f ï i i i m n m i i i x i i i 1 » » » ^
I
I
THE
3 GREAT
;
j SHADOW I
h
By
!
:
A. CONAN DOYLE
!
Author of
The Aaventnres et
Sherlock Holmes
Copyright by X . Conan Doyle.
C H A P T E R XII—-Continued.
— 12 —
I had expected to find half that reg­
iment of horse lying on the ground;
but whether it was that their breast­
plates had shielded them, or whether,
being young and a Kttle shaken at
their coming, we had fired high, our
volley had done no very great harm.
About thirty horses lay about, three of
them together within ten yards of
me, the middle one right on its back,
with its four legs in the air, and It
was one o f these that I had* seen flap­
ping through the smoke. Then there
were eight or ten. dead men, and about
as many wounded, sitting dazedly on
the grass fo r the most part, though
one was shouting “ V ive 1’Empereur l”
at the' top o f his voice. Another fe l­
low who had been shot in the thigh—
a great, black-mustached chap he was,
too— leaned his back against his dead
horse, and, picking up his carbine,
fired as coolly as if he had been shoot­
ing fo r a prize, and hit Angus Myres,
wrho was only two feet from me, right
through the forehead. Then he out
with his hand to get another carbine
that lay near, but before he could
reach it big Hodgson, who was the
pivot-man of the grenadier company,
ran out and passed his bayonet
through his throat, which was a pity,
to r he seemed to be a very fine man.
A t first I thought that the cuirassiers
had run away In the smoke, but they
were not men who did that very eas­
ily. Their horses had swerved at our
volley, and they had raced past our
square and taken the fire of the two
other ones beyond. Then they broke
through a hedge, and coming on a regi­
ment of Hanoverians who were in line,
they treated them as they would have
treated us if we had not been so quick,
and cut them to pieces in an instant.
It was dreadful to see the big Germans
running and screaming, while the
cuirassiers stood up in their stirrups
to have a better sweep fo r their long,
heavy swords, and cut and stabbed
without mercy. I do not believe that
a hundred men o f that regiment were
le ft alive, and the Frenchmen came
back across our front, shouting at us
and waving their weapons, which were
crimson down to the hilts. This they
did to draw our fire, but the colonel
was too old a soldier, fo r we could
have done little harm at the distance,
and they would have been among us
before we could reload.
These horsemen got behind the ridge
on our right again, and we knew very
well that if we opened up from the
squares they would be down upon us
in a twinkle.
On the other hand, it
was hard to bide as we were, fo r they
had passed the word to a battery of
twelve guns which formed up a few
hundred yards away from us, but out
o f our sight, sending their balls just
over the brow and down into the midst
o f us, which is called a plunging fire.
And one of their gunners ran up to
the top o f the slope and stuck a hand­
spike into the wet earth, to give them
a guide, under the very muzzles of the
whole brigade, none o f whom fired a
shot at him, each leaving him to the
other. Ensign Samson, who was the
youngest subaltern In the regiment,
ran out from the square and pulled
down the handspike, but quick as a
jack after a minnow a lancer came fly­
ing over the ridge, and he made such
a thrust from behind that not only his
point but his pennon, too, came out be­
tween the second and third buttons of
the lad’s tunic. “ H elen! H elen !” he
shouted, and fell dead on his face,
while the lancer, blown half to pieces
with musket balls, toppled over beside
him, still holding on to his weapon, so
they lay together with that dreadful
bond stilt connecting them.
But when the battery opened there
was no time for us to think of any­
thing else.
A square is a very good
way of meeting a horseman, but there
Is no worse one of- taking a cannon­
ball, so we soon learned when they
began to cut red seams through us,
until our ears were weary o f the slosh
and splash when hard iron met living
flesh and blood.
A fter ten minutes
Of it we moved our square a hundred
paces to the right,* but we left an­
other square behind us, for a hundred
and twenty men and seven officers
Showed where we had been standing.
Then the guns found us again.«and we
tried to open out into line, bift in an
instant the horsemen— lancers they
were this time— were upon us from
over the brae. I tell you we were glad
to hear the thud of their hoofs, for
we knew that that must stop the can­
non fo r a minute, and give us a chance
of hitting back. And we hit back
pretty hard, too, that time, fo r we were
cold and vicious and savage, and I,
fo r one, felt that I cared no more for
the horsemen than If they had been
so many sheep on Corriemuir. One
gets past being afraid or thinking of
one’s own skin after a while, and yon
just feel that you want to make some
one pay fo r all you have gone through.
