From the rock plateau some two hundred meters away the file watched the wild shadow play that accompanied the death of Private Strawbridge, dragged clear of the fire with a dozen wounds in his body but still clutching the bent barrel of the stolen weapon. When the figure on the ground had ceased to heave and men rose breathlessly to their feet calling for torches, the partisan chief arrived, staring down at the body on the edge of the scattered fire while around him men gasped and groaned and two of the Englishman’s assailants were dragged half roasted from the fire.
“One mad Englishman,” Castobert said, looking slowly around the circle. “One, you hear me?” He glanced across at the group who had succeeded in beating out the blazing clothing of the two partisans and then beyond the fire to the still form of the man whom Strawbridge had brained against the doorpost.
Nobody answered him. The man with the broken forearm rocked to and fro in agony, and a fourth casualty, stabbed in the thigh by an overzealous comrade, dragged himself into the hut, his hand pressed to his wound.
Suddenly Castobert erupted. “The others? Where are the others?” he demanded. “Are they here? Have you killed them all?” And he kicked the prostrate Strawbridge in the ribs.
Someone said, “They are still camped over in the wood. This one came down alone.”
Suddenly a single shot cracked out and a partisan came running with news that the English party were leaving by the eastern exit and had fired at Benvenito, wounding him in the leg.
They stood around in uneasy silence, waiting for Castobert’s orders. Someone muttered that it would be a simple matter to go up the western path and work around the mountain to catch the Englishmen as they descended into the next valley by daylight, but Castobert seemed not to be listening.
Presently he said slowly, “This one, how many did he kill?”
They told him that three were as good as dead and three others were wounded.
“Six,” Castobert murmured reflectively. “One more than a half company of the French accounted for in the hills.” Touching the body of Strawbridge with his foot, he added, “Get this one away from here and leave the others to the French. Why should we sacrifice men fighting maniacs?”
One of the partisans stooped and pried the bent musket barrel from the dead man’s grasp, studying it with interest. “It is rifled,” he murmured. “With fifty like this we could shoot a hundred Josephinos a day without ever meeting them in the open!”
When it was clear to Graham that Strawbridge had roused the entire camp and was fighting for his life beyond the campfire in the center of the valley, he would have given the order to charge without a thought of what would happen to them if they descended on to level ground. Perhaps Lockhart sensed this, for he laid his hand on the ensign’s shoulder, but before he could counsel him to await attack Watson made his wild dash for the slope, screaming that he would bayonet every partisan in the valley. Gwyneth saved Watson’s life, tripping him up and calling to Lockhart to hold him down, and it was while the three of them were threshing about on the edge of the plateau that Graham realized that the woman was right and that to abandon the higher ground and access to the path would be fatal to all of them.
He ran across and seized Watson by the shoulder, pulling him around and shouting in his ear, “Leave him! You can’t save him now! Get up the path. Everyone get up the path before they attack!” And he helped Lockhart drag Watson to his feet, shaking him and shouting at him in a desperate effort to make the hysterical man understand the uselessness of joining his comrade. But Watson could not see reason and continued to struggle in Lockhart’s grasp, calling them cowards and traitors and bellowing that Strawbridge was the only man among them. Then Graham saw there was no time to waste, for a group of partisans had already begun to mass at the foot of the rocks and their clamor reached the men occupying the plateau. He struck Watson a heavy blow on the jaw and suddenly the Cockney ceased to struggle and shrank against Lockhart, whimpering like a child.
Croyde and the woman were snatching up their equipment, and the boy Curle stood by with a pine branch that he had fanned into a flame. A spatter of small shot struck the branches above their heads, and Lockhart said quietly, “I’ll put a shot over among ’em to keep them at a distance!” Shouldering Watson aside, he leveled his musket and fired into the group, which immediately scattered for cover. Then, with Curle and his torch in the van, they withdrew through the copse and began the ascent, Lockhart half dragging Watson, and Graham bringing up the rear, expecting any moment to be overwhelmed by a rush of partisans.
As they emerged from the trees and followed the track’s westerly curve they could look down on the encampment now alive with moving figures and bright with replenished fires, but there was no immediate pursuit, or so it seemed to Graham, looking over his shoulder as he climbed. Presently the campfires were pinpoints in the valley and the rain that Gwyneth had prophesied began to fall, striking cold on their sweating faces as they picked their way ever higher among the tumbled masses of rock. Soon the path became steeper and the surface was covered with loose shale that made progress dangerous and toilsome. Curle’s torch had burned out by now, but they blundered on for more than an hour until Graham caught up with them on a comparatively level stretch where the overhang of the cliff formed a shallow cave. Here, on Lockhart’s advice, they stopped to await the light that was glimmering behind the eastern range, the moist air striking cold through their wet clothes and each one of them far too breathless to talk. Only Lockhart seemed as steady as ever, taking up his position on the edge of the ascent with his musket crooked over his arm in the same carelessly poised position.
