The Dynasts: An Epic-Drama of the War with Napoleon Part 79

COLBORNE

I do, Sir John: I am more than sad thereat!

In brief time now the surgeon will be here.

The French retreat--pushed from Elvina far.

MOORE

That's good! Is Paget anywhere about?

COLBORNE

He's at the front, Sir John.

MOORE

Remembrance to him!

[Enter two surgeons.]

Ah, doctors,--you can scarcely mend up me.-- And yet I feel so tough--I have feverish fears My dying will waste a long and tedious while; But not too long, I hope!

SURGEONS [after a hasty examination]

You must be borne In to your lodgings instantly, Sir John.

Please strive to stand the motion--if you can; They will keep step, and bear you steadily.

MOORE

Anything.... Surely fainter ebbs that fire?

COLBORNE

Yes: we must be advancing everywhere: Colbert their General, too, they have lost, I learn.

[They lift him by stretching their sashes under the blanket, and begin moving off. A light waggon enters.]

MOORE

Who's in that waggon?

HARDINGE

Colonel Wynch, Sir John.

He's wounded, but he urges you to take it.

MOORE

No. I will not. This suits.... Don't come with me; There's more for you to do out here as yet. [Cheerful shouts.]

A-ha! 'Tis THIS way I have wished to die!

[Exeunt slowly in the twilight MOORE, bearers, surgeons, etc., towards Coruna. The scene darkens.]

SCENE IV

CORUNA. NEAR THE RAMPARTS

[It is just before dawn on the following morning, objects being still indistinct. The features of the elevated enclosure of San Carlos can be recognized in dim outline, and also those of the Old Town of Coruna around, though scarcely a lamp is s.h.i.+ning.

The numerous transports in the harbour beneath have still their riding-lights burning.

In a nook of the town walls a lantern glimmers. Some English soldiers of the Ninth regiment are hastily digging a grave there with extemporized tools.]

A VOICE [from the gloom some distance off]

"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."

[The soldiers look up, and see entering at the further end of the patch of ground a slow procession. It advances by the light of lanterns in the hands of some members of it. At moments the fitful rays fall upon bearers carrying a coffinless body rolled in a blanket, with a military cloak roughly thrown over by way of pall.

It is brought towards the incomplete grave, and followed by HOPE, GRAHAM, ANDERSON, COLBORNE, HARDINGE, and several aides-de-camp, a chaplain preceding.]

FIRST SOLDIER

They are here, almost as quickly as ourselves.

There is no time to dig much deeper now: Level a bottom just as far's we've got.

He'll couch as calmly in this scrabbled hole As in a royal vault!

SECOND SOLDIER

Would it had been a foot deeper, here among foreigners, with strange manures manufactured out of no one knows what! Surely we can give him another six inches?

FIRST SOLDIER

There is no time. Just make the bottom true.

[The meagre procession approaches the spot, and waits while the half-dug grave is roughly finished by the men of the Ninth.