noon
The dead were thick there -- ten or twelve deep -- French trooper and Bedouin rider flung across each other , horribly entangled with the limbs , the manes , the shattered bodies of their own horses . Among them she saw the face she sought , as the dog eagerly ran back , caressing the hair of a soldier who lay underneath the weight of his gray charger , that had been killed by a musket-ball . Cigarette grew very pale , as she had never grown when the hailstorm of shots had been pouring on her in the midst of a battle ; but , with the rapid skill and strength she had acquired long before , she reached the place , lifted aside first one , then another of the lifeless Arabs that had fallen above him , and drew out from beneath the suffocating pressure of his horse 's weight the head and the frame of the Chasseur whom Flick-Flack had sought out and guarded . For a moment she thought him dead ; then , as she drew him out where the cooled breeze of the declining day could reach him , a slow breath , painfully drawn , moved his chest ; she saw that he was unconscious from the stifling oppression under which he had been buried since the noon ; an hour more without the touch of fresher air , and life would have been extinct . Cigarette had with her the flask of brandy that she always brought on such errands as these ; she forced the end between his lips , and poured some down his throat ; her hand shook slightly as she did so , a weakness the gallant little campaigner never before then had known . It revived him in a degree ; he breathed more freely , though heavily , and with difficulty still ; but gradually the deadly , leaden color of his face was replaced by the hue of life , and his heart began to beat more loudly . Consciousness did not return to him ; he lay motionless and senseless , with his head resting on her lap , and with Flick-Flack , in eager affection , licking his hands and his hair .