CHAPTER XIX.

THE CROWN OF FIRE.

For us, a mere "handful," opposed to a column so powerful, there could be no rest; thus, while one half of our slender force remained under arms, the others worked hard at the repair and further strengthening of the works, by means of cannon-baskets filled with earth, sandbags, beds and mattresses, taken from the houses, and chandeliers made of roofs and flooring sawn into billets, trussed up in bundles, and banked over with turf. We made the utmost exertion, because, though unmolested, we augured, by the constant report of fire-arms in the Imperial bivouac, that the troops were busy discharging, cleaning, and preparing their fire-arms for a second attack.

In one deep grave, within the sconce, we buried our dead, placing more than forty of them side by side, and so covered them up. The last we put in was the sergeant, Ronald Gorm.

"Poor Ronald!" said Phadrig Mhor; "'tis thou must perform the _faire-chloidh_;" for it is a Highland superstition that the soul of the last person buried in any place, must keep watch there until another corpse is brought, whose spirit relieves the former.

"Ronald's ghost will not be long on guard," said Ian; "for I am much mistaken if more heads will not be broken before to-morrow." The piper played a sweet and sad lament at this unseemly funeral; in the old Highland fashion, we placed four large stones above that ghastly tomb, and, in the language of the bards, bade them speak to other years, and to the men of other times.

The wounded we sent off to Glückstadt in rough country carts, through the open joints of which their blood ran dripping on the dusty road. As a protection, a small guard of pikes accompanied them; for our stragglers and sick were frequently murdered by the boors, whose cupidity their silver buttons and ornaments served to excite.

A ration of skeidam was served round to us all; and about sunrise, after doubling the guards and seeing that the Imperialists, though within cannon-shot, were not intending to molest us, Dunbar ordered our men to "pile arms," and take some repose. Poor fellows! they lay down to sleep in their armour, and with their bare legs on the gory platforms or cold earth; and there, amid the scattered shot, the exploded shells, the blood gouts, and the broken weapons, I enjoyed the sound sleep of a wearied soldier, and undisturbed by the reflection that it might be the last I should ever enjoy; and you, good reader, would have slept sound also, after the toil, the carnage, and excitement of such a night as that at Boitzenburg.

Anxious to defend his post with honour, Dunbar--that brave old cavalier--never slept, but remained watching every movement of the enemy, whom we permitted, without molestation, to bear away their wounded from under the very muzzles of our cannon; but the moment this was over, the pipes sounded, the drums beat, and we were again roused to man the ramparts, for again they were coming on, and with renewed vigour, for three battalions of Spanish Imperialists had joined the Count in the night.

"Pikes and pistols--here they are again!" cried our veteran major, or sergeant-major, for according to the Danish etiquette we called him both; "but fear not, my brave hearts, for God is with us, and His hand is over us. Believe me, gentlemen, our cannon are noway inferior to theirs for not having Latin mumbled, and holy water sprinkled, over them by the superior of the Jesuits. So to your guns, my wight cannoniers--to them again with handspike and linstock--with rammer and quoin!"

About the closing in of the evening, a dense column of Spanish infantry, with pikes and musketeers intermingled, suddenly debouched upon the roadway from behind the little eminence which had sheltered them, and poured impetuously forward, to assail again the stockades of the graff; while a brigade of Austrians rushed towards the sluice which admitted into it the water of the Elbe; and though thrice, by sheer dint of cannon and musketry, we drove them back, they forced a passage to the angle of the ditch, and climbing literally over piles of their own dead and dying, cut the chains by their axes, and, closing the sluice by sledge-hammers, retired with a loud hurrah; for immediately the water in the ditch began to subside. On this the furious Spaniards redoubled their efforts to carry the palisades; but as these projected at the angle of forty-five degrees from a steep bank, and were swept by our fire, it was a task of the greatest danger and difficulty; yet these valiant hearts accomplished it, and reached the inner edge of the ditch, but as fast as they mounted they were shot down, and when struck we could see the blood spouting from their buff coats and corslets as if ejected from a syringe.

"Fire on the sluice!" cried Dunbar to Captain Learmonth, whose pikemen still worked our cannon; "break through the planks--admit the Elbe, and fill the graff again."

"It is impossible!" replied that cavalier; "for our guns cannot be depressed so low."

