r as I knew, was the only means we possessed of passing the river; so
that, when the last retiring sounds of the troops were heard by me, I began
to suspect that Crawfurd, in compliance with his orders, was making a
backward movement, leaving the bridge open to the French, to draw them
on to his line of march, while he should cross over at some more distant
point.

As the night grew later, the storm seemed to increase; the waves of the
foaming river dashed against the frail walls of the hut, while its roof,
rent by the blast, fell in fragments upon the stream, and all threatened a
speedy and perfect ruin.

How I longed for morning! The doubt and uncertainty I suffered nearly drove
me distracted. Of all the casualties my career as a soldier opened, none
had such terrors for me as imprisonment; the very thought of the long years
of inaction and inglorious idleness was worse than any death. My wounds,
and the state of fever I was in, increased the morbid dread upon me, and
had the French captured me at the time, I know not that madness of which
I was not capable. Day broke at last, but slowly and sullenly; the gray
clouds hurried past upon the storm, pouring down the rain in torrents as
they went, and the desolation and dreariness on all sides was scarcely
preferable to the darkness and gloom of night. My eyes were turned ever
towards the plain, across which the winter wind bore the plashing rain in
vast sheets of water; the thunder crashed louder and louder; but except the
sounds of the storm none others met my ear. Not a man, not a human figure
could I see, as I strained my sight towards the distant horizon.

The morning crept over, but the storm abated not, and the same unchanged
aspect of dreary desolation prevailed without. At times I thought I could
hear, amidst the noises of the tempest, something like the roll of distant
artillery; but the thunder swelled in sullen roar above all, and left me
uncertain as before.

At last, in a momentary pause of the storm, a tremendous peal of heavy
guns caught my ear, followed by the long rattling of small-arms. My heart
bounded with ecstasy. The thoughts of the battle-field, with all its
changing fortunes, was better, a thousand times better, than the despairing
sense of desertion I labored under. I listened now with eagerness, but
the rain bore down again in torrents, and the crumbling walls and falling
timbers left no other sounds to be heard. Far as my eye could reach,
not