But though the motives which inspired him were very wildly mixed and very uncertain in their origin, there is no doubt whatever as to the deed to which amongst themselves they inspired him that Christmas morning. The Malakoff belched hell. The flying crowds hustled him and threw him twice or thrice. But he was on his feet again, racing towards that prone figure. He dropped into the front trench and trod upon a wounded man who screamed beneath his heel, and climbed out on the further side. The air was musical with hooting shell and singing shot and hissing bullet as if a whole diabolic orchestra were fiddling and bugling. Polson found the fallen body of his foe, and hugged it in his arms, and raced back as hard as he could tear. He tumbled into the trench of the first parallel almost anyhow; but he gripped the man he hated, and in his soul was a great rejoicing. He tore up the opposite side, and came out upon the open slope again, with the unconscious man still in his arms. ‘You’ll ruin me, you devil!’ said Polson, as he ran breathlessly with the wind of shot and shell in his ears. ‘And I’m to report myself to you to-morrow, am I? We may report ourselves to Almighty God together, but _you_ are safe for the minute, I guess.’ He was within a yard of his own post when these mad exaltations of an excited fancy crossed his mind, and at that instant a musket shot took him in the neck and he fell with his burden into the trench before him. CHAPTER XI We swoop, as it were, to the skies, and we drop, as it were, to the very sea bed, and we are seasick to the souls of us, one and all; and of the five hundred men the staunch boat carries, there are a round four hundred and fifty wounded, and a round four hundred who will never see the skies with conscious eyes again. We are bound for Scutari, where an enlightened intelligence, awakened at last to some beginning of elementary necessity, has established a hospital; for Government, as usual in such matters, after five hundred years of more or less victorious prowling to and fro in the world and more of gathered experience than any other body of men ever had in the history of the world, has positively made up its mind to shelter broken bones and sick bodies from the mere inclemencies of the weather.