If such was his object, (and it is the only plausible one I can find,) he had altogether overlooked that for a man with one pair of arms to grapple with another who had ten, it must rest with the ten-pair man to say when the play is over, for although the one-pair man may disable an equal number in his front, there are still nine pair left to poke him in the sides and all round about; and thus the general found it; for having once exposed himself to such overwhelming numbers, there was no getting out of it but at a large sacrifice--and but for the experience, the confidence, and the devotion of the different individual battalion officers, seconded by the gallantry of the soldiers, the division had been utterly annihilated. Napier, as an eye-witness, states, (what I have often heard repeated by other officers who were there,) that "there was no room to array the line, no time for any thing but battle, every captain carried off his company as an independent body, and joining as he could with the ninety-fifth or fifty-second, the whole presented a mass of skirmishers acting in small parties, and under no regular command, yet each confident in the courage and discipline of those on his right and left, and all regulating their movements by a common discretion, and keeping together with surprising vigour." The result of the action was a loss on the British portion of the division of two hundred and seventy-two, including twenty-eight officers, killed, wounded, and taken. It is curious to observe by what singular interpositions of Providence the lives of individuals are spared. One of our officers happening to have a pocket-volume of Gil Blas, was in the middle of one of his interesting stories when the action commenced. Not choosing to throw it away, he thrust it into the breast of his jacket for want of a better place, and in the course of the day it received a musket-ball which had been meant for a more tender subject. The volume was afterwards, of course, treated as a tried friend. Having, in one of the foregoing pages, introduced the name of Mac Culloch in a prominent part of the action, I must be forgiven for taking this opportunity of following him to the end of his highly honourable earthly career. John Mac Culloch was from Scotland, (a native, I believe, of Kirkudbright;) he was young, handsome, athletic, and active; with the meekness of a lamb, he had the heart of a lion, and was the delight of every one. At the time I first became acquainted with him he had been several years in the regiment, and had shared in all the vicissitudes of the restless life they then led. I brought him under the notice of the reader in marching off to relieve the advanced picquet on the night prior to the action of the Coa.