W e took our change out of the lancers
that time, fo r they had no breastplates
to shield them, and we cleared seventy
o f them out of their saddles at a vol­
ley. Maybe if we could have seen sev­
enty mothers weeping fo r their lads
we should not have felt so pleased
over it, but then men are just brutes
when they are fighting, and have as
much thought as two bull-pups when
they’ve got one another by the throt­
tle.
Then the colonel did a wise stroke,
for he reckoned that this would stave
off the cavalry fo r five minutes, so he
wheeled us into line and got us back
into a deeper hollow, out of reach
o f the * guns, before
they
could
open again.
This gave us time t‘o
breathe, and wë wanted it, too, for
the regiment had been melting away
like an Icicle in the sun.
But bad
as it was for us, It was a deal worse
fo r some o f the others.
The whole
o f the Dutch-Belgians were cut off by
this time belter skelter* fifteen thou­
sand of them, and there were great
gaps left In our line, through which
the French cavalry^ rode as pleased
them best. Then the French guns had
been too many and too good fo r ours,
and our heavy horse had been cut to
bits, so that things were none too
merry with us. On the other hand,
Hougoumont, a blood-soaked ruin, was
still oürs, and every British regiment
was firm, though, to tell the honest
truth, as a man Is bound to do, there
were a sprinkling o f red coats among
the blue ones who made fo r the rear,
But these were lads and stragglers,
the faint hearts that are found every­
where, and I say again that no regi­
ment flinched. It was little we could
see of the battle, but a man would be
blind not to know that all the fields
behind us were covered with flying
men;
But then, though we on the
right wing knew nothing of if, the
Prussians had begun to show, and Na­
poleon had set twenty thousand o f his
men to face them, which made up for
ours that had bolted, and left us much
as we began. That was all dark to us,
however, and there was a time when
the French horsemen had flooded In
between us and the rest of the army,
that we thought we were the only
brigade left standing, and bad set
our teeth with the intention of selling
our lives as dearly as we could.
A t that time It was between four
and five in the afternoon, and we had
had nothing to eat,^ the most of us,
since the night before, and were
soaked with rain into the bargain. It
had drizzled off and on all day, but for
the last few hours we had not had a
thought to spare either upon the
weather or our hunger. Now we be­
gan to look around and tighten our
waistbelts, and ask who was hit, and
who was spared. I was glad to see
Jim, with his face all blackened with
powder, standing on my right rear,
leaning on his fire-lock. He- saw me
looking a f him, and shouted out to
know i f I were hurt.
“ A ll right, Jim.” I answered.
“I fear I ’m here on a wild-goose
çhasë,” said he gloomily, “but it’s not
over yet.
By God, I ’ll have him or
he’ll have m e!” H e had brooded so
much on his wrong, had poor Jim, that
I really believe It had turned bis head,
for he had a glare in his eyes as he
spoke that was hardly human. He
was always a man that took even a
little thing to heart, and since Edie
had left him I am sure that he was no
longer his own master.
It was at this time that we saw two
single fights which they tell me were
common enough In the battles o f old,
before men were trained in masses.
As we lay in the hollow, two horse­
men came spurring along the ridge in
front o f us, riding as hard as hoof
could rattle. The first was an English
dragoon, his fa.ce right down on his
horse’s mane, with a French cuirassier,
an old, gray-headed fellow, thundering
behind him on a big, black mare. Our
chaps set up a hooting as they came
flying on, fo r It seemed a shame to see
an Englishman run like that; but as
they swept across our front we saw
where the trouble lay.
The dragoon
had dropped his sword and was un­
armed, while the other was pressing
him so close that he could not get a
weapon. A t last, stung maybe by our
hooting, he made up his mind to chance
it. His eye fell on a lance beside a
dead Frenchman, so he swerved his
horse to let the other pass, and hop­
ping off cleverly enough, he gripped
hold o f it.
But the other was too
tricky for him, and was on him like
a shot. The dragoon thrust up with
the lance, but the other turned apd
sliced him through the shoulder-blade.
It was all done in an instant, and the
Frenchman cantered his horse up the
brae, showing his teeth at us over
his shoulder like a snarling dog.
That was one to them, but we scored
one fo r us presently. They had pushed
forward a skirmish-line whose fire was
toward the batteries on our right and
left rather than on us, but we sent out
two companies of the Ninety-fifth to
keep them In check. It was strange
to hear the crackling kind of noise that
they made, for both sides were using
the rifle. An -officer stood among the
French skirmishers, a tall, lean man
with a mantle over his shoulders, and
as our fellows came forward he ran
out midway between the two parties
and stood as a fencer would, with his
sword up and his head back. I can
see him now, with his lowered eye­
lids, and the kind of sneer that he had
upon his face. On this the subaltern
of the Rifles, who was a fine well-
grown lad, ran forward and drove full
lilt at him with one of the queer,
crooked swords that the riflemen carry.
