Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/766

754  over the gaps in it, while several of those who had got in were scrambling back again.

"What is the matter?" said Yorke, riding up to them; "and where's your officer?"

"He's too badly hit to bring off," said one of the fugitives, loading his rifle mechanically as he spoke; "it's as much as I could do to get away myself," and indeed the man was bleeding profusely from a wound in the shoulder.

The enemy were now swarming back to defend their post, and keeping up a warm fire from the roof of the houses within it and from every opening, to which the soldiers replied from outside the wall. There was a narrow lane running from front to back of the enclosure, and Yorke looking along this over the gap in the wall which faced the end of it, could see the bodies of some half-dozen Europeans lying in the roadway, and one, the officer, half-sitting, half-lying against the side wall. At the end of the lane was a little crowd of the enemy, some standing boldly out, others partly under cover, all firing down along it towards the gap, while the British soldiers at the other end replied from outside.

The soldiers in the lane seemed all dead, but Yorke could see the officer moving; and without stopping to think, he rode his horse a few paces back, and then putting him at the gap, cleared it at a bound into the lane.

The enemy on seeing him jump over showed in still greater numbers, and from all sides the fire seemed converging on him, while he was now in the way of his own people, nearly filling up with his horse the whole of the narrow road. And it seemed as if he must certainly be hit. But all round the enclosure immediately inside the wall was a narrow passage, and he turned aside into this as by instinct, finding for the moment comparative shelter, and then dismounting and leaving his horse there, ran up the lane to the wounded officer, and lifting him up tried to carry him back. But the burden was a heavy one, and he would have failed of his purpose but that two of the soldiers, following his example, had also come over the wall to help him. Working together they made good progress, but it seemed as if the end of the lane would never be reached, although the distance to be traversed was only a few yards. Close and many whizzed the bullets, and, almost filling up the lane as did the little party, it seemed as if they could not escape. At last one of the two soldiers fell on his face, and Yorke and the other stumbled and nearly let drop their burden. "He's killed, sir," said the survivor, after looking for a moment at his comrade — "it's no good waiting for him;" and they pushed on and at last reached the wall, and, handing their burden over, followed themselves, Yorke's horse — not Selim, but his second charger — having been shot in his absence, and took shelter behind. The surviving soldier, however, had been shot through the thigh, but Yorke with his usual good fortune got off with a bullet through the skirt of his coat.

Outside the place were now drawn up the whole of Kirke's Horse, the commandant himself having ridden up to the gap to see if he could help his comrade; five minutes afterwards the enclosure was abandoned by its occupants, the main village having just been carried, and Yorke mounted on a trooper was soon in pursuit with his regiment, and busy cutting up the fugitives trying to escape across the open plain. He never saw the young officer again, who, he afterwards learnt, died the same evening of his wounds; but he lived long enough to tell the story of his deliverance; and Kirke, who had witnessed the conduct of his second in command, reported it in such terms that Yorke was at once awarded the Victoria Cross. And not long afterwards, the fact of his promotion to regimental captain having been recorded at the Horse Guards, the promotion of Captain Arthur Yorke, V.C, Bengal Native Infantry, to be major in the army, appeared in the London Gazette. This was indeed promotion, from lieutenant to field-officer all in one day. And he had the Gazette all to himself too, for the last instalment of brevets for the campaign had already appeared, including Kirke's promotion to lieutenant-colonel, and appointment to C.B. True, the Crimea had made field rank somewhat cheap; still the rise was a great one, from subaltern in a contemned service to major in a distinguished regiment, and few men even in these days had gained the rank in less than eight years' total service. Surely there must be a career before him, if he pulled through the war without getting knocked on the head; Falkland had been twenty years in the army before he got his first brevet. Ah! poor Falkland! Already his career and his fate were almost forgotten, covered by the pall of brave men who had fallen during the war; and the days of the residency defence seemed to have faded away into the shadowy past, so much had happened since.

And yet in one respect those memories