The Adventures of Harry Revel

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

  CHAPTER XXI.

  I GO CAMPAIGNING WITH LORD WELLINGTON.

  The vessel to which they rowed me was the _Bute_ transport, bound forPortugal with one hundred and fifty officers and men of the 52ndRegiment, one hundred and twenty of the third battalion 95th Rifles,and a young cornet and three farriers of the 7th Light Dragoons incharge of fifty remounts for that regiment.

  We weighed anchor at daybreak (the date, I may mention, was July28th), and cleared the Sound. At ten o'clock or thereabouts the windfell, and for two days and nights we drifted aimlessly about theChannel at the will of the tides, while the sergeant--a veteran namedHenderson, who had started twenty-five years before by blowing abugle in the 52nd, and therefore served me as index and example ofwhat by patience I might attain to--filled the most of my timebetween sleep and meals with lessons upon that instrument. From ahencoop abaft the mainmast (the _Bute_ was a brig, by the way) I blewback inarticulate farewells to the shores receding from usimperceptibly, if at all; and so illustrated a profound remark of thewar's great historian, that the English are a bellicose rather than amartial race, and by consequence sometimes find themselves committedto military enterprises without having counted the cost or madecomplete preparation.

  On the third day the wind freshened and blew dead foul, decimatingthe horses with sea-sickness, prostrating three-fourths of the men,and shaking the two regiments down into a sociability which outlastedtheir sufferings. To be sure my comrades of the 52nd (as, with afearful joy, I named them to myself in secret), being veterans forthe most part, recovered or recovering from wounds taken in the landto which they were returning with common memories of Sir John Moore,of Benevente, Calcabellos and Corunna, treated the riflemen with thataffable condescension which was all that could be claimed by thirdbattalion youngsters with their soldiering before them. But the 52ndknew the 95th of old. And, veterans and youths, were they not boundto be enrolled together in that noble Light Division, the glory ofwhich was already lifting above the horizon, soon to blaze acrossheaven?

  Sergeant Henderson did not suffer from seasickness. For no reward--unless it be the fierce delight of tackling a difficulty for its ownsake--he had sworn to make a bugler of me, given moderately badweather: and when the evening of September 2nd brought us off thecoast of Portugal, he allowed me to shake hands over his success.Early next morning we began to disembark at a place called Figueira,by the mouth of the Mondego river. I stepped ashore with a swellingheart.

  But I carried also a portentously swollen under-lip, with a crack init which showed signs of festering. Now there was a base hospital atFigueira, to the surgeon in charge of which fell the duty ofinspecting the men as they landed and detaining those who were sickor physically unfit. I need not say that his eye was arrested atonce by my unfortunate lip. He examined it.

  "Blood-poisoning," he announced. "Nasty, if not attended to.Detained for a week."

  He saw my eyes fill with tears at this blow, the more cruel becausequite unexpected; and added not unkindly:

  "Eh? What? In a hurry? Never mind, my lad--you'll go up with thenext draft I dare say. Jericho won't fall between this and then."

  I was young, and never doubted that even so slight a promise must beremembered.

  Still, that my merit might leave him no excuse for forgetting, Idetermined that it should not escape attention: and finding myselfconfined to hospital with a trifling hurt which in no way interferedwith my activity, and being at once pounced upon by an over-workedand red-eyed orderly and pressed into service as emergency-man,nurse, and general bottle-washer for three over-crowded tents, Iflung into my new duties a zeal which ended by undoing me. Drummersmight be wanted at the front, but meanwhile the hospital-camp wasundoubtedly short-handed. And my hopes faded as, with the approachof Christmas, wagon after wagon laden with sick soldiers crawled backto us from the low-lying country over which Lord Wellington hadspread his forces between the Agueda and the upper Mondego--menshuddering with ague or bent double with rheumatism, and all bringingdown the same tales of short food, sodden quarters, and arrears ofpay. For three days, they told me, the army had gone without bread,and the commissariat crawled over unthreatened roads at the pace offive to nine miles a day. They cursed the war, the Government athome, above all the Portuguese and everything in Portugal; and yettheir hardships seemed heaven to me in comparison with the hospitalin which, though its duties were frequently disgusting, I hadplenty to eat and nothing to complain of but over-work.

