He looked at me, and smiled incredulously; and then continued “I don’t command the rear-guard, sir--but I waste time--are the boats ready?” He was answered in the affirmative. “Then set fire to the houses, and let off the rockets; they will see them at Cuxhaven--men,” fall in--march--and off we all trundled towards the river again. When we arrived there, we found ten Blankanese boats, two of them very large, and fitted with sliding platforms. The four fieldpieces were run on board, two into each; one hundred and fifty men embarked in them and the other craft, which I found partly loaded with sacks of corn. I was in one of the smallest boats with the colonel. When we were all ready to shove off, “Lafont,” he said, “are the men ready with their couteaux?” “They are, sir,” replied the sergeant. “Then cut the horses’ throats--but no firing.” A few bubbling groans, and some heavy falls, and a struggling splash or two in the water, showed that the poor artillery horses had been destroyed. The wind was fair up the river, and away we bowled before it. It was clear to me that the colonel commanding the post had overrated our strength, and, under the belief that we had cut him off from Cuxhaven, he had determined on falling back on Hamburgh. When the morning broke, we were close to the beautiful bank below Altona. The trees were beginning to assume the russet hue of autumn, and the sun shone gaily on the pretty villas and bloomin Gartens on the hill side, while here and there a Chinese pagoda, or other fanciful pleasure-house, with its gilded trellised work, and little bells depending from the eaves of its many roofs, glancing like small golden balls, rose from out the fast thinning recesses of the woods. But there was no life in the scene--‘twas “Greece, but living Greece no more,”--not a fishing-boat was near, scarcely a solitary figure crawled along the beach. “What is that?” after we had passed Blankanese, said the colonel quickly. “Who are those?” as a group of three of four men presented themselves at a sharp turning of the road, that wound along the foot of the hill close to the shore. “The uniform of the Prussians,” said one. “Of the Russians,” said another. “Poo,” said a third, “it is a picket of the Prince’s;” and so it was, but the very fact of his having advanced his outposts so far, showed how he trembled for his position.