Explore "The Call of the Southern Cross, A Romance of Australia" by John Sandes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There was a thick mist and a light rain was falling when the army moved forward at daybreak. Flynn and Verner, who were in the same company, found themselves climbing up the steep hillside together, and as the sun rose just when they reached the crest they could see the British uniforms trickling over and through the hills all around them, and flowing into the valley in a great and ever-growing torrent that soon became a flood.
As Verner and Flynn scrambled down the stony hillside together, they became aware of a lonely little cottage nestling on the flank of the hill in the midst of a small patch of cultivated ground. It was right between the opposing armies. Coming closer to it they perceived the Spanish peasant, who was the occupier of the place, sitting on a wheelbarrow, smoking, and in a shed alongside the cottage was a girl, milking a cow. As the redcoats came swarming down the hillside, she looked up with a startled gaze, and ran to her father.