Page:"The Mummy" Volume 3.djvu/15

 scattered in wild disorder around. The earth, ploughed up by the cannon balls in deep furrows, save where the ridges had been beaten flat by the feet of the combatants, looked wild and uneven as the waves of the mighty ocean arrested in the moment of tempest. Blood lay in pools upon the ground; and clotted gore, mingled horribly with remnants of human bones and brains, hung to the still standing bushes, disfiguring the fair face of nature.

Pauline shuddered, and turned eagerly to the other side of the landscape, which commanded a view of the town. Here still, however, she found nothing but death and war. It was the moment when the explosion of the petard set fire to the wooden bulwark; and Roderick and Edric leaped through the flames upon the beach. The bright glare of the blazing bulwarks relieved strongly their dark figures, and Pauline distinctly saw and recognized them for a moment, though the next they were lost in a cloud of smoke. She screamed, and grasped her father's arm in convulsive agony. M. de Mallet was scarcely less agitated than herself;