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Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer, a novel by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 30. Briggs's Irish Lion |
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_ CHAPTER THIRTY. BRIGGS'S IRISH LION "Why, it's an Irish lion!" cried the Sergeant, who was now close behind me. I was too much surprised to say anything then; but I felt afterwards that I might have said, "Irish jackal! The Irish lions are quite different." But somehow the sight of the badly-wounded man disarmed me, and I dismounted to part the bushes and kneel down beside where my enemy lay back with his legs beneath the neck and shoulders of his dead horse, blood-smeared and ghastly, as he gazed wildly in my face. "Wather!" he said pitifully. "I am a dead man." "Are you, now, Pat?" cried the Sergeant, in mocking imitation of the poor wretch's accent and high-pitched intonation. "Don't be a brute, Sergeant," I said angrily as I opened my water-bottle and held it to the man's lips. "Can't you see he's badly hurt?" "Serve him right," growled the Sergeant angrily. "What business has he fighting against the soldiers of the Queen? Ugh! he don't deserve help; he ought to be stood up and shot for a traitor." "Be quiet!" I said angrily as I held the bottle, and the wounded man gulped down the cool water with terrible avidity. "All!" he moaned, "it putts life into me. Pull this baste of a horse aff me. I've got a bullet through my showlther, and I'm nearly crushed to death and devoured by those imp-like divils o' monkeys." "Here, you two," cried the Sergeant surlily, "uncoil your reins, and make them fast round this dead horse's neck." Our two followers quickly executed the order, and then, the other ends of the plaited raw-hide ropes being secured to rings in their saddles, they urged on their horses, which made a plunge or two and dragged their dead fellow enough on one side for the Sergeant, with my help, to lift the poor rider clear. "The blessing of all the saints be upon you both!" he moaned. "There's some lint in my pouch; just put a bit of a bandage about my showlther. I'm Captain Moriarty, an officer and a gintleman, who yields as a prisoner, and I want to be carried to yer commanding officer." He spoke very feebly at first; but the water and the relief from the pressure of the horse revived him, and he began to breathe more freely, his eyes searching my face in a puzzled way as if he thought he had seen me before. I took no heed, but did as he suggested; and, finding the lint and a bandage, roughly bound up the wound, which had long ceased bleeding. "Can ye fale the bullet in the wound, me young inimy?" he said, with a sigh. "No," I replied, looking him full in the eyes. "Our doctor will see to that." "Then ye've got a docthor with ye?" he said, pretty strongly now. "Of course we have," growled the Sergeant, whose countenance seemed to me then to bear a remarkable resemblance to that of a mastiff dog who was angry because his master spoke civilly to a stranger he wanted to hunt off the premises. "Do you take us for savages?" "Silence, sor!" cried our prisoner, "or I'll report ye to yer officer." "Silence yourself!" cried the Sergeant. "What do you want with a doctor, you Irish renegado turncoat? You said you were a dead man." "Whisht! I'm a prisoner; but I'm an officer and a gintleman.--Here, boy, ordher your min to carry me out of this." "My men!" I said, laughing. "I'm only a private, and this is my sergeant." "Thin ye ought to change places, me boy.--Give orders to your min to carry me out of this, Serjint." "I'm about ready to tell the lads to put an end to a traitor to his country." "Tchah! Ye daren't do annything o' the kind, Serjint, for it would be murther. This is my counthry, and I'm a prisoner of war." "Let him be, Sergeant, and we'll get him into the camp.--Can you sit on a horse, sir?" I said. "Sure, how do I know, boy, till I thry? I've been lying under that dead baste till I don't seem to have any legs at all, at all. Ye must lift me on." "Officer and a gentleman!" said the Sergeant scornfully. "I never heard an Irish gentleman with a brogue like that. I believe you're one of the rowdy sort that call themselves patriots." "Sure, and I am," cried our prisoner. "But here, I don't want any wurruds with the like o' ye.--Help me up gently, boy, and let me see if I can't shtand." "Take hold of him on the other side," I said to the Sergeant, and he frowningly helped, so that we got our prisoner upon his feet. "Ah!" he said, with a groan. "I think I can manage it if ye lift me on a horse." Sandho was led up, and with a good deal of difficulty and a repetition of groans and allusions to the state of his lower members, the Captain was hoisted into the saddle, and after another draught of water he declared that he could "howld" out till we got him to the "docthor." "He doesn't look as if he could try to make a bolt of it," growled the Sergeant; "but you'd better throw the reins over your horse's head and lead him.--And look here, Mr Officer and Gentleman, I'm very good with the revolver, so don't try to spur off." Our prisoner waved his hand contemptuously and turned to me. "Sure, me wound and me fall put it all out of me head; but I had a man with me when I was hit, and we were cut off in the fight." "Yes," I said; "the poor fellow lies close here--dead." "Thin lade the horse round another way, boy. I don't want to look at the poor lad. Ah! I don't fale so faint now. To think of me bad luck, though. Shot down like this, and not in battle, but hunting a gang of wagon-thieves." "Ha, ha, ha! ha, ha, ha!" roared the Sergeant, slapping his thigh again and again as he laughed. "Come, I like that, Mr Moray.--Here, Mr Captain, let me introduce you to the gentleman who so cleverly carried off your stores last night." I was scarlet with indignation at being called a cattle-thief, and turned angrily away. "What!" said the prisoner; "him? Did--did he--did--But Moray--Moray? Sure, I thought I knew his face again. Here, I arrest ye as a thraitor and a deserter from the commando, boy;" and his hand went to the holster to draw his revolver, which had not been interfered with. "Drop that!" roared the Sergeant roughly, and he dragged the prisoner's hand from the holster, wrenching the revolver from his grasp, and nearly making him lose his balance and fall out of the saddle. "I've heard all about it. So you're the Irish scoundrel who summoned that poor lad, and when he refused to turn traitor and fight against his own country, you had his hands lashed behind his back and treated him like a dog. Why, you miserable renegado! if you weren't a wounded man I'd serve you the same. An officer and a gentleman! Why, you're a disgrace to your brave countrymen." "Whisht! whisht!" cried our prisoner contemptuously. "Whisht! whisht! I'd like to whisht you with a Boer's sjambok," cried the Sergeant. "Here he finds you wounded and where you'd have lain and died, and the carrion-birds would have come to the carrion; and when the brave lad's helped you, given you water, bound up your wound, and put you on his own beast, like that man did in Scripture, you turn round in the nastiness of your nature and try to sting him. Bah! I'd be ashamed of myself. You're not Irish. I don't even call you a man." The Sergeant's flow of indignation sounded much poorer at the end than at the beginning; and, his words failing now, I had a chance to get in a few. "That's enough, Sergeant," I said. "You forget he's a wounded man and a prisoner." "Not half enough, Mr Moray," cried the Sergeant. "I'm not one of your sort, full of fine feelings; only a plain, straightforward soldier." "And a brave man," I said, "who cannot trample on a fallen enemy." Sergeant Briggs gave his slouch felt hat a thrust on one side, while he angrily tore at his grizzled shock of closely-cut hair: it was too fierce to be called a scratch. "All right," he said--"all right; but the sight of him trying to get out a pistol to hold at the head of him as--as--" "Be quiet, Sergeant," I said, smiling in spite of myself. "Look: the poor fellow's turning faint. Let's get him to the camp. Ride alongside him and hold him up or he'll fall." "If I do may I--" "Sergeant!" I shouted. "Oh, all right, all right. I--But here, I'm not going to let you begin to domineer over your officer." "Sergeant," I said gently, and without a word he pressed his horse close alongside the prisoner, thrust a strong arm beneath him, and we went out into the open, passing, after all, the prisoner's Boer companion, whose fighting was for ever at an end; and at last we reached the entrance to the old fort, with our wounded prisoner nearly insensible. After the horses had been led in, the prisoner had to be lifted down and placed in the temporary hospital made in a sheltered portion of the passage. Here the surgeon saw him at once, and extracted a rifle-bullet, which had nearly passed through the shoulder. The Colonel was soon made acquainted with all that had passed, the Sergeant being his informant, and men were sent out to give a soldier's funeral to the dead Boer, who, with the Captain, must have dashed out in one of our skirmishes, after being wounded, and tried to escape by going right round the kopje, but had fallen by the way. "Here, Moray," said the Colonel to me the next time he passed, "you've been heaping coals of fire upon your enemy's head, I hear?" "Oh, I don't know, sir," I said uneasily. "I've heard all about it, my lad; and a nice sort of a prisoner you've brought me in. If he had been a Boer I'd have put him on one of the captured horses and sent him to his laager, but I feel as if I must keep this fellow. There, we shall see." "A brute!" said Denham that same night. "He's actually had the impudence to send a message to the Colonel complaining of his quarters and saying that he claims to be treated as an officer and a gentleman." "Pooh! The fellow only merits contempt," I said. "There are fifteen Irishmen in the corps, and they're all raging about him. They say he ought to be hung for a traitor. He doesn't deserve to be shot." "But there isn't an Irishman in the corps would put it to the proof," I said. "Humph! Well," said Denham, "I suppose not, for he is a prisoner after all. Officer and a gentleman--eh? One who must have left his country for his country's good." _ |
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