第38章 THE GREAT NORTH ROAD(3)

A chorus of voices enforced and explained.It was one of Lord Wellington's heroes.He had been wounded under Rowland Hill.He was Colbourne's right-hand man.In short, this favoured individual appeared to have served with every separate corps, and under every individual general in the Peninsula.Of course I apologised.I had not known.The devil was in it if a soldier had not a right to the best in England.And with that sentiment, which was loudly applauded, I found a corner of a bench, and awaited, with some hopes of entertainment, the return of the hero.He proved, of course, to be a private soldier.I say of course, because no officer could possibly enjoy such heights of popularity.He had been wounded before San Sebastian, and still wore his arm in a sling.What was a great deal worse for him, every member of the company had been plying him with drink.His honest yokel's countenance blazed as if with fever, his eyes were glazed and looked the two ways, and his feet stumbled as, amidst a murmur of applause, he returned to the midst of his admirers.

Two minutes afterwards I was again posting in the dark along the highway; to explain which sudden movement of retreat I must trouble the reader with a reminiscence of my services.

I lay one night with the out-pickets in Castile.We were in close touch with the enemy; the usual orders had been issued against smoking, fires, and talk, and both armies lay as quiet as mice, when I saw the English sentinel opposite making a signal by holding up his musket.I repeated it, and we both crept together in the dry bed of a stream, which made the demarcation of the armies.It was wine he wanted, of which we had a good provision, and the English had quite run out.He gave me the money, and I, as was the custom, left him my firelock in pledge, and set off for the canteen.When I returned with a skin of wine, behold, it had pleased some uneasy devil of an English officer to withdraw the outposts! Here was a situation with a vengeance, and I looked for nothing but ridicule in the present and punishment in the future.

Doubtless our officers winked pretty hard at this interchange of courtesies, but doubtless it would be impossible to wink at so gross a fault, or rather so pitiable a misadventure as mine; and you are to conceive me wandering in the plains of Castile, benighted, charged with a wine-skin for which I had no use, and with no knowledge whatever of the whereabouts of my musket, beyond that it was somewhere in my Lord Wellington's army.But my Englishman was either a very honest fellow, or else extremely thirsty, and at last contrived to advertise me of his new position.

Now, the English sentry in Castile, and the wounded hero in the Durham public-house, were one and the same person; and if he had been a little less drunk, or myself less lively in getting away, the travels of M.St.Ives might have come to an untimely end.