Chapter I

At nine o'clock or thereabouts in the morning of January 5, 1809, five regiments of British infantry and a troop of horse artillery with six guns were winding their way down the eastern slope of a ravine beyond Nogales, in the fastnesses of Galicia. They formed the reserve of Sir John Moore's army, retreating upon Corunna; and as they slid or skidded down the frozen road in the teeth of a snowstorm, the men of the 28th and 95th Rifles, who made up the rearguard--for the cavalry had been sent forward as being useless for protection in this difficult country--were forced to turn from time to time and silence the fire of the French, close upon their heels and galling them.

A dirty brown trail, trodden and churned by the main army and again frozen hard, gave them the course of the road as it zig-zagged into the ravine; but, even had the snow obliterated the track, the regiments could have found their way by the dead bodies strewing it--bodies of men, of horses, even of women and children--some heaped by the wind's eddies with thick coverlets of white, so that their forms could only be guessed; others half sunk, with a glazing of thin ice over upturned faces and wide-open eyes; others again flung in stiff contortions across the very road--here a man with his fists clenched to his ribs, there a horse on its back with all four legs in air, crooked, and rigid as poles. The most of these horses had belonged to the dragoons, who, after leading them to the last, had been forced to slaughter them: for the poor brutes cast their shoes on the rough track, and the forage-carts with the cavalry contained neither spare shoes nor nails. The women and children, with sick stragglers and plunderers, had made up that horrible, shameful tail-pipe which every retreating army drags in its wake--a crowd to which the reserve had for weeks acted as whippers-in, herding them through Bembibre, Calcabellos, Villa Franca, Nogales; driving them out of wine-shops; shaking, pricking, clubbing them from drunken stupor into panic; pushing them forward through the snow until they collapsed in it to stagger up no more. Strewn between the corpses along the wayside lay broken carts and cartwheels, bundles, knapsacks, muskets, shakos, split boots, kettles, empty wine-flasks--whatever the weaker had dropped and the stronger had found not worth the gleaning.

The regiments lurched by sullenly, savagely. They were red-eyed with want of sleep and weary from an overnight march of thirty-five miles; and they had feasted their fill of these sights. On this side of Herrerias, for example, they had passed a group of three men, a woman, and a child, lying dead in a circle around a broken cask and a frozen pool of rum. And at Nogales they had drained a wine-vat, to discover its drowned owner at the bottom. They themselves were sick and shaking with abstinence after drunkenness; heavy with shame, too. For though incomparably better behaved than the main body, the reserve had disgraced themselves once or twice, and incurred a stern lesson from Paget, their General. On a low hill before Calcabellos he had halted them, formed them in a hollow square with faces inwards, set up his triangles, and flogged the drunkards collected during the night by the patrols. Then, turning to two culprits taken in the act of robbing a peaceful Spaniard, he had them brought forward with ropes around their necks and hoisted, under a tree, upon the shoulders of the provost-marshal's men. While the ropes were being knotted to the branches overhead, an officer rode up at a gallop to report that the French were driving in our picquets on the other side of the hill. "I am sorry for it, Sir," answered Paget; "but though _that_ angle of the square should be attacked, I shall hang these villains in _this_ one." After a minute's silence he asked his men, "If I spare these two, will you promise me to reform?" There was no answer. "If I spare these men, shall I have your word of honour as soldiers that you will reform?" Still the men kept silence, until a few officers whispered them to say "Yes," and at once a shout of "Yes!" broke from every corner of the square. This had been their lesson, and from Calcabellos onward the division had striven to keep its word. But a sullen flame burned in their sick bodies; and when they fought they fought viciously, as men with a score to wipe off and a memory to drown.

A few hours ago they had resembled scarecrows rather than British soldiers; now, having ransacked at Nogales a train of carts full of Spanish boots and clothing--which had been sent thither by mistake and lay abandoned, without mules, muleteers, or guards--they showed a medley of costumes. Some wore grey breeches, others blue; some black boots, others white, others again black and white together; while not a few carried several pairs slung round their necks. Some had wrapped themselves in _ponchos_, others had replaced the regulation greatcoat with a simple blanket. But, wild crew as they seemed, they swung down the road in good order, kept steady by discipline and the fighting spirit and a present sense of the enemy close at hand.

