Immediately elsewhere in a dozen places was the phenomenon repeated.

There was too much glitter about the staff uniforms and vindictive French sharpshooters were finding them an attractive mark.
"They are firing on us, sir!" cried O'Moy on a note of sharp alarm.
"So I perceive," Lord Wellington answered calmly, and leisurely he closed his glass, so leisurely that O'Moy, in impatient fear of his chief, spurred forward and placed himself as a screen between him and the line of fire.
Lord Wellington looked at him with a faint smile.

He was about to speak when O'Moy pitched forward and rolled headlong from the saddle.
They picked him up unconscious but alive, and for once Lord Wellington was seen to blench as he flung down from his horse to inquire the nature of O'Moy's hurt.

It was not fatal, but, as it afterwards proved, it was grave enough.

He had been shot through the body, the right lung had been grazed and one of his ribs broken.
Two days later, after the bullet had been extracted, Lord Wellington went to visit him in the house where he was quartered.