THE BATTLE OF CLISSOW 271

“Vour king treats his prisoners well,” the officer said.
“We will do everything we can for you.”

Half an hour later a doctor came to his side, and cutting
open his coat, applied a bandage to his shoulder.

“Ts it a serious wound?” Charlie asked in Swedish.

“Tt might be worse, but it will be a troublesome one; it
is a sabre-cut, and has cleft right through your shoulder-
bone. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“No, I do not think so. I was knocked down in the
dark and I believe stunned, though I have a sort of recol-
lection of being trampled on, and I feel sore all over.”

The surgeon felt his ribs and limbs, repeatedly asking
him if it hurt him. When he finished the examination he
said: “You are doubtless badly bruised, but I don’t think
anything is broken. Our Cossack horses are little more
than ponies, had they been heavy horse they would have
trod your life out.”

A few moments later there was a sound of trampling
horses. They halted close by. The officers drew back,
and a moment later Marshal Scheremetof, the commander
of the Russian army, came up to Charlie’s side.

“Which of you speaks Swedish?” he asked the officers,
and one of them stepped forward. “Ask him what force
was this that attacked us, and with what object.” As
Charlie saw no reason for concealment, he replied that it
was a body of four hundred Swedish infantry and a troop
of horse, with four guns, and that their object was to enter
the town.

“They must have been mad to attempt to cut their way
through our whole army,” the general said, when the answer
was translated to him; “but by St. Paul they nearly suc-
ceeded. ‘The Swedes are mad, but this was too much even
for madmen. Ask him whence the force came. It may be
that a large reinforcement has reached Vyburg without our
knowing it.”