than the high clear tones of Craufurd addressing his
men for the last time.

Then, after many minutes of silence, suddenly the sky over the
convent wall opened with a glare and shut again, and we heard the
French guns tearing the night. The attack of the Third Division on
our right had begun, and the noise of it was taken up by the 95th
riflemen, spread wide in three companies to scour the _fausse braye_
between the two breaches, and keep the defenders busy along it.
As the sound of the assault spread down to us, interrupted again and
again by the explosion of shells, we were marched forward for two or
three hundred yards and halted, put into motion and halted again.
We could see the city now, opening and shutting upon us in fiery
flashes; and, in the intervals, jet after jet of fire streamed from
the rifles on our right.

Then someone shouted to us to advance at the double, and I ran
blowing upon my bugle, for now the calls were sounding all about me.
I had no thought of death in all this roar--the crowd seemed to close
around and shut that out--until we came to the edge of the
counterscarp facing the _fausse braye_: and by that time the worst of
the danger had passed. The _fausse braye_ itself was dark, and the
darker for a blaze of light behind it. Our stormers had carried it
and swept the defenders back into the true breach beside the tower.
Some stray bullets splashed among us as we toppled down the ditch and
mounted the scarp--shots fired from Heaven knows where, but probably
from some French retreating along the top of the _fausse braye_.

While we were mounting the scarp Napier and his men must have carried
the inner breach. At the top we thronged to squeeze through the
narrow entrance, for all the world like a crowd elbowing its way into
a theatre: and as I pressed into the skirts of the throng it seemed
to suck me in and choke me. My small ribs caved inwards as we were
driven through by the weight of men behind. The pressure eased, and
an explosion threw a dozen of us to earth between the _fausse braye_
and the slope of rubble by which the stormers had climbed.

I picked myself up--gripped my bugle--and ran for the slope, still
blowing. A man of the 43rd gave me a hand and helped me up, for now
we were stumbling among corpses. What had become of the stormers?
Some we were trampling under foot: the rest had swept on and into the
town.

"Fifty-second to the left," said my friend as we gained the to