He looked back,
though, as he did so. He heard three distinct reports from Keene's
revolver: two of the enemy's skirmishers dropped to the shots, and the
third wavered in his saddle; the rest closed round the fallen man with
leveled lances. The stout sergeant looked back no more; but he set his
teeth hard, and turned out of his way to encounter a stray Russian, and
laid the foeman's face open from eyebrow to lip, with an awful
blasphemy. The spot where Royston fell was so near to the British lines
that those who slaughtered him dared not stay for plunder. Half an hour
later, Davis and two more volunteers went out and brought in the mangled
body of the best swordsman in the Light Brigade.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Not dead yet!
Though the bloody Muscovite spearmen thought they had left a corpse
behind them, and though the surgeons who examined him decided that he
could not survive the night, the obstinate vitality in Royston Keene
still lingered on, refusing to yield to wounds that might have drained
the life out of three strong men. It seemed as if some strange doom were
upon him, such as was laid on the Black Slave in the _Arabian Nights_,
loved by the enchantress-queen; or a Durindarte in the old romance,
where the tortured spirit, enthralled by potent spells, was withheld for
a season from departure, though its tenement was all shattered and
ruined.
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