"Then Heaven help us! for they will soon gain this poor sconce by storm."

"We can still retire by the bridge," said Learmonth.

"Without orders?" exclaimed Dunbar, the umbriere of whose helmet was, at that moment, torn away by a shot; "nay, I will die first!"

Learmonth, who was levelling a cannon, was about to make some devil-may-care reply, when two musket-balls struck him; one pierced his cuirass, and wounded him in the breast; the other tore away three fingers of his left hand, and he fell without a cry, but with a heavy groan, while his lieutenant, old Martin of that Ilk, assumed his place.

"This, to avenge thee, Balcomie," said he, discharging the cannon, and unhorsing a cavalier, whose bright armour and waving plumage made him dangerously conspicuous above the dense mass of Spaniards who were swarming over the stockades, and lowering their ladders into the now almost empty fosse.

"Well done, stout Martin!" said Dunbar, brandishing his sword; "to thy cannon again, and give me another good shot--another like that for the Queen of Bohemia! Down with that tall fellow in the gilt armour! Cocksnails, man!--he may be Carlstein himself! Down with the black eagle, and down with the cross of Burgundy! Load with cartridge shot my cannoniers, and sweep the stockade; sweep, my comrades, and be stanch as your swords of steel. Ah! pikes and pistols--my poor Martin--and thou, too?" he added, as a ball from a falconet passed through the head of the old lieutenant, and killed him on the spot: he was the last of the Martins of that Ilk, a good old family ruined in the affair of the Spanish Blanks, since when he had fed himself with the blade of his sword among the Scottish bands in Bohemia, or elsewhere.

It was frightful! Poor Martin's brains flew over me, and, half blinded, I wiped them off my face with my scarf; while, enraged by the loss of two favourite officers (though Lowlanders), our clansmen redoubled their energies, and thus the din increased as the smoke and slaughter deepened around us.

Brightly the evening sun was shining on the blue water and green banks of the Elbe; but enveloped in the white cloud of war, inspired with ferocity, and bent on carnage and destruction, we saw nothing but the enemy and our dying comrades, who every moment fell heavily down in their accoutrements, bleeding and in agony, or stone dead, as the fated shot might strike them; but closing up, shoulder to shoulder, the little band of survivors stood firm on the parapet ready to repel the assault; for still the Danish flag was flying on the colour-staff, and still the Scottish cross was streaming on the rampart. We--the officers--fought side by side with our musketeers, till our mustaches were all matted by the wet powder of bitten cartridges, and our shoulders ached with the exertion of incessant firing, while the barrels of our muskets became so hot that there was eminent danger in recharging them; yet still we toiled on. And now came the crisis; for though three successive storming parties had been swept away, our ammunition began to fail, and, as the bandoliers emptied, our fire slackened, and then the Spaniards and Austrians--pikemen, halberdiers, and musketeers, all mingled pell-mell--led by officers having pistols in their belts, and swords, daggers, and demi-lances, poured into the ditch; rushing down their ladders, and planting them against the wall, they swarmed up its face in hundreds.

Sheathed in brilliant armour, magnificently inlaid with gold, having his visor closed, a sword in his right hand and a poniard in his left, which also grasped a light rondelle or buckler, the tall and stately Count of Carlstein, wearing above his gorget the Golden Fleece and the White Eagle, led the forlorn hope.

"Victoria! Victoria!" we heard him crying. "Forward, forward! swords and pikemen!"

"Sancta Maria!" replied his soldiers, in a thousand varying tones uniting in one roar; "Sancta Maria! Vivat--vivat!" and that wild cry of the Austrians was echoed by the wilder hurrah of a regiment of Croats, who had leaped from their white horses, and were levelling their long carbines at us, point-blank over their saddles, with deadly precision. As the foe approached I looked at Ian. With his eyes flashing under the peak of his helmet, and both hands clenched on the hilt of his claymore, he was surveying the scene below with stern calmness. Phadrig Mhor, with a Lochaber axe, stood by his side, and the M'Farquars, with their empty muskets clubbed, stood grimly in their ranks. They were a dark, a savage, and picturesque group.

"You see, my cousin," said Ian, in that grim jesting tone which he could assume at times; "that King Christian has resolved we shall pay dearly for declining the Danish cross. We shall all find our graves by the shore of the Elbe."

