After half an hour's instruction I began to see daylight, and to feel that with patience and practice I should be able to write out the story in legible English. The little I had read with Mr. Fortescue made me keen to know more; but as the cryptographic narrative did not begin at the beginning, he proposed that I should write this, as also any other missing parts, to his dictation. "Who knows that you may not make a book of it?" he said. "Do you think I am intelligent enough?" I asked, resentfully; for his uncomplimentary references to my mental capacity were still rankling in my mind. "I should hope so. Everybody writes in these days. Don't worry yourself on that score, my dear Mr. Bacon. Even though you may write a book, nobody will accuse you of being exceptionally intelligent." "But I cannot make a book of your narrative without your leave," I observed, with a painful sense of having gained nothing by my motion. "And that leave may be sooner or later forthcoming, on conditions." As the reader will find in the sequel, the leave has been given and the conditions have been fulfilled, and Mr. Fortescue's personal narrative--partly taken down from his own dictation, but for the most part extended from his manuscript--begins with the following chapter. CHAPTER VI. THE TALE BEGINS. The morning after the battle of Salamanca (through which I passed unscathed) the regiment of dragoons to which I belonged (forming part of Anson's brigade), together with Bock's Germans, was ordered to follow on the traces of the flying French, who had retired across the River Tormes. Though we started at daylight, we did not come up with their rear-guard until noon. It consisted of a strong force of horse and foot, and made a stand near La Serna; but the cavalry, who had received a severe lesson on the previous day, bolted before we could cross swords with them. The infantry, however, remained firm, and forming square, faced us like men. The order was then given to charge; and when the two brigades broke into a gallop and thundered down the slope, they raised so thick a cloud of dust that all we could see of the enemy was the glitter of their bayonets and the flash of their musket-fire. Saddles were emptied both to the right and left of me, and one of the riderless horses, maddened by a wound in the head, dashed wildly forward, and leaping among the bayonets and lashing out furiously with his hind-legs, opened a way into the square. I was the first man through the gap, and engaged the French colonel in a hand-to-hand combat. At the very moment just as I gave him the point in his throat he cut open my shoulder, my horse, mortally hurt by a bayonet thrust, fell, half rolling over me and crushing my leg.