He went right along up, from grade to grade, over the dead bodies of his superiors, until at last, in the hottest moment of the battle of ... down went our colonel, and my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby was next in rank!  Now for it, said I; we’ll all land in Sheol in ten minutes, sure.

The battle was awfully hot; the allies were steadily giving way all over the field.  Our regiment occupied a position that was vital; a blunder now must be destruction.  At this critical moment, what does this immortal fool do but detach the regiment from its place and order a charge over a neighbouring hill where there wasn’t a suggestion of an enemy!  ‘There you go!’ I said to myself; ‘this is the end at last.’

And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the hill before the insane movement could be discovered and stopped.  And what did we find?  An entire and unsuspected Russian army in reserve!  And what happened?  We were eaten up?  That is necessarily what would have happened in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred.  But no; those Russians argued that no single regiment would come browsing around there at such a time.  It must be the entire English army, and that the sly Russian game was detected and blocked; so they turned tail, and away they went, pell-mell, over the hill and down into the field, in wild confusion, and we after them; they themselves broke the solid Russia centre in the field, and tore through, and in no time there was the most tremendous rout you ever saw, and the defeat of the allies was turned into a sweeping and splendid victory!  Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy with astonishment, admiration, and delight; and sent right off for Scoresby, and hugged him, and decorated him on the field in presence of all the armies!

And what was Scoresby’s blunder that time?  Merely the mistaking his right hand for his left—­that was all.  An order had come to him to fall back and support our right; and instead he fell forward and went over the hill to the left.  But the name he won that day as a marvellous military genius filled the world with his glory, and that glory will never fade while history books last.

He is just as good and sweet and lovable and unpretending as a man can be, but he doesn’t know enough to come in when it rains.  He has been pursued, day by day and year by year, by a most phenomenal and astonishing luckiness.  He has been a shining soldier in all our wars for half a generation; he has littered his military life with blunders, and yet has never committed one that didn’t make him a knight or a baronet or a lord or something.  Look at his breast; why, he is just clothed in domestic and foreign decorations.  Well, sir, every one of them is a record of some shouting stupidity or other; and, taken together, they are proof that the very best thing in all this world that can befall a man is to be born lucky.

THE CAPTAIN’S STORY