Georgette Heyer Bundle by Georgette Heyer

Author:Georgette Heyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

5

Kincaid, who had been sent on picket the previous evening, and was still unrelieved, had found himself, at an early hour, in a position of some discomfort. When the cannonade began, a quantity of round-shot peppered the ground over which his picket was posted. He remarked coolly that the Frogs seemed to have chosen the picket as their pitching-place, and cast an experienced eye around him to discover the nearest cover. A broad ditch, about a hundred yards distant, offered the only obstacle to an enemy advance. He noted its position in case of a future need, and turned to find his Sergeant at his elbow. A splutter of dust, kicked up by a charge of shot falling quite close to them, freely bespattered them both. ‘Don’t seem to be firing blanks, do they, Sergeant?’ said Kincaid.

The Sergeant grinned. ‘No, sir. What will we do, sir?’

‘Oh, just watch the plain!’ Kincaid replied. ‘Seems to be a little trouble going on behind that hill.’

The Sergeant, who thought, from the confused uproar, that there must be a good deal of trouble going on, grinned more broadly, but said: ‘Yes, sir. As you say, sir!’

The picket remained in position, keeping a look-out over the plain. The rising ground to the left hid the operations of the cavalry from sight, but in a short while such a violent commotion arose from behind the hill that Kincaid lost no time in removing his picket to a position behind the ditch he had previously noted. He had barely executed this movement when (as he afterwards described it) Lord Wellington with his Staff, and a cloud of French and English dragoons and horse-artillery intermixed, came over the hill at full cry, over the very ground he had that instant quitted.

A picket of the 43rd regiment having formed on his right, Kincaid was forced, for fear of shooting them instead of the enemy, to remain inactive. He was so astonished, he said, by the spectacle of Lord Wellington and Marshal Beresford hacking their way through the mêlée with their drawn swords, that he doubted whether he could have collected his wits sufficiently to give the order to fire.

‘And how they came there, I know no more than my old mare!’ Kincaid told Harry, much later. ‘Old Hookey, and Beresford, and the two guns, and all the beautiful Staff, took refuge behind my picket. Old Hookey didn’t look more than half-pleased, I can tell you. But it was a pleasure to hear Alten swearing. I wish I understood German.’

‘I don’t wonder the Peer wasn’t pleased!’ said Harry. ‘He was bringing up two cavalry brigades to reinforce us, and rode ahead of them to the left of our skirmishing line, where the 11th and 12th Light dragoons were supporting Ross’s guns. Just as he arrived, a French squadron broke in from the flank, straight for the guns. The 12th couldn’t stand against them, and began to retire. From what I heard, some fellows on Beresford’s Staff tried to stop ’em,

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