"Who's going to dance?" said the Doctor: "the ball's begun. Ha! there
goes poor Jack Delamere's head off! The ball chose a soft one, anyhow.
Come here, Tim, till I mend your leg. Your wife has need only knit half
as many stockings next year, Doolan my boy. Faix! there goes a big one
had wellnigh stopped my talking: bedad! it has snuffed the feather off
my cocked hat!"
In this way, with eighty-four-pounders roaring over us like hail, the
undaunted little Doctor pursued his jokes and his duty. That he had
a feeling heart, all who served with him knew, and none more so than
Philip Fogarty, the humble writer of this tale of war.
Our embrasure was luckily bomb-proof, and the detachment of the
Onety-oneth under my orders suffered comparatively little. "Be cool,
boys," I said; "it will be hot enough work for you ere long." The
honest fellows answered with an Irish cheer. I saw that it affected our
prisoner.
"Countryman," said I, "I know you; but an Irishman was never a traitor."
"Taisez-vous!" said he, putting his finger to his lip. "C'est la
fortune de la guerre: if ever you come to Paris, ask for the Marquis d'
O'Mahony, and I may render you the hospitality which your tyrannous laws
prevent me from exercising in the ancestral halls of my own race."
I shook him warmly by the hand as a tear bedimmed his eye.
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