  It was not until Christmas that I won my release, and by a singularaccident.

  It happened that after nightfall on the 23rd of December an ambulancetrain arrived of six wagons, all full of sick demanding instantattention; and, close upon these, four other wagons laden withcavalrymen, wounded more or less severely in a foraging excursionbeyond the Agueda, which had brought them into conflict with a casualparty of Marmont's dragoons. The weather was bitterly cold; the men,apart from this, were unfit for so long a journey and should havebeen attended to promptly at their own headquarters. To make mattersworse, one of the wagons had been overturned six miles back on thefrozen road, and the assistant-surgeon who, owing to the seriousnessof the business, had been sent down in attendance, lost his balancecompletely. Three of the poor fellows had succumbed as they lay, ofcold, wounds and exhaustion, and a dozen others were in desperatecase.

  Our surgeons went to work at once, and until midnight I attendedon them, preparing the lint, washing the blood-stained instruments,changing the water in the pails, and performing other necessarybut more gruesome tasks which I need not particularise. At midnightthe young cavalry surgeon, who had been freely dosed with brandy,professed himself ready to take over the minor casualties. The twohospital surgeons, by this time worn out, accepted the offer andwithdrew. No one thought of me.

  I understand that about an hour later as I sat waiting for orders onthe edge of an unoccupied bed (from which a dead man had been carriedout a little before midnight) I must have dropped across it in asleep of utter exhaustion. It appears too that the young doctor,finding me there a short while after, carried me out and laid me onthe ground with my head against the hut. He never admitted this: forI had been attending upon him, off and on, since his arrival, andthat he failed to recognise me might have been awkwardly accountedfor. But I cannot believe (as certainly I do not remember) that ofmy own motion I crawled outside the hut and stretched myself on thefrozen ground, or that, exhausted as I was, I could have walked tenyards in my sleep.

  At all events, the chill of the bitter dawn awoke me there; and witha yawn I stretched out both arms. My right hand encountered--what?--the body of a man stretched beside me! Still dazed and numb, Irolled over to my elbow, raised myself a little and peered into hisface.

  It was pinched and cold. Its eyes stared straight up at the dawn.From it my gaze travelled slowly over the faces of three other menlaid out accurately alongside of him, feet to feet, head to head.

  I sank back, not yet comprehending, gazed up at the grey sky for awhile, then slowly raised myself on my left elbow.

  On that side lay a score of sleepers, all flat on their backs, andall equally still. Then I understood and leapt up with a scream.It was a line of corpses, and I had been laid out beside them forburial at dawn.

  A sleepy orderly--a friend of mine--poked his head out of the doorwayof the next hut. I pointed to the spot where I had been lying.

  "They must ha' done it in the dark," he said, slowly regarding thebodies.

  I suppose that my story, spreading about the camp, at lengthpenetrated to headquarters: for on Christmas Day, a transportarriving and landing some light guns and a detachment of artillery, Iwas sent forward with them towards Villa del Ciervo on the left bankof the Agueda, where, by all accounts, the 52nd were posted.

  Our battery was but six light six-pounders; yet even with these wemoved over the frozen and slippery roads at a snail's pace, the mentearing their boots to ribbons as they hung on to the drag-ropes--forthe artillery c
aptain was a martinet and refused to lock the wheels,declaring that it would damage the carriages. Of damage to his menhe never seemed to think: and I, being fool enough to volunteer--though my weight on the rope could have counted for next to nothing--found myself on the second day without heels to my shoes, and on thethird without shoes at all. Nor is it likely that I had ever reachedthe Agueda in time for the fighting had we not been met at Coimbra byan order to leave our guns in the magazine there and hurry forward toCiudad Rodrigo, where my comrades were required to work the24-pounders which composed the bulk of Lord Wellington's siege-train.

  Having been supplied with new boots from the stores in Coimbra,we pushed on eastward through torrents of rain which convertedevery valley bottom into a quag, so that our march was scarcelyless toilsome than before, and the men grumbled worse thanthey had when dragging the guns over the frozen hill-roads.They had been forced to leave their wagons behind at Coimbra, andmarched like infantry soldiers, each man carrying a haversackwith four days' provisions, as well as an extra pair of boots.But what seemed to vex and deject them most was a rumour thatQuartermaster-General Murray had been sent down from the front onleave of absence for England. They argued positively that, withMurray absent, the Commander-in-Chief could not be intending anyaction of importance: they doubted that he had twenty siege-guns athis call even if he stripped Almeida and left that fortressdefenceless. Moreover, who would open a siege in such a country,in the depth of such a winter as this?

