Explore "A Bird of Passage" by B.M. Croker on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"They laid him by the pleasant shore, / And in the hearing of the wave." / Tennyson.
THE news about Colonel Denis was only too true! He had started for the ranges on Aberdeen one morning about nine o'clock, as his regiment was going through their annual course of musketry, and as he stood in a marker's butt, close to the targets, a native child from the Sepoy lines suddenly emerged from some unsuspected hiding-place, where she had been lying _perdue_, and ran right into the open, across the line of fire. Colonel Denis rushed out to drag her into shelter, but just as he seized her, a bullet from a Martini-Henry struck him between the shoulders, and without a groan, he fell forward on his face dead. Yes, he was quite dead when they hurried up to him. The shock to every one was stupefying; they were speechless with horror; but five minutes previously he had been talking to them so cheerfully, and had to all appearances as good a life as any one present,-and now here he lay motionless on his face in the sand, a dark stain widening on his white coat, and a frightened little native child whimpering beside him.