One fierce brute, with his forepaws planted, straight and stiff, before him, on a dead body, was tugging with his front teeth at the large pectoral muscle; occasionally letting go his hold to look at us, and utter a short angry bark, and again tearing at the bleeding flesh, as if it had been a carcass thrown to him for food. Another dog had lain down, with a hold of one of the same poor fellow's cold hands. Every now and then he would clap his head sideways on the ground, so as to get the back grinders to bear on his prey; and there the creature was, with the dead blue fingers across his teeth, crunching and crunching, and gasping, with his mouth full of froth and blood, and marrow, and white splinters of the crushed bones, the sinews and nerves of the dead limb hanging like bloody cords and threads from----Bah!--you have given us a little _de trop_ of this, Master Benjie. Two wounded Spaniards were all this time struggling in the soft mud beyond the platform; their lower limbs, and in fact their whole bodies up to the arm-pits, had already settled down into the loathsome chaos. Some of our people were soft-hearted enough to endeavour to extricate them, but, "Get along, get along--be off to the boats, will ye? be off to the boats, if you wish to sleep in a sound skin," shouted by Mr Sprawl, made all hands turn to the more engrossing affair of self-preservation. But as it was some time before we could all string over the stockade, and the single plank that led to it from the platform across the mud, I could not help remarking one of the poor fellows who appeared to have been badly wounded, for there was blood on his ghastly visage. His struggles had gradually settled him up to the chin in the mire--he was shrieking miserably--he sunk over the mouth--his exertions to escape increased--the mud covered his nose--he began to cough and splutter for breath--while he struggled hard with his arms to keep himself above the surface--had he been one of the best swimmers alive--alas! he was now neither on earth nor in water--his eyes were still visible. Father of mercies, let me forget their expression--their hopeless dying glare, as he gradually sunk deeper and deeper into the quagmire. Oh! what a horrible grave! he disappeared, but his hands were still visible--he clasped them together--then opened them again--the fingers spread out, and quivered like aspen leaves, as he held them up towards heaven in an attitude of supplication. There--he is gone.