He stumbled inside the battery one time, after a bang on the head from a clubbed musket which made him sick and dizzy; and as he sat panting in a corner for a moment till his wits came back, he told Jim afterwards that he remembered wondering if he had died and this was hell; He had a flask in his pocket somewhere, and he tried to get it out, and found his left arm would not act, though he had felt nothing wrong with it till he sat down. He was drenched with rain and sweat--and blood, though he did not know it at the time. He got out his flask with his right hand at last, and took a long pull at it and felt better. Blood out, and brandy in, made his bruised head feel light and airy. He picked up his heavy rifle and bayonet and staggered out to join the wild mêlée again--one hand was better than none where every hand was needed. But he tumbled blindly down the slope and fell, and men trampled to and fro over his body till he felt all one big bruise. Then the grim dim struggle swayed off to one side for a moment, and he tried to crawl away. A tall Russian--an officer by his sword--lunged down at him as he leaped past in the fog, but the point struck on his flask and the blow only rolled him over again, and the other had not time to repeat it. And presently he crawled away up the hill, and got out of it all, and down the other side towards his own camp. It was there his father found him, late in the afternoon, spent and bruised, and weak from loss of blood, and he went off at once and got a litter, and took him away to his own tent and set him down beside Jim. For the English doctors had their hands very much more than full, and Colonel Carron, rightly or wrongly, had much greater faith in the nursing arrangements of his adopted service than in those of the British camps and field hospitals. When he came in at night, Jack was all bandaged up and as comfortable as could be expected, with bayonet wounds in his arm and shoulder, a badly bruised head, and a bodyful of contusions. "I was just thanking my stars and you, sir, that I was here, and not shivering to pieces over yonder," he said gratefully. And with reason. For the Colonel's tent was as cosy a little habitation as even the French camps could show. He had taken advantage of a slight hollow, and had had it deepened and the earth piled high like a rampart all round it, so that only its top showed above ground-level, and the keen night winds whistled over it with small effect. And inside was a cheerful little stove, and Tartar rugs, of small value perhaps, and of crude and glaring colour and design without doubt, but very homely to look at to boys who had grown accustomed to bare trodden earth. And for couches, instead of waterproof cloth and a couple of blankets spread on the ground, they had clever little bedsteads, consisting of a springy network of string inside an oblong wooden frame which rested on folding legs like a campstool.