It might have been, as nearly as I can recollect, about three P.M., when Sir Augustus Frazer galloped up, crying out, “Left limber up, and as fast as you can.” The words were scarcely uttered when my gallant troop stood as desired in column of subdivisions, left in front, pointing towards the main ridge. “At a gallop, march!” and away we flew, as steadily and compactly as if at a review. I rode with Frazer, whose face was as black as a chimney-sweep’s from the smoke, and the jacket-sleeve of his right arm torn open by a musket-ball or case-shot, which had merely grazed his flesh. As we went along, he told me that the enemy had assembled an enormous mass of heavy cavalry in front of the point to which he was leading us (about one-third of the distance between Hougoumont and the Charleroi road), and that in all probability we should immediately be charged on gaining our position. “_The Duke’s orders, however, are positive,” he added, “that in the event of their persevering and charging home, you do not expose your men, but retire with them into the adjacent squares of infantry._” As he spoke, we were ascending the reverse slope of the main position. We breathed a new atmosphere--the air was suffocatingly hot, resembling that issuing from an oven. We were enveloped in thick smoke, and, _malgré_ the incessant roar of cannon and musketry, could distinctly hear around us a mysterious humming noise, like that which one hears of a summer’s evening proceeding from myriads of black beetles; cannon-shot, too, ploughed the ground in all directions, and so thick was the hail of balls and bullets that it seemed dangerous to extend the arm lest it should be torn off. In spite of the serious situation in which we were, I could not help being somewhat amused at the astonishment expressed by our kind-hearted surgeon (Hitchins), who heard for the first time this sort of music. He was close to me as we ascended the slope, and, hearing this infernal _carillon_ about his ears, began staring round in the wildest and most comic manner imaginable, twisting himself from side to side, exclaiming, “My God, Mercer, what _is_ that? What _is_ all this noise? How curious!--how very curious!” And then when a cannon-shot rushed hissing past, “_There!--there!_ What _is_ it all?” It was with great difficulty that I persuaded him to retire: for a time he insisted on remaining near me, and it was only by pointing out how important it was to us, in case of being wounded, that he should keep himself safe to be able to assist us, that I prevailed on him to withdraw. Amidst this storm we gained the summit of the ridge, strange to say, without a casualty; and Sir Augustus, pointing out our position between two squares of Brunswick infantry, left us with injunctions to remember the Duke’s order, and to economise our ammunition. The Brunswickers were falling fast--the shot every moment making great gaps in their squares, which the officers and