"Kill that sergeant!"
as I knew, by the cry being raised in English, and taken up in other
tongues. I had received a severe cut across the left arm a few moments
before, and should have known nothing of it, except supposing that
somebody had struck me a smart blow, if I had not felt weak, and seen
myself covered with spouting blood, and, at the same instant of time,
seen Miss Maryon tearing her dress and binding it with Mrs. Fisher's help
round the wound. They called to Tom Packer, who was scouring by, to stop
and guard me for one minute, while I was bound, or I should bleed to
death in trying to defend myself. Tom stopped directly, with a good
sabre in his hand.

In that same moment--all things seem to happen in that same moment, at
such a time--half-a-dozen had rushed howling at Sergeant Drooce. The
Sergeant, stepping back against the wall, stopped one howl for ever with
such a terrible blow, and waited for the rest to come on, with such a
wonderfully unmoved face, that they stopped and looked at him.

"See him now!" cried Tom Packer. "Now, when I could cut him out! Gill!
Did I tell you to mark my words?"

I implored Tom Packer in the Lord's name, as well as I could in my
faintness, to go to the Sergeant's aid.

"I hate and detest him," says Tom, moodily wavering. "Still, he is a
brave man." Then he calls out, "Sergeant Drooce, Sergeant Drooce! Tell
me you have driven me too hard, and are sorry for it."

The Sergeant, without turning his eyes from his assailants, which would
have been instant death to him, answers.

"No. I won't."

"Sergeant Drooce!" cries Tom, in a kind of an agony. "I have passed my
word that I would never save you from Death, if I could, but would leave
you to die. Tell me you have driven me too hard and are sorry for it,
and that shall go for nothing."

One of the group laid the Sergeant's bald bare head open. The Sergeant
laid him dead.

"I tell you," says the Sergeant, breathing a little short, and waiting
for the next attack, "no. I won't. If you are not man enough to strike
for a fellow-soldier because he wants help, and because of nothing else,
I'll go into the other world and look for a better man."

Tom swept upon them, and cut him out. Tom and he fought their way
through another knot of them, and sent them flying, and came over to
where I was beginning again to feel, with inexpressible joy, that I had
got a sword in my hand.

They had hardly come to us, when