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TAKING OF THE REDOUBT
49
The colonel was lying covered with blood on a broken ammunition box near the gorge. Several soldiers crowded round him. I joined them.
"Where is the senior captain? " he asked one of the sergeants.
The sergeant shrugged his shoulders in a significant way.
"And the senior lieutenant?"
"Here is the gentleman who came yesterday," said the sergeant in a perfectly calm voice.
The colonel smiled bitterly.
"Well, monsieur, you are commander-in-chief," said he to me. "Have the gorge of the fort fortified at once with these waggons. The enemy is in force, but General C——— is coming to support you."
"Colonel," I said to him, "you are badly wounded."
"A fig for that, my lad. We have taken the redoubt!"