmed away by the buoyant audacity of Moore. "He was a strong man. In the dark perils of war, in the high places of the field, hope shone in him like a pillar of fire, when it had gone out in all the others." Brave and vivacious himself, he was the cause that bravery and vivacity were in other men. It was not that he had less at stake than those around him: for his wife and children were in the entrenchment. When the vicissitudes of battle called her husband to the outposts, Mrs. Moore would step across with her work, and spend the day beneath a little hut of bamboos covered with canvas, which the garrison of Barrack Number Two had raised for her in their most sheltered corner. Seldom had fair lady a less appropriate bower.