Page:Gilbert Parker--The Lane that had No Turning.djvu/303

Rh powder, an’ red wid blood, an’ the bits o’ b’ys droppin’ round me loike twigs of an’ ould tree in a shtorm. Just a cry an’ a bit av a gurgle tru the teeth, an’ divil the wan o’ thim would see the Liffey side anny more.

“‘The Roosians are chargin’!’ shouts Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick. ‘The Roosians are chargin’—here they come!’ Shtandin’ besoide me was a bit of a lump of a b’y, as foine a lad as ever shtood in the boots of me rigimint—aw! the look of his face was the look o’ the dead. ‘The Roosians are comin’—they’re chargin’!’ says Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick, and the bit av a b’y, that had nothin’ to eat all day, throws down his gun and turns round to run. Eighteen years old he was, only eighteen! just a straight slip of a lad from Malahide. ‘Hould on! Teddie,’ says I, ‘hould on! How’ll yer face yer mother if yer turn yer back on the inimy of yer counthry?’ The b’y looks me in the eyes long enough to wink three times, picks up his gun, an’ shtood loike a rock, he did, till the Roosians charged us, roared on us, an’ I saw me slip of a b’y go down under the sabre of a damned Cossack! ‘Mother!’ I heard him say, ‘Mother!’ an’ that’s all I heard him say—and the mother waitin’ away aff there by the Liffey soide! Aw! wurra! wurra! the b’ys go down to battle and the mothers wait at home. Some of the b’ys come back, but the most of thim shtay where the battle laves ’em. Wurra! wurra! many’s the b’y wint down that day by Alma River, an’ niver come back!

“There I was shtandin’, when hell broke loose on the b’ys of me rigimint, and divil the wan o’ me knows if I killed a Roosian that day or not. But Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick—a bit of a liar was the Sergeant-Major—says he: ‘It was tin ye killed, Kilquhanity.’ He says that to me the noight that I left the rigimint