As they disappeared in the recesses of the wall, Night--the stormy, the
eventful, the fatal!--reached its last limit; and the famished sentinel
on the fortifications of the besieged city roused himself from his
dreary and absorbing thoughts, for he saw that the new day was dawning
in the east.
CHAPTER 20. THE BREACH REPASSED.
Slowly and mournfully the sentinel at the rifted wall raised his eyes
towards the eastern clouds as they brightened before the advancing dawn.
Desolate as was the appearance of the dull, misty daybreak, it was yet
the most welcome of all the objects surrounding the starving soldier on
which he could fix his languid gaze. To look back on the city behind
him was to look back on the dreary charnel-house of famine and death; to
look down on the waste ground without the walls was to look down on the
dead body of the comrade of his watch, who, maddened by the pangs of
hunger which he had suffered during the night, had cast himself from the
rampart to meet a welcome death on the earth beneath.
Pages:
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558