It was but for a moment nevertheless: determined to have one brief struggle for liberty, I freed myself from the dragoon’s grasp, and dealing him a severe blow on the head with the butt of my rifle, I rushed up to the wall of our 52nd, which I was in the act of clearing at a jump, when I received a shot under the cap of my right knee and instantly fell. In this emergency, there seemed a speedy prospect of my again falling into the hands of the French, as the division was in rapid retreat, but a comrade of the name of Little instantly dragged me over the wall, and was proceeding as quick as possible with me, on his back, towards the bridge of the Coa, over which our men were fast pouring, when he, poor fellow! also received a shot, which passing through his arm smashed the bone, and finally lodged itself in my thigh, where it has ever since remained.[5] In this extremity, Little was obliged to abandon me, but urged by a strong desire to escape imprisonment, I made another desperate effort, and managed to get over the bridge, from the other side of which Captain Ross’s guns were in full roar, covering our retreat; in this crippled state and faint through loss of blood, I made a second appeal to a comrade, who assisted me to ascend a hill on the other side of the river. On the summit, we found a chapel which had been converted into a temporary hospital, where a number of wounded men were being taken to have their wounds dressed by the surgeons. Fortunately, I had not long to wait for my turn, for as we momentarily expected the coming of the French, everything was done with the greatest dispatch. In this affair our company sustained a very severe loss; our return was, “one officer, Lieutenant Cohen, quite a youth, dangerously wounded, eleven file killed and wounded, and forty-five taken prisoners.” My old Captain O’Hare had only eleven men on parade next day. The preceding facts will serve to show the unmilitary reader, that skirmishes are frequently more partially destructive to riflemen than general actions, although attended with but little of their celebrity. For my own part, I was never nearer death, excepting on the night we took Badajoz. I must not forget a singular escape that occurred: a man of the name of Charity, of my own company, when the cavalry first rushed upon us, had fallen, wounded in the head by a sabre, while on the ground, he received another severe sword slash on the seat of honour, and a shot through the arm, the latter, no doubt, from the 52nd. Yet after all this, he managed to escape, and Clothed in scarlet lived to tell the tale, as a pensioner in Chelsea Hospital. Having no mules nor waggons to accommodate us, the surgeons advised all who were by any means capable of moving, to get on as quick as they could to Pinhel. There were of our regiment about seventy or eighty disabled, a number of those hobbled onwards assisting each other by turns.