"Ye say truth, M'Farquhar," said Dunbar, as he pressed to the front with a partisan in his hand, and a pair of pistols in his belt; "but if ever we have a Hegisippus to relate our story, he shall never, like a lying loon, have it to say that we feared the face of man. But that king, whose life was saved by the Scottish Rittmaster Hume, on the day he fled from the battle of Lütter, should have remembered that trifling circumstance; and also that his sister had the honour to be queen of fair Scotland. But bide ye--hark!"

Above the uproar in the trench below us, the fire of the Croatian calivers, and the shouts of the stormers, we heard the clang of a horse's hoofs on a paved street, and saw a cavalier lightly armed, galloping in mad haste across the bridge of the Elbe, and in three seconds he dashed into the heart of the sconce amongst us.

"The Baron Karl of Klosterfiord, aide-de-camp to the king!" exclaimed Ian and others.

"Herr Dunbar," said he, breathlessly: "you are to abandon the sconce, spike the cannon if you cannot bring them off, blow up the bridge of the Elbe, and retire to Lauenburg or Glückstadt."

"'Tis too late, baron--these orders have come too late to save us," replied Dunbar, as hand to hand we met the Imperialists, hewing them from their ladders with swords and halberts, thrusting them down at push of pike into the fosse, where many of them, by falling head foremost, perished miserably among the mud and sap below.

Right in the gorge of our embrasure stood the Count of Carlstein, fighting with sword and buckler against Ian, whose powerful form, overtopped the foe, though he could not stand erect while swaying his two-handed sword. Their soldiers pressed on behind them, and deadly was strife at that point; for against it the enemy were pouring all their strength and fury. Save an occasional pistol shot, the din was occasioned alone by the cries of the combatants, and the clash of their weapons, steel sparkling on steel; and nothing could surpass the bravery of Count Carlstein and his Spaniards, but that of Ian Dhu and his company.

Hurled over each other in whole sections by our levelled pikes, we rolled them into the ditch; but other sections came up in their places, and their cries rent the air.

"Viva Ferdinand! A Dios! a Cristo y al Espiritu Santo, gloria y gracias! Victoria! Victoria!" For lack of powder our men hurled sand, earth, and stones, right into their faces, and Phadrig Mhor hewed away with his pole-axe like a mower in a ripe clover field.

Amid this dense mass in the embrasure, while pikes were crashing, swords ringing, and colours flying, swaying to and fro--now on this side, and now on that--many frightful wounds were given and received. Ian's right knee, being bare and unprotected, was drenched in blood from a stab, which raised his Highland blood to the boiling pitch, and, by one headlong stroke, he hurled the count, as if he had been a mere puppet, into the heart of the ditch; but his place was immediately supplied by another cavalier wearing the Imperial scarf, and carrying in one hand a demi-pike, in the other a banner with the black eagle.

With one foot on a culverin, and the other on the cope of the parapet, during this meleé I was handling my half-pike so prominently that I was the mark of many a bullet, but escaped them all, though receiving innumerable bruises. While he fought with others, the sword of my noble cousin shred off many a pike-head, and broke down many a sword, which menaced me; for, like wight Wallace of old, it was no uncommon event for Ian Dhu to encounter four men at once, and knock them all on the head in succession, aiding his friends the while by many a casual thrust and blow.

In this desperate and destructive struggle their native strength and skill in the use of their weapons, together with their lofty position, gave our bare-kneed warriors an immense superiority over the Spanish or Austrian stormers; but it was evident that, step by step, by main force of numbers, they would drive us into the heart of the place, where we would infallibly be all cut to pieces or taken. Major Wilson, Sir Patrick Mackay, Culcraigie, Kildon, M'Coll of that Ilk, and others, all fought valiantly in their own ranks; and it was a glorious sight to see so many brave Scottish cavaliers, all handling sword and pike as if they had come into the world with harness on their backs.

But, meanwhile, where was old Dunbar? for he, who usually was in the thickest of every fray, was not now in the front with his two-handed cliobh. Our soldiers, who soon missed him, were beginning to lose heart, and cried repeatedly--

"A Dunbar! a Dunbar!"

