Excerpt
Preface.
This tale is the last from the pen of Captain Mayne Reid, whose stories have so long been the delight of English boys. Our readers may, perhaps, like to know something of the writer who has given them so much pleasure; especially as his own life was full of adventure and of brave deeds.
Mayne Reid was born in the north of Ireland in 1819; his father was a Presbyterian minister, and wished that his son should also be a clergyman; but the boy longed for adventure, and to see the world in its wildest places, and could not bring himself to settle down to a quiet life at home.
When he was twenty years old he set out on his travels, and, landing at New Orleans, began a life of adventure in the prairies and forests of America—good descriptions of which were given by him in his books.
In 1845 a war broke out between the United States and Mexico, and young Reid instantly volunteered his services to fight on the United States’ side.
He received the commission of lieutenant in a New York regiment, and fought all through the campaign with the most dauntless courage. He received several wounds, and gained a high reputation for generous good feeling.
The castle of Chapultepec commanded the high road to the city of Mexico, and as it was very strongly defended, and the Mexicans had thirty thousand soldiers to the American six thousand, to take it was a work requiring great courage.
Reid was guarding a battery which the Americans had thrown up on the south-east side of the castle, with a grenadier company of New York volunteers and a detachment of United States’ marines under his command. From thence he cannonaded the main gate for a whole day. The following morning a storming party was formed of five hundred volunteers, and at eleven o’clock the batteries ceased firing, and the attack began.
Reid and the artillery officers, standing by their guns, watched with great anxiety the advance of the line, and were alarmed when they saw that half-way up the hill there was a halt.
“I knew,” he said in his account, “that if Chapultepec was not taken, neither would the city be; and, failing that, not a man of us might ever leave the Valley of Mexico alive.” He instantly asked leave of the senior engineering officer to join the storming-party with his grenadiers and marines. The officer gave it, and Reid and his men at once started at a swift run, and came up with the storming-party under the brow of the hill, where it had halted to wait for scaling ladders.
The fire from the castle was constant, and very fatal. The men faltered, and several officers were wounded while urging them on. Suddenly Reid, conspicuous by his brilliant uniform, sprang to his feet, and shouted, “Men, if we don’t take Chapultepec, the American army is lost. Let us charge up the walls!”
The soldiers answered, “We are ready.”
At that moment the three guns on the parapet fired simultaneously. There would be a moment’s interval while they reloaded. Reid seized that interval, and crying “Come on,” leaped over the scarp, and rushed up to the very walls....