descended from my station, and with difficulty guided my horse, so as to

avoid the slain.

Suddenly I heard a piercing shriek; a form seemed to rise from the earth;

it flew swiftly towards me, sinking to the ground again as it drew near.

All this passed so suddenly, that I with difficulty reined in my horse, so

that it should not trample on the prostrate being. The dress of this person

was that of a soldier, but the bared neck and arms, and the continued

shrieks discovered a female thus disguised. I dismounted to her aid, while

she, with heavy groans, and her hand placed on her side, resisted my

attempt to lead her on. In the hurry of the moment I forgot that I was in

Greece, and in my native accents endeavoured to soothe the sufferer. With

wild and terrific exclamations did the lost, dying Evadne (for it was she)

recognize the language of her lover; pain and fever from her wound had

deranged her intellects, while her piteous cries and feeble efforts to

escape, penetrated me with compassion. In wild delirium she called upon the

name of Raymond; she exclaimed that I was keeping him from her, while the

Turks with fearful instruments of torture were about to take his life. Then

again she sadly lamented her hard fate; that a woman, with a woman's heart

and sensibility, should be driven by hopeless love and vacant hopes to take

up the trade of arms, and suffer beyond the endurance of man privation,

labour, and pain--the while her dry, hot hand pressed mine, and her brow

and lips burned with consuming fire.

As her strength grew less, I lifted her from the ground; her emaciated form

hung over my arm, her sunken cheek rested on my breast; in a sepulchral

236

The Last Man