"I am here, my comrades! Ah, pikes and pistols--clear the way!" replied the sturdy veteran, as he sprang into the embrasure, and hurled among the assailants something which seemed to me like an immense hoop.

It was enveloped in light smoke, and became covered with flames as it fell among the dense masses of armed men in the graff below; a sudden yell arose from thence, and an immediate panic followed.

This wary old veteran, who had served with Camp-Marshal Hepburn and Sir Andrew Gray in Bohemia, and with Count Mansfeldt in Flanders, in expectation of an assault, had prepared a _couronne foudroyante_, which was composed of four iron hoops, bound together with wire, and studded by loaded pistol barrels, crackers, pointed pieces of iron, glass bottles filled with powder, and bunches of grenades (those notable inventions of 1574), the whole being covered with tarred and oiled flax, which wreathed the hoops with fire as they rolled, a blazing and exploding mass among the stormers. The barrels of the pistols, which were loaded to the muzzle, as they became redhot vomited their leaden contents every where; the bottles of powder burst, and the grenades exploded, scattering death and mutilation as their showers of splintered iron, stones, and nails, were driven among the shrinking storming party, which fled in every direction up the ladders, over the stockades, and to the farthest ends of the ditch. For five minutes the panic was general; but those five minutes saved the soldiers of Dunbar, who cut and destroyed the scaling-ladders.

A hoarse shout for vengeance burst from the foe. Led on again by the Count and the cavalier with the black eagle, the Imperialists poured in thousands into the ditch; bub before fresh ladders were planted upon those corpse-strewn heaps which filled it, and before the infuriated pikemen had gained the summit of the parapet, we had drawn back our twenty brass culverins, traced the horses to them, and retired in double-quick time by the bridge.

In close ranks, with pikes sloped, and muskets trailed, the three hundred Highlanders who survived crossed the Elbe; and the horses galloping at full speed, drew the heavy culverins over the broad arches with the sound of thunder. Holding his startled charger by the bridle, Dunbar stood near the klinket of the sconce to spring the mine the moment the last of us were passed. The M'Farquhars were the last who retired.

"The colours--the standard! Ensign Rollo, you have left your colours behind!" cried the old man in a furious tone; "they are still flying on the parapet, within arm's length of the enemy."

Thunderstruck by his words, I paused irresolutely.

"God's death!" he cried passionately; "the Imperialists have never yet gained one from our Scottish bands, and shall the first be taken from the regiment of Strathnaver? Pikes and pistols!--at the risk of your life, youngster, bring off that standard, or die under it."

He levelled a pistol at me; but at that time I scarcely heard all he said, as I rushed back to the bastion, where in the hurry of bringing off the cannon we had left St. Andrew's cross flying. The Austrians were indeed within arm's-length; a storm of bullets swept around me, as I tore it down and sprang after my comrades, followed by a swarm of Imperialists, who now poured over the undefended rampart like a living flood.

Closely pursued by a volley of oaths and bullets, I ran towards the bridge of the Elbe, and had almost reached the _tête-du-pont_ when, lo! the arches rocked beneath my feet, there was a tremendous explosion, with a broad blaze of lurid light, and then a cloud of darkness, dust and stones arose before me, and I knew not whether I was in the clouds or on the earth, as the mine was sprung, and the great centre arch blown into the air. Like the shower of a volcano, the debris descended upon the crystal current of the Elbe. Before me, a deep chasm yawned between the ruined piers; behind me, were the fierce Imperialists! On the opposite ruin stood Dunbar, still grasping his restive horse by the bridle.

"I could not help it, Rollo," he cried; "better that one should be lost, than all!"

I thought my heart would burst under its band of steel; but tearing the silken colour from its staff, and placing a stone within it, I flung it across to Dunbar. He snatched it up, sprung into his saddle, and galloped after the retiring Highlanders, who had now disappeared in the silent streets of Boitzenburg.

Though encumbered by my back, breast, and headpieces, my heavy tartan kilt and accoutrements, my first thought was to spring into the river and swim it, as I had often swam the Dee and Don; but a bullet, almost spent, struck my head. The good steel cap prevented it from piercing my brain, but I sank on the spot, and felt the ruin crumbling under me, as, with one arm overhanging the water, I lay upon the fragment of the bridge.

I remember no more.