t projecting more than a foot out
at the back of his head. As the poor lad fell dead at our feet,
Sergeant White remarked, "Boys, this is no joke; we must pay them off."
We all loaded and capped, and pushing up our feather bonnets again, a
whole shower of arrows went past or through them. Up we sprang and
returned a well-aimed volley from our rifles at point-blank distance,
and more than half-a-dozen of the enemy went down. But one unfortunate
man of the regiment, named Montgomery, of No. 6 company, exposed himself
a little too long to watch the effect of our volley, and before he could
get down into shelter again an arrow was sent right through his heart,
passing clean through his body and falling on the ground a few yards
behind him. He leaped about six feet straight up in the air, and fell
stone dead. White could not resist making another quotation, but this
time it was from the old English ballad of _Chevy Chase_.

He had a bow bent in his hand
Made of a trusty tree,
An arrow of a cloth-yard long
Up to the head drew he.

Against Sir Hugh Montgomerie
So right his shaft he set,
The grey goose wing that was thereon
In his heart's blood was wet.

Readers who have never been under the excitement of a fight like this
which I describe, may think that such coolness is an exaggeration. It is
not so. Remember the men of whom I write had stood in the "Thin Red
Line" of Balaclava without wavering, and had made up their minds to die
where they stood, if need be; men who had been for days and nights
under shot and shell in the trenches of Sebastopol. If familiarity
breeds contempt, continual exposure to danger breeds coolness, and, I
may say, selfishness too; where all are exposed to equal danger little
sympathy is, for the time being at least, displayed for the unlucky ones
"knocked on the head," to use the common expression in the ranks for
those who are killed. Besides, Sergeant Daniel White was an
exceptionally cool man, and looked on every incident with the eye of an
actor.

By this time the sun was getting low, a heavy cloud of smoke hung over
the field, and every flash of the guns and rifles could be clearly seen.
The enemy in hundreds were visible on the ramparts, yelling like demons,
brandishing their swords in one hand and burning torches in the other,
shouting at us to "Come on!" But little impression had been made on the
solid masonry walls. Brigadier Hope and his aide-de