I looked up, and perceived some soldiers in fatigue dresses, followed by a few others who, from their noiseless gestures and sad countenances, I guessed were carrying some wounded comrade to the rear.
"Who is it, boys ?" cried I.
"It's the major, sir, the Lord be good to him!" said a hardy-looking Eighty-eighth man, wiping his eye with the cuff of his coat as he spoke.
"Not your major?
Not Major O'Shaughnessy ?" said I, jumping up and rushing forward towards the litter.

Alas, too true, it was the gallant fellow himself! There he lay, pale and cold; his bloodless cheek and parted lips looking like death itself.

A thin blue rivulet trickled from his forehead, but his most serious wound appeared to be in the side; his coat was open, and showed a mass of congealed and clotted blood, from the midst of which, with every motion of the way, a fresh stream kept welling upward.

Whether from the shock or my loss of blood or from both together, I know not, but I sank fainting to the ground.
It would have needed a clearer brain and a cooler judgment than I possessed to have conjectured where I was, and what had occurred to me, when next I recovered my senses.

Weak, fevered, and with a burning thirst, I lay, unable to move, and could merely perceive the objects which lay within the immediate reach of my vision.