Ahead of them, on the far side of the ravine, loomed a mountain white from base to summit save where a scarp of sheer cliff had allowed but a powder of snow to cling or, settling in the fissures, to cross-hatch the wrinkles of its forbidding face. A stream, hidden far out of sight by the near wall of the ravine, chattered aloud as it swept around the mountain's base on a sharp curve, rattling the boulders in its bed. During the first part of the descent mists and snow-wreaths concealed even the lip of the chasm through which this noisy water poured; but as the leading regiment neared it, the snowstorm lifted, the clouds parted, and a shaft of wintry sunshine pierced the valley, revealing a bridge of many arches. For the moment it seemed a fairy bridge spanning gulfs of nothingness; next--for it stood aslant to the road--its narrow archways appeared as so many portals, tall and cavernous, admitting to the bowels of the mountain. But beyond it the road resumed its zig-zags, plainly traceable on the snow. The soldiers, as they neared the bridge, grunted their disapproval of these zig-zags beyond it. A few lifted their muskets and took imaginary aim, as much as to say, "That's how the French from here will pick us off as we mount yonder."

The General had been the first to perceive this, and ran his forces briskly across the bridge--his guns first, then his infantry at the double. He found a party of engineers at work on the farther arches, preparing to destroy them as soon as the British were over; but ordered them to desist and make their way out of danger with all speed. For the stream--as a glance told him--was fordable both above and below the bridge, and they were wasting their labour. Moreover, arches of so narrow a span could be easily repaired.

Engineers, therefore, and artillery and infantry together pressed briskly up the exposed gradients, and were halted just beyond musket-shot from the bank opposite, having suffered little on the way from the few French voltigeurs who had arrived in time to fire with effect. Though beyond their range, the British position admirably commanded the bridge and the bridge-head; and Paget, warming to his work and willing to give tit-for-tat after hours of harassment, devised an open insult for his pursuers.

He ordered the guns to be unlimbered and their horses to be led out of sight. Then, regiment by regiment, he sent his division onward--20th, 52nd, 91st, and Rifles--pausing only at his trusted 28th, whom he proceeded to post with careful inconspicuousness; the light company behind a low fence in flank of the guns and commanding the bridge, the grenadiers about a hundred yards behind them, and the battalion companies yet a little further to the rear. While the 28th thus disposed themselves, the rest of the division moved off, leaving the guns to all appearance abandoned. The General spread his greatcoat, and seating himself on the slope behind the light company, cheerfully helped himself to snuff from the pocket of his buff-leather waistcoat. Meanwhile the sky had been clearing steadily, and the sunshine, at first so feeble, fell on the slope with almost summer warmth. The 28th, under the lee of the mountain-cliffs, looked up and saw white clouds chasing each other across deep gulfs of blue, looked down and saw the noon rays glinting on their enemy's accoutrements beyond the bridge-head. The French were gathering fast, but could not yet make up their minds to assault.

"Our friends," said the General, pouring himself a drink from his pocket-flask, "don't seem in a hurry to add to their artillery."

The men of the light company, standing near him, laughed as they munched their rations. For three days they had plodded through snow and sleet with hot hearts, nursing their Commander-in-Chief's reproof at Calcabellos: "You, 28th, are not the men you used to be. You are no longer the regiment who to a man fought by my side in Egypt!" So Moore had spoken, and ridden off contemptuously, leaving the words to sting. They not only stung, but rankled; for to the war-cry of "Remember Egypt!" the 28th always went into action: and they had been rebuked in the presence of Paget, now their General of Division, but once their Colonel, and the very man under whom they had won their proudest title, "the Backplates." It was Paget who, when once in Egypt the regiment had to meet two simultaneous attacks, in front and rear, had faced his rear rank about and gloriously repulsed both charges.

At the moment of Moore's reproof Paget had said nothing, and he made no allusion to it now. But the 28th understood. They knew why he had posted them alone here, and why he remained to watch. He was giving them a splendid chance, if a forlorn one. In the recovered sunshine their hearts warmed to him.

Unhappily, the French did not seem disposed to walk into the trap. Their fire slackened--from the first it had not been serious--and they loitered by the bridge-end awaiting reinforcements. Yet from time to time they pushed small parties across the fords above and below the bridge; and at length Paget sent a young subaltern up to the crest of the ridge on his flank, to see how many had collected thus on the near side of the stream. The subaltern reported--"Two or three hundred."

By this time the 28th had been posted for an hour or more; time enough to give the main body of the reserve a start of four miles. General Paget consulted his watch, returned it to his fob, and ordered the guns to be horsed again. As the artillerymen led their horses forward, he turned to the infantry, eyed their chapfallen faces, and composedly took snuff.

"Twenty-eighth