I looked up. It was the stern Picton himself who spoke. The Eighty-eighth now led the pursuit, and sprang from rock to rock in all the mad impetuosity of battle; and like some mighty billow rolling before the gale, the French went down the heights. “Gallant Eighty-eighth! Gloriously done!” cried Picton, as he waved his hat. “Aren’t we Connaught robbers, now?” shouted a rich brogue, as its owner, breathless and bleeding, pressed forward in the charge. A hearty burst of laughter mingled with the din of the battle. “Now for it, boys! Now for _our_ work!” said old Merivale, drawing his sabre as he spoke. “Forward! and charge!” We waited not a second bidding, but bursting from our concealment, galloped down into the broken column. It was no regular charge, but an indiscriminate rush. Scarcely offering resistance, the enemy fell beneath our sabres, or the still more deadly bayonets of the infantry, who were inextricably mingled up in the conflict. The chase was followed up for above half a mile, when we fell back, fortunately in good time; for the French had opened a heavy fire from their artillery, and regardless of their own retreating column, poured a shower of grape among our squadrons. As we retired, the struggling files of the Rangers joined us,--their faces and accoutrements blackened and begrimed with powder; many of them, themselves wounded, had captured prisoners; and one huge fellow of the grenadier company was seen driving before him a no less powerful Frenchman, and to whom, as he turned from time to time reluctantly, and scowled upon his jailer, the other vociferated some Irish imprecation, whose harsh intentions were made most palpably evident by a flourish of a drawn bayonet. “Who is he?” said Mike; “who is he, ahagur?” “Sorra one o’ me knows,” said the other; “but it’s the chap that shot Lieutenant Mahony, and I never took my eye off him after; and if the lieutenant’s not dead, sure it’ll be a satisfaction to him that I cotch him.” The lower town was now evacuated by the French, who retired beyond the range of our artillery; the upper continued in the occupation of our troops; and worn out and exhausted, surrounded by dead and dying, both parties abandoned the contest, and the battle was over. Both sides laid claim to the victory; the French, because, having taken the village of Poço Velho, they had pierced the British line, and compelled them to fall back and assume a new position; the British, because the attack upon Fuentes d’Onoro has been successfully resisted, and the blockade of Almeida--the real object of the battle--maintained. The loss to each was tremendous; fifteen hundred men and officers, of whom three hundred were prisoners, were lost by the allies, and a far greater number fell among the forces of the enemy. After the action, a brigade of the light division released the troops in the village, and the armies bivouacked once more in sight of each other. CHAPTER XXIV. A RENCONTRE.