"
Knowing that it was best they should be left in quiet, Terence soon left
them and returned to the regiment.
"Well, Dick, what did you think of a battle?" he asked his chum.
"I don't quite know what I did think. It does not seem to me that I
thought much about it at all, what with the noise of the firing and the
shouting of the men, and the whistle overhead of the French round shot,
and the men cheering, the French shouting and the excitement, there was no
time for thinking at all. From the time the skirmishers came running up
the hill to the time when we rolled the French down it, I seem to have
been in a dream. It's lucky that I had no words of command to give, for I
am sure I should not have given them. I don't think I was frightened at
all; somehow I did not seem to think of the danger. It was just a horrible
confusion."
"I felt very much like that, too. It was not a bit like what it was when
we took that brig; I felt cool enough when we jumped on to her deck. But
then there was no noise to speak of, while the row this morning was
tremendous. I tried to cheer when the men did, but I could not hear my own
voice, and I don't know whether I made any sound or not."
A delay of some weeks took place after the battle of Vimiera. The Mayo
Fusiliers were not among the troops who entered Lisbon in order to overawe
the populace and prevent attacks both upon French soldiers and officers,
and Portuguese suspected of leaning towards the French cause.
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