  Nevertheless we had no sooner passed the bridge of the Coa thanwe discovered our mistake; the roads below Almeida being chokedwith a continuous train of mule transports, tumbrils, light carts,and wagons heaped with fascines, gabions, long balks of timber,sheaves of spades and siege implements--all crawling southwards.Our artillerymen were now halted to await and take charge of threebrass guns said to be on their way down from Pinhel under an escortof Portuguese militia; and, taking leave of them, I was handed overto a company of the 23rd Regiment--hurrying in from one of theoutlying hamlets near Celorico--with whom I reached on the 7th ofJanuary the squalid village of Boden, in and around which the 52ndlay in face of the doomed fortress across the river.

  "Here then is war at last," thought I that night, as I curledmyself to sleep in a loft where Sergeant Henderson consideratelyfound a corner for me under some pathetically empty fowl-roosts.Sergeant Henderson in his captain's absence had claimed me from adistracted adjutant who wanted to know where the devil I had comefrom, and why, and if I would kindly make myself scarce and leave himin peace--a display of temper pardonable in a man who had just comein wet to his middle from fording the river amid cannoning blocks ofice.

  Here was war at last, and I was not long in making acquaintance withit. I awoke to find, by the light of the lantern swung from theroost overhead, the dozen men in the loft awake and pulling on theirboots. They had lain in their sodden clothes all night: but of theirboots, I found, they were as careful as dandies, and to grease themwould hoard up a lump of fat even while their stomachs craved for it.Sergeant Henderson motioned me to pull on mine. From my preciousbugle I had never parted, even to unsling it, since leaving Figueira.And so I stood ready.

  We bundled on our great-coats, climbed down the ladder, and filed outinto the street. It was dark yet, though I could not guess the hour;and bitter cold, with an east wind which seemed to set the very starsshivering. The men stamped their feet on the frozen road as wehurried to the alarm-post, and there I walked into a crowd of darkfigures which closed around me at once. For a moment I supposed thewhole army to be massed there in the darkness, and wondered foolishlyif we were to assault Ciudad Rodrigo at once. A terrible murmurfilled the night--the more terrible because, while the few wordsspoken near me were idle and jocular, it ran down the jostling crowdinto endless darkness, gathering menace as it went.

  But the sergeant, gripping my shoulder, ordered me gruffly to keepclose beside him, and promised to find me my place. The jostlinggrew regular, almost methodical, and by and by an officer camedown the road carrying a lantern, and spoke with Henderson for amoment. At a word from him the men began to number off. Far up theroad, other lanterns were moving and voices calling. Then after along pause, on the reason of which the company speculated inwhispers, the troops ahead began to move and the order came down tous--"Order arms--Fix bayonets--Shoulder arms!"--a pause--"By theright, quick march!"

  An hour later, still in darkness, we halted beside the Agueda whilecompany after company marched down into the water. A body of cavalryhad been drawn across the upper edge of the ford, four deep--thehorses' bodies forming a barrier against the swirling blocks of ice;and under this shelter we crossed, the water rising to my small ribsand touching my heart with a shiver that I recall as I write.But the sergeant's hand was on my collar and steadied me over.

  "How much farther?" I made bold to whisper to him as we groped ourway up the bank.

  "Three miles, maybe: that's as the crow flies. But you mustn'ttalk."

  And not another word did I say. We plodded on--not straight for thefortress, the distant lights of which seemed to be waiting for us,but athwart and, for a mile and more, almost away from it. By and bythe road began to climb; and, a little later, we had left it and werecrossing the shoulder of a grassy hill behind which the lights ofCiudad Rodrigo disappeared from view.

  Here the dawn overtook us; and here at length, along the northernslope of the hill and close under its summit, we were halted.

  Sergeant Henderson gave a satisfied grunt. "Good for _The_Division--the One and Only!" he remarked. "Now, for my part, I'mready for breakfast."