As the light improved, Graham looked across at Watson and saw misery in the man’s pinched face. He said gently, “How did it happen, Watson? What made him go down among them in that mad fashion?”
Watson growled, “They stole his Bess, that’s why! Old Turnip’ead set great store on that Bess. They couldn’t have done nothing worse to ’im, the bastards!” He then seemed to make a big effort to pull himself together and said, “Best mate I ever ’ad, was Turnip’ead! Stick by yer through thick an’ thin he would, not like some of ’em!” And he glanced at Croyde, who was lying flat on his back prostrated by the climb.
Graham thought dismally of their diminishing strength and of his seeming inability to prevent their numbers from being whittled away one by one. They were nine when they set out and now they were five, reduced by almost half in a matter of days, and yet, thinking back, he could not see how any action on his part could have checked this attrition. Morgan had been caught in the open by the lancers, and Fox, of his own choosing, had remained behind to cover their retreat from the church. Lickspittle had been shot by the woman, and Strawbridge had committed an act of suicide by challenging an entire camp in an attempt to regain his wretched musket. There was a kind of devilish pattern running through their adventures, a variation of tramping and scrambling interspersed with short, murderous bursts of action, each episode claiming another victim. They must have tramped at least a hundred miles since the bridge was blown and had yielded up a life for every day’s march, but still they were lost and isolated, hemmed in by these interminable peaks and cut off from their friends by innumerable enemies, among whom they could now number supposed allies operating behind the French lines. Graham wondered if an experienced officer could have extricated the file with more certainty and less cost, but he could not see what alternatives would have suggested themselves to a man like the dead Captain Sowden. Surely the real author of their troubles was the fool who had prematurely fired the explosive charge under the bridge. As he remembered this, rage rose in his throat and he felt a sharp, smarting sensation behind his eyes, as though, at the slightest demonstration of sympathy, he would blubber as Watson had wept for the death of his friend.
Perhaps Gwyneth was aware of this, for she made no attempt to discuss their escape but occupied herself doling out portions of the bread she had taken from Castobert’s table. He took his
share, a mere mouthful, and, masticating it with the thoroughness of a man uncertain of his next meal, he went out to join Lockhart, who was looking back to the path they had traveled and peering into the mist for signs of pursuit.
In answer to Graham’s query Lockhart said, “I doubt if they’ll come after us this road, sir! Likely as not they’ll use the path we come down yesterday and hope to cut us off in the valley, but it’s my belief they won’t stir so long as the French are below. Praise be to God I winged one of ’em back yonder, I heard him yelp!”
“We shall keep well clear of the irregulars from now on,” Graham said shortly. “From the summit we should be able to see the lie of the land. Cover the rear and I’ll take the van, and keep a sharp eye on Watson.”
“Aye,” said Lockhart solemnly and Graham gave the order to march. As the light grew stronger they began to straggle up the tortuous path to the summit, and presently they were completely shrouded in white mist so that it seemed to Graham that they were heading into the mountains of the moon. Then, very abruptly, the path leveled out and at the same time the sun came out, revealing a superb vista stretching for more than thirty miles to the south and west, a country spread out like a relief map, with a series of dwarf peaks glittering in the sun and between them belt after belt of timber hugging the valleys like a dark-green skin. Somehow the sheer vastness of the view brought him a sense of release and his spirit lifted as confidence began to return to him. He stood quite still on the summit, watching the pale sun drink up the mist, and far away to the south, so far that he could not be sure, the sky resolved itself into a harder outline that suggested the sea.
Then Gwyneth was beside him, pointing to a rift in the woods far below, where a bright and continuously rippling sparkle indicated what Graham took to be a torrent. But when he looked again he recognized it as the movement of light on polished metal. Somewhere down there was a metaled road cleaving the woods, and along the road troops were moving, thousands and thousands of men and animals, judging by the width of the arc—a whole army trudging purposefully from east to west.
“The French?” he asked. It was not their presence but their numbers that astonished him.
“Wait,” she replied and knelt, laying one ear to the naked rock and lifting her hand for silence.
“At least an army corps, with siege weapons and baggage train,” she told him, rising, “for they are strong enough to march without flank guards. That is good, you understand, for it means we can go on down to the edge of the woods and take a close look at them.”
He nodded, having learned to accept her infallibility, and one by one they left the ribbon of track, picking their way down a slope that was less steep on this side of the mountains and was covered with scrub almost as far as the summit. They moved forward in a long, extended line, with Lockhart on one flank and Croyde on the other, and as they drew nearer the tall timber they heard a long, continuous rumble rising from the valley below.
CHAPTER SIX
The Torrent
That was the place where he found the first of his new confidence, as though, by descending from the granite of the mountains to levels where vegetation abounded reminded him of the deep woods and shallow streams of home and restored to him the resilience and bright hopes of boyhood. Down here the air was soft and lazy and the rain from the dripping trees caused a continuous murmur that seemed to Graham very soothing after the whine of the wind in the peaks. He said to himself, as he plodded ever downward, We have only to cross their line of march and strike south into the woods on the far slopes and we shall find British pickets in less than forty-eight hours. I won’t lose any more men. Strawbridge was the last and we shall arrive, the woman, the boy and the four of us, in spite of everything. I know this to be true. I shall make it come true! And as he reached the first of the cork trees he threw out his arms, bringing the extended line into a group once more and then into file, with himself leading.
