A party of five hundred French infantry were rapidly retreating towards the cork wood, exposed to the continual fire of two twelve-pound field-pieces and the charges of the cavalry brigade under General Long, who took every opportunity of breaking among the little band through the gaps formed by the cannon shot, which made complete lanes through their compact mass. The French retired with admirable coolness and bravery, keeping up a hot and rapid fire from four sides on the cavalry, who often charged them at full speed, brandishing their sabres, but were forced to recoil; and no sooner was a gap made in a face of a solid square by the fall of a file, than it was instantly filled by another. And thus leaving behind them a line of killed and wounded, they continued their retreat towards Merida, where their main body lay, disputing every foot of ground with desperate courage until they reached the cork wood, which being unfavourable for the movements of the cavalry, the latter were obliged to retire with considerable loss. "Hurrah!" cried Campbell, flourishing his stick; "I have not seen this sort of work for this year and more. You see, Stuart, that a solid square of bold infantry may laugh at a charge of horse, who must recoil from their bayonets like water from a rock. There are the 9th and 13th Light Dragoons and the fire of the French seems to have cooled their chivalry a little, and shown them that a sabre is as nothing against brown Bess, with a bayonet on her muzzle. They are retiring towards us, after doing, however, all that brave hearts could do. Poor fellows! many of them are lying rolling about wounded and in agony, or already dead, near the skirts of that confounded copse by which the frog-eaters have escaped. But where are _ours_? I do not see Howard’s brigade." "Yonder they are, major," replied Ronald, "halted on the level place behind the ruined village. I see the bonnets of the Highlanders, and the colours." "Ay, I see them now. Yonder they are, sure enough; and the old Half-hundred, and the 71st, the light bobs, with the tartan trews and hummel bonnets, all as spruce as ever, bivouacked comfortably on the bare earth as of old. We shall have the pleasure of passing the night without even a tent to keep the dew off us. _Carajo!_ as the Spaniard says; you will now taste the delights of soldiering in good earnest, as I did first in Egypt with old Sir Ralph Abercrombie." "We are seen by them. I hear the sound of the pipes, and they are waving their bonnets in welcome," said Alister Macdonald. "Blow up your bags, Macdonuil-dhu, and let them hear the bray of the drones," cried Campbell, whacking the sides of his nag to urge her onward. "Push forward, brave lads! we will be with Fassifern and our comrades in a few minutes more."