'_Mon Prince, dépêchez-vous, si'l vous plait!_' cried his countryman trooper, Le Toque, as he rushed past, lying across but not in his saddle, and then the heir of France found himself alone--alone and face to face with more than forty merciless and pitiless savages! Who can tell what may have flashed through the brave lad's mind in that moment of fierce excitement and supreme mental agony--what thoughts of France and Imperial glory--the glorious past, the dim future, and, more than all, no doubt, of the lonely mother, who was so soon to weep for him at Chiselhurst--to weep the tears that no condolence could quench! When last seen by Le Toque, as the latter gave a backward and despairing glance, he was grasping a stirrup-leather in vain attempts to mount the maddened animal, which trod upon him, and broke away when the strap parted; and then, for a moment, the young Napoleon covered his face with his hands--deserted, abandoned to an awful death, which no Christian eye was then to see. All the obloquy of this tragedy was now heaped upon Lieutenant Carey, a native of the south of England. It was dark night when he got to head-quarters, and at that time nothing could be done to ascertain the fate of the deserted one. Scarcely a man slept in our camp by the Ityotyosi River, and after 'lights out' had been sounded by the bugles, the soldiers could talk of nothing else but the poor Prince Imperial. 'The news of his death,' wrote an officer who was in the camp, 'fell like a thunderbolt on all! At first it was regarded as one of those reports that so often went round. Bit by bit, however, it assumed a form. Even then people were incredulous, only half believing the dreadful tale. The two questions first asked were--What will they say at home? and, secondly, the poor Empress? All was wildest excitement, and brave men absolutely broke down under the blow. To them it looked a black and bitter disgrace. The chivalrous young Prince, repaying the hospitality shown him by England with his sword--entrusted to us by his widowed mother--to have been killed in a mere paltry reconnaissance! to have fallen without all his escort having been killed first! to lie there dead and alone! Many there were who would have given up life to have been lying with him, so that our British honour might have been kept sacred.' CHAPTER XIX. FINDING THE BODY. 'Fall in, the Mounted Infantry!' cried the voice of Hammersley, when with earliest dawn strong parties were detailed from the camps of the Second Division and Sir Evelyn Wood to scout the scene of the tragedy; and as his squadron rode forth in the grey light with rifle-butt resting on the thigh, just as the dawn began to redden the summit of the Itelezi Hill, Florian remembered that this mournful search was his first duty as an officer; but the calamity clouded the joy of his promotion, and would be always associated with it.