But when the battery opened there was no time for us to think of anything else.  A square is a very good way of meeting a horseman, but there is no worse one of taking a cannon ball, as we soon learned when they began to cut red seams through us, until our ears were weary of the slosh and splash when hard iron met living flesh and blood.  After ten minutes of it we moved our square a hundred paces to the right; but we left another square behind us, for a hundred and twenty men and seven officers showed where we had been standing.  Then the guns found us out again, and we tried to open out into line; but 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 cannon for a minute and give us a chance of hitting back.  And we hit back pretty hard too that time, for we were cold and vicious and savage, and I for 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 you just feel that you want to make some one pay for all you have gone through.  We took our change out of the lancers that time; for they had no breastplates to shield them, and we cleared seventy of them out of their saddles at a volley.  Maybe, if we could have seen seventy mothers weeping for 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 throttle.

Then the colonel did a wise stroke; for he reckoned that this would stave off the cavalry for five minutes, so he wheeled us into line, and got us back into a deeper hollow out of reach of the guns before they could open again.  This gave us time to breathe, and we 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 for some of the others.  The whole of the Dutch Belgians were off by this time helter-skelter, fifteen thousand 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 for 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 ours, and every British regiment was firm; though, to tell the honest truth, as a man is bound to do, there were a sprinkling of red coats among the blue ones who made for the rear.  But these were lads and stragglers, the faint hearts that are found everywhere, and I say again that no regiment 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 it, the Prussians