appreciate your kindness, but I wish you had remained in bed. I have
only a bullet or two through me, and a sabre-cut on my arm dealt by one
of those six rascals whom I was attacking. If there had been one less,
I should have cut them all down. As it was, three bit the ground.
Don't fear! I shall be all right, with a little plastering and
bandaging,--shall I not, doctor?"

"Yes, yes, captain, you'll do very well; but you must keep quiet for a
few hours.--And you, Mr Sinclair, must get back to your tent."

I endeavoured to obey the surgeon, but, overcome with exertions for
which I was ill-fitted, I sank down in a dead faint.

"Now this is too bad of the boy, when I want to be attending his
friend," I heard the doctor say, after he had poured some cordial down
my throat, which somewhat restored me. On this, two men whom he
summoned took me up and carried me back to Captain Brown's tent.

Towards evening, a portion of our troops returned to guard the camp, but
the main body was advancing in pursuit of the Pastucians.

The next day less satisfactory news arrived. The enemy had been
reinforced, and the Patriot army had had no little difficulty in
maintaining its position.

The surgeons now advised that the wounded officers who could bear the
journey should be carried back to Popayan; and as neither Captain Laffan
nor I were likely to be fit for duty for some time to come, we gladly
availed ourselves of the opportunity. We were put into litters hung on
long poles, supported on men's shoulders; and the journey occupied
several days, though I can give very little account of it. Some of the
time, indeed, I was in a semi-somnolent state, caused by weakness.

The only striking scene I can recall was our passage on a bamboo bridge
over a river in our course. The army had crossed by a ford lower down,
where the water was shallow and the current slight. Here it was of
great depth, and the banks of considerable height. As I looked at the
slight structure, however, it appeared to me incapable of bearing more
than the weight of a single man, while a few cuts with a manchette would
have sent it into the torrent below.

I heard Captain Laffan, who was in advance of me, cry out to his
bearers, "You don't mean to say that we are to go over that spider's-web
affair! Why! it looks as if it would give way with the weight of that
woman going along it."

"Have no fears about the matter, senor captain; cavalry have charged
o