Down here the rumble from the valley below increased to a steady roar. Graham told the others to make camp in a clearing under a giant oak and after a brief word with Lockhart pushed on ahead, threading the dense spread of undergrowth until he reached the lip of an almost precipitous drop of about a hundred feet where the timber fell away to begin afresh on the lower shelf, masking the road. From here he could distinguish individual shouts of the teamsters urging their mules up the incline and the harsh rattle of ammunition caissons above the deeper rumble of heavier transport—guns, no doubt, and perhaps also the siege train that Gwyneth had mentioned. He examined the slope with great care, looking for a way down, and presently he found one where a landslide had exposed the trailing roots of a large tree, making a kind of net that gave access to a straggle of rocks reaching the lower shelf. He worked his way along the cliff and swung himself over the edge, scrambling from hold to hold until he dropped into a clump of flowering rhododendrons, and from here he moved cautiously forward so as to look directly onto the road below.
What he saw amazed him. He had been prepared for a largish body of troops, perhaps a regiment or two, with cavalry and a few field guns, but here was an army, its toiling columns stretching east and west until both vanguard and rearguard were lost in the coils of the road. The spectacle excited and uplifted him, for it struck him at once that here was a unique opportunity to estimate the fighting strength of Masséna’s cohorts. The chance of being caught while so engaged was negligible, for yet another drop of over a hundred and fifty feet lay immediately below, and even if the French threw out flank guards they would have to pass along the escarpment from which he had just descended.
The rain that had fallen earlier in the day had done something to lay the dust, and although it still hung in clouds above the columns, he could see everything passing his viewpoint with the utmost clarity. A long column of infantry was marching by, bowed under packs and moving at what seemed a snail’s pace, and behind them, just rounding the wide curve in the road, was what looked like a siege train of twenty or thirty mule-drawn wagons. Spaces between the bodies of troops were filled with horse-drawn batteries of ten- and twelve-pounder field guns, and ahead he could see the sun glinting on the casques of a body of cavalry bunched across the entire width of the road.
His first problem, he realized, was to estimate how many troops had already passed, for although the road was comparatively straight on his right, he could not see the end of the column. He realized that he had struck the road at a point high in the advance, however, for if a column of this size had been marching around the foot of the mountains all the previous day Castobert’s scouts would surely have brought word of it, and it therefore followed that the march had commenced only at dawn, perhaps four or five hours ago. Troops were now passing him at the rate of about a hundred per minute, marching in columns of four, and a rapid calculation told him that perhaps a corps of men had already gone by. He was tempted to scramble back the way he had come and pass the word to the file to remain bivouacked until he rejoined them, but he did not want to waste the time and effort, so he compromised by worming his way back to the foot of the root ladder, fixing his shako on an isolated stump where it could be seen from above, then hurrying back to his observation point. He guessed that Lockhart’s sharp eyes would interpret his signal and understand what he was doing.
He used the letters taken from the murdered Frenchman for his notes, having found a stub of black lead that Captain Sowden had loaned him to make a list of requisitioned articles an hour or so before he died at the bridge. Hour after hour he lay there, noting and scribbling, while Masséna’s army filed below, three entire corps comprising about 75,000 men if one took into account the corps that must have passed earlier in the day. He was astonished not so much by the numbers as by the latent power of this army, by its complement of guns and baggage wagons and, above all, by the sense of purpose conveyed to him by the massed infantry and the general condition of the cavalry. This was the army, he remembered, that the British had mauled at Busaco a month ago, but there wa
s nothing about the endless columns to suggest that Masséna had taken the check very seriously. Perhaps he had been reinforced from the north and somewhere in this devastated country had found fresh transport and mule teams numbered by the hundred. Graham paused in his note-taking for a moment to reflect on what might happen when this splendidly equipped force reached the sea at Lisbon. It seemed very unlikely that Wellington’s few thousand rascals and mob of half-trained Portuguese could stop such an avalanche, and as he thought this his horizon widened and he remembered that all his life the French Emperor had been marching and countermarching these same men about Europe, overturning everything that lay in his path. Where, he wondered, did the man recruit and train such splendid battalions? And what use were amateurs like Watson and Strawbridge against veterans who had marched over the bodies of every professional army on the Continent? Where would it stop, this vast onrush of military might? He could remember the upheaval caused in the area around his home during the threatened invasion by the French five years ago, when Graham’s portly father had been seen strutting about in the gay uniform of the Fencibles alongside yokels and country gentlemen drilling on the green, but how effectively could a local rabble have checked the advance upon London of the lean pack-laden men now marching below? No more, surely, than Wellington, Crauford and old Tommy Picton could stop them now unless the guns of the fleet took a hand in the business.
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