They came together like two rams, for
each ran at the other, and down they
tumbled at the shock, but the French­
man was below. Our man broke his
sword short off, and took the other’s
blade through his left arm, but he
was the stronger man, and he man­
aged to let the life out o f his enemy
with the jagged stump of his blade. I
thought that the French skirmishers
would have shot him down, but not a
trigger was drawn, and he got back
to his company with one sword through
his arm and half another in his hand.
CHAPTER
XIII.
The End of the Storm.
O f all the things that seem strange
in that great battle, now that I look
back upon it, there was nothing that
was queerer than the way In which it
acted on my comrades. For some took
it as though It had been their dally
meat, without question or change, and
others pattered out prayers from the
first gun-fire to the last, and others
again cursed and swore In a way that
was creepy to listen to. There was
one, my own left-hand mate, Mike
Threadingham, who kept telling about
his maiden aunt, Sarah, and how she
had left the money which had been
promised to him to a home fo r the chil­
dren o f drowned sailors. Again and
again he told me this story, and yet,
when the battle was over, he took his
oath that he had never opened his
lips all day. As to me, I cannot say
whether I spoke or not, but I know
that my mind and my memory were
clearer than I can ever remember
them, and I was thinking all the time
about the old folks at home, and about
cousin Edie with her saucy, dancing
eyes, and De Lissac with his cat’s
whiskers, and all the doings at West
Inch which had ended by bringing us
here on the plains o f Belgium as a
cockshot fo r two hundred and fifty
cannon.
During all this time the roaring of
those guns had been something dread­
ful to listen to, but now they suddenly
died away, though it was like the lull
in a thunder-storm when one feels
that a worse crash is coming hard at
the fringe of It.
There was still a
mighty - noise on the distant wing,
where the Prussians were pushing
their way onward, but that was two
miles away. The other batteries, both
French and English, were silent, and
the smoke cleared so that the armies
could see a little of each other. It was
a dreary sight along our ridge, for
there seemed to be just a few scat­
tered knots of red, and the lines of
green where the German legion stood,
while the masses of the French ap­
peared to be as thick as ever, though,
of course, we knew that they must
have lost many thousands.In these at­
tacks. W e heard a great cheering and
shouting from among them, and then
suddenly all their batteries opened to­
gether with a roar which made the din
of the earlier part seem nothing in
comparison. It might well be twice as
loud, for every battery was twice as
near, being moved right up to point-
blank range, with huge masses o f horse
between and behind them to guard
them from attack.
When that devil’s roar burst upon
our ears there was not a man down
to the drummer-boys who did not un­
derstand what it meant. It was Na­
poleon’s last great effort to crush us.
There were but two more hours of
light, and If we could hold our own
fo r those, all would be well. Starved
and weary and spent, we prayed that
we might have strength to load and
stab and fire while a man o f us stood
upon his fe e t
(T O B E C O N T IN U E D .)
Honesty.
Fashions
in Furs
----
«--------
—
—
.—
Short Sport Coat Favorite Among
American Women.
advantage; it is dressy when it must
be, but at the m
. same time it can be
worn on other occasions. Once a fur
coat is adopted as a part o f a winter
In This Type of Wrap Milady Can Be
Comfortable; It Is Always
Good Looking.
Fur stands out more prominently
In women’s apparel this season than
ever before. Not only are fu r coats
each costing a small fortune, but there
are coat linings o f fur, coat trimmings
of fur, hats of fur, dresses trimmed
with fur. Everywhere fur is seen in
abundance, and wherever it is used
it adds that last touch of lavishness
now so much sought.
The American woman delights in
the short sport coat o f fur. In it she
can be comfortable and it is always
good looking.
There is something
about the short fur coat—that is al­
ways in the well-dressed class. Then
It allows so many sorts of frocks to be
worn with it. The sport skirt of
tweed or plaid or stripe is good; the
soft „satin folds o f a one-piece frock
look graceful when falling from a
top o f thick fu r; serge is good with
it and duvetyn is very smart. It is
interesting to see the different combi­
nations that can be made with a
short fur coat and to see that most
o f them are astonishingly successful.
