Seeing that our men wavered for a moment, for they were inferior in number, and the English reinforcements consisted of fresh troops, I charged at the head of our weak reserve of cavalry.

The old prince was in the centre, fighting, as he always fights, intrepidly; his son, Djalma, scarcely eighteen, as brave as his father, did not leave my side.

In the hottest part of the engagement, my horse was killed under me, and rolling over into a ravine, along the edge of which I was riding, I found myself so awkwardly entangled beneath him, that for an instant I thought my thigh was broken." "Poor father!" said Blanche.
"This time, happily, nothing more dangerous ensued thanks to Djalma! You see, Dagobert," added Rose, "that I remember the name." And she continued to read, "The English thought--and a very flattering opinion it was--that, if they could kill me, they would make short work of the prince's army.
So a Sepoy officer, with five or six irregulars--cowardly, ferocious plunderers--seeing me roll down the ravine, threw themselves into it to despatch me.

Surrounded by fire and smoke, and carried away by their ardor, our mountaineers had not seen me fall; but Djalma never left me.
He leaped into the ravine to my assistance, and his cool intrepidity saved my life.

He had held the fire of his double-barrelled carbine; with one load, he killed the officer on the spot; with the other he broke the arm of an irregular, who had already pierced my left hand with his bayonet.