For three hours we advanced in this cautious way, until it seemed to me that I must have left all danger behind me.

I then pushed on more briskly, for I wished to be in the rear of the whole army by daybreak.

There are many vineyards in these parts which in winter become open plains, and a horseman finds few difficulties in his way.
But Massena had underrated the cunning of these English, for it appears that there was not one line of defence, but three, and it was the third, which was the most formidable, through which I was at that instant passing.

As I rode, elated at my own success, a lantern flashed suddenly before me, and I saw the glint of polished gun-barrels and the gleam of a red coat.
"Who goes there ?" cried a voice--such a voice! I swerved to the right and rode like a madman, but a dozen squirts of fire came out of the darkness, and the bullets whizzed all round my ears.

That was no new sound to me, my friends, though I will not talk like a foolish conscript and say that I have ever liked it.