Seal is the fu r that is most popu­
larly, and, indeed, most successfully,
used fo r these shorter coats. It com­
bines so nicely with different materials
and colors. The tall girls look fasci­
nating when they wear lightish
dresses along with short seal coats,
and the short girls are at their best
when the skirt that shows Is of a
darker tone. Then seal has another
The
V E L V E T AND GRAY SQUIRREL
Chic
Sport Coat of Seal
Chinchilla Collar.
With
wardrobe, It is apt to be clung to
closely. Nothing else, after the cozi-
ness o f fur, seems at all adequate fo r
keeping out the wintry blasts.
NEW SHADE FOR M ILLINERY
“ Dandelion Yellow” Is Color Featured
In Spring Headgear; Traveling
Hats of Heavy Silk.
Touching upon what w ill be worn,
it is announced that a new shade
called “ dandelion yellow” featured in
spring millinery, as are pastels. Peach,
apricot and lavender are among the
popular hues fo r winter resort wear.
Luster satin with hair braid and straw
and linen crash w ill also have their
day.
Traveling hats of heavy silk are
close fitting brims or turban shaped
with trimming of ostrich showers and
wings. Garden bats are chiefly of
light-colored transparent hair-braid,
ribbon and flower-trimmed, large and
drooping in shape. Sports wear will
favor close fitting silk crushes and the
banded straw sailor will undoubtedly
be chosen by many women.
A taking sports novelty is the silk-
and-wool sock for women, designed to
be worn with the heavy London
brogue. It has the regular golf turn­
over belowjthe knee, the colored band
on this “ roll” w ill match, the band
on the dashing sports hat for golf,
hiking or boating.
Electricity for Aged Hands.
The aged hand has been a source of
much mortification and anxiety to the
woman who has left her ’30s and her
’40s behind her. Yet electricity, that
prime aid in the rejuvenation of beau­
ty, has come to her assistance, and
now the woman who has a good many
years to her credit, but who does not
care to admit that balance, goes to
This circular capp of velvet and gray the beauty parlors, settles back com­
squirrel is decidedly reminiscent of fortably in a reclining chair and re­
the early sixties, as is also the frilled news the youth o f her hands by elec*
dancing frock under it.
i trical treatment.
Make Camisole of Hand kies
------------- .
Garment Easy to Construct by Using
Soft Kerchiefs With Embroidered
or Scalloped Edges.
a t - ------------- ------------ ;--------------------------------------
then tack the strips of insertion into
place and remove the paper. In put­
ting the front o f the camisole together
leave the left edge o f the center sec­
tion free fo r an opening. Sew small
pearl buttons on the under edge and
small loops on the insertion.
A fter you have joined all the sec­
tions, fit the garment on the wearer,
i f possible; It will probably be neces­
sary -to draw in both back and* front
at the top with small gathers. Add
the yoke, m ade. o f double strips of
insertion, and the armhole rows and
finish thexn with a lace edge to match.
Through the openwork of the lace run
a narrow ribbon fo r gathering; in­
stead o f rifibon a crocheted lingerie
cord may be used that Is made with
a simple chain stitch o f white thread
of a weight suited to the texture o f
the lace. Finish the bottom with a
narrow tape.
Take three soft handkerchiefs of
fine material and with embroidered
or scalloped edges. Fold each hand­
kerchief diagonally through the mid­
dle and press the creases well with a
moderately-hot iron. W ith sharp scis­
sors cut along the lines thus made;
you w ill now have six triangular
pieces of equal size. Cut the insert
tion to whatever lengths are required,
"Great Expectations.”
which can be ascertained by measur­
Should people, it is asked, sleep at ing. There should be two long rows,
the theater? No. They should hard­ with plenty of length allowed for fu ll­
ly expect to get bored and lodging as ness, fo r the top o f the garment; two
well.— Brooklyn Eagle.
center strips to meet in points at the
front and at the back, each crossing
Economy.
the shoulder without a seam ; two
Without economy none can be rich, short strips fo r use at the joining o f
and with It few w ill be poor.— Doctor the front and the back, and two short
Johnson.
rows fo r each armhole.
The easiest way to put the sections
It ’s better to smile and be a villain together is to pin them in the proper
Some smart Paris frocks have nar*
than never to have smiled at a lt
position on a large sheet of paper and row bands at the hem.
Honesty is not the best policy, it
isn’t any kind of policy. It ’s a virtue
practiced for its own sake without re­
gard fo r profits. Those who refrain
from stealing because thieves end in
jail are not honest. They are merely
discreet.— Robert Quillen In Saturday
Evening P o s t