"Now, Dundas!" cried Macleod, scrambling out of the trenches, "as the gallant Monsieur de Bourmont has given over his morning’s shooting, and as you know something of his lingo, just tie a handkerchief to the point of your sword, and go up and inquire whether or not he means to surrender the place without any more bother? If not, let him expect broken heads to be plenty before tattoo to-night. By Heaven! the Ross-shire Buffs will dye their tartans red in the best blood of his garrison, brave fellows though they be!" "And the terms, colonel?" "Such as Frenchmen—such as brave soldiers may accept without dishonour; but nothing more. Give this my summons of unconditional surrender; and, as they know not of the fall of Gaeta and Massena’s advance, they will no doubt yield at discretion." With a white handkerchief fluttering from the point of my sabre, and having a Corsican bugler in attendance, I departed on my mission from the trenches; where more than two hundred of our soldiers lay weltering in their blood. Most of their wounds being inflicted by cannon shot, or the explosion of bombs, were ghastly beyond description. The earthen trenches in some places were literally flooded with gore. None but those who have seen a man bleed to death from his wounds being left undressed, can imagine how much blood the human frame contains. The ensanguined mud, where corpses, wounded men, fascines, shot and shell, lay all mingled together, made our approaches frightful; and I gladly sprang out and left them behind me. As usual, the morning was beautiful: earth and sky were bright with summer splendour. The sea of Adria shone in a blaze of yellow light, and the chain of mountains stretching away to Isola, the little white village dotting the sandy beach, and the solitary column of Juno Lacina, afar off, made up a charming landscape; the beauties of which, my mind was then too much occupied to appreciate. To bear a flag of truce is an exciting duty; and I felt my pulses quicken, on finding myself close under the enemy’s cannon, yet warm with the heat of their last discharge. As I approached the old fortress, its walls shone gaily in the bright sunlight; but the blood oozing from the carved stone gargoyles, or spouts, of the battlements, told a terrible tale of the havoc made by our shot and shell. An ample tricolour waved lazily in the warm breeze, and serried lines of bright bayonets glittered over the ramparts, while grim faces peered at me through the dark embrasures and narrow loopholes of the time-worn walls. The troops were formed in rank-entire, with arms shouldered. Poor old Bourmont was evidently making the greatest possible display of his force.