Pah! it was a sight to haunt one's dreams. (You might have filled my glass, some of you, when you saw it was empty.)
Ralph looked down on him, and laughed again; his sabre whirled round once, and cleared a wide circle; then, trampling down the wounded man by main force, he drove the point through his throat, and pinned him to the floor. I tell you I heard the steel plainly as it grated on the stone. There was an awful convulsion of all the limbs, and then the huge mass lay quite still.
Then came a lull for several moments. The Irish cowered back to the door like penned sheep; their ammunition was exhausted, and none dared to cross the hideous barrier that now was between them and the terrible Cuirassier.
All this took about half the time to act that it does to tell. I was hesitating whether to descend or to stay where my duty called me--near my wife. Fritz knelt behind me, silent and motionless; he had got his orders to stay by me to the last; but the sturdy keeper rose to his feet.
"Faix," he said, "I'm but a poor hand at the swoording, but I must help my master, anyhow;" and he began to climb over the breastwork. The colonel's quick glance caught the movement, and his brief imperious tones rang over the hubbub of voices loud and clear,
"Don't stir, Connell; stay where you are. I can finish with these hounds alone."
As he spoke, he dashed in upon them with lowered head and uplifted sword.
I don't wonder that they all recoiled; his whole face and form were fearfully transfigured; every hair in his bushy beard was bristling with rage, and the incarnate devil of murder was gleaming redly in his eyes.
Just then there was a wild cry from without, answered by a shriek from my wife, who had been quiet till now. At first I thought that some fellows had scaled the window; but I soon distinguished the accents of a great joy. My poor Kate! She had roughed it in barracks too long not to know the rattle of the steel scabbards.
When the dragoons came up at a hard gallop, there was nothing left in the court-yard but the dead and dying. Mohun had followed the flyers to get a last stroke at the hindmost. We clambered down into the hall, and, just as we reached the door, we saw a miserable crippled being clinging round his knees, crying for quarter. Poor wretch! he might as well have asked it from a famished jungle-tiger. The arm that had fallen so often that night, and never in vain, came down once more; the piteous appeal ended in a death-yell, and, as we reached him, Mohun was wiping coolly his dripping sabre: it had no more work to do.