The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray (Volume 23) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PHIL FOGARTY A TALE OF THE FIGHTING ONETY-ONETH BY HAIIRY ROLLICKER The gabion was ours. After two hours' fighting we were in possession of the first embrasure, and made ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would admit. Jack Delamere, Tom Delancy, Jerry Blake, the Doctor, and myself, sat down under a pontoon, and our servants laid out a hasty supper on a tumbrel. Though Cambaceres had escaped me so provokingly after I cut him down, his spoils were mine; a cold fowl and a Bologna sausage were found in the Marshal's holsters; and in the haversack of a French private who lay a corpse on the glacis, we found a loaf of bread, his three days' ration. Instead of salt, we had gunpowder; and you may be sure, wherever the Doctor was, a flask of good brandy was behind him in his instrument-case. We sat down and made a soldier's supper. The Doctor pulled a few of the delicious fruit from the lemon- trees growing near (and round which the Carabiniers and the 24th Leger had made a desperate rally), and punch was brewed in Jack Delamere's helmet. " 'Faith, it never had so much wit in it before," said the Doctor, as he ladled out the drink. We all roaredwith laughing, except the guardsman, who was as savage as a Turk at a christening. " Buvez-en," said old Sawbones to our French prisoner; " qa vous fera du bien, mon vieux coq! " and the Colonel, whose wound had been just dressed, eagerly grasped at the proffered cup, and drained it with a health to the donors. How strange are the chances of war! But half-an- hour before he and I were engaged in mortal combat, and our prisoner was all but my conqueror. Grappling with Cambaceres, whom I knocked from his horse, and was about to despatch, I felt a lunge behind, which luckily was parried by my sabretache; a herculean grasp was at ...