Burlesques William Makepeace Thackeray

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Delamere, Tom Delancy, Jerry Blake, the Doctor, and myself, sat down under a pontoon,
and our servants laid out a hasty supper on a tumbrel. Though Cambaceres had escaped me
so provokingly after I cut him down, his spoils were mine; a cold fowl and a Bologna
sausage were found in the Marshal's holsters; and in the haversack of a French private who
lay a corpse on the glacis, we found a loaf of bread, his three days' ration. Instead of salt,
we had gunpowder; and you may be sure, wherever the Doctor was, a flask of good brandy
was behind him in his instrument-case. We sat down and made a soldier's supper. The
Doctor pulled a few of the delicious fruit from the lemon-trees growing near (and round
which the Carabineers and the 24th Leger had made a desperate rally), and punch was
brewed in Jack Delamere's helmet.
"'Faith, it never had so much wit in it before," said the Doctor, as he ladled out the drink.
We all roared with laughing, except the guardsman, who was as savage as a Turk at a
christening.
"Buvez-en," said old Sawbones to our French prisoner; "ca vous fera du bien, mon vieux
coq!" and the Colonel, whose wound had been just dressed, eagerly grasped at the proffered
cup, and drained it with a health to the donors.
How strange are the chances of war! But half an hour before he and I were engaged in
mortal combat, and our prisoner was all but my conqueror. Grappling with Cambaceres,
whom I knocked from his horse, and was about to despatch, I felt a lunge behind, which
luckily was parried by my sabretache; a herculean grasp was at the next instant at my
throat—I was on the ground—my prisoner had escaped, and a gigantic warrior in the
uniform of a colonel of the regiment of Artois glaring over me with pointed sword.
"Rends-toi, coquin!" said he.
"Allez an Diable!" said I: "a Fogarty never surrenders."
I thought of my poor mother and my sisters, at the old house in Killaloo—I felt the tip of
his blade between my teeth—I breathed a prayer, and shut my eyes—when the tables were
turned—the butt-end of Lanty Clancy's musket knocked the sword up and broke the arm
that held it.
"Thonamoundiaoul nabochlish," said the French officer, with a curse in the purest Irish. It
was lucky I stopped laughing time enough to bid Lanty hold his hand, for the honest fellow
would else have brained my gallant adversary. We were the better friends for our combat,
as what gallant hearts are not?
The breach was to be stormed at sunset, and like true soldiers we sat down to make the
most of our time. The rogue of a Doctor took the liver-wing for his share—we gave the