Alone with the Dying.
It would be difficult to find in the whole range of fiction a more affecting incident than is contained in the following extract from a letter written by a British seaman to his wife.
It was his first service as a soldier, he having been sent on shore with a boat's crew of marines to silence a fort and take some guns:
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"We dispersed at a few hundred yards distance from the beach to keep the coast clear, while the boat's crew made prizes of the guns.
The enemy had advantage of the wood, and also knowing the country well; and a troop of them showed in advance.
We were ordered to fire.
I took steady aim and fired at my man at about sixty yards. He fell like a stone.
"At the same time a broadside from — went in among the trees, and the enemy disappeared, we could scarcely tell how. I felt as though I must go up to him and see whether he was dead or alive.
He lay quite still, and I was more afraid of him than when he stood facing me a few minutes before.
It is a strange feeling to come over you all at once that you have killed a man. He had unbuttoned his jacket; and was pressing his hand over the front of the chest where the wound was. He breathed hard, and the blood poured from the wound, and also from his mouth, every breath he took.
His face was as white as death, and his eyes looked so big and bright as he turned them and stared at me.--I shall never forget it. He was a fine young fellow, not more than five-and-twenty.
"I went down on my knees beside him, and my breast felt so full as though my own heart would burst.
He had a real English face, and did not look like an enemy.
What I felt, I never can tell; but if my life could have saved his. I believe I should have given it. I laid his head on my knee, and he grasped hold of my hand and tried to speak, but his voice was gone.
I could not tell a word he said, and every time he went to speak the blood poured out; so I knew it would soon be over.
I am not ashamed to say that I was worse than he, for he never shed a tear, and I couldn't help it. His eyes were closed, when a gun was fired from the --to order aboard, and that aroused him. He pointed to the beach where the boat was just pushing off with the guns which we had taken, and where our marines were waiting to man the second boat, and then he pointed to the wood where the enemy was concealed.
Poor fellow the little thought how I shot him down.
I was wondering how I could leave him to die, and no one near him, when he had something like a convulsion for a moment, and then his face rolled over, and, without a sigh, he was gone.
I trust the Almighty has received his soul.
I laid his head gently down on the grass and left him. It seemed so strange when I looked at him for the last time.
I somehow thought of every thing I heard about the Turks and Russians, and the rest of them, but all that seemed so far off and the dead man so near."
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Scenes like this are destined, we fear, to be too common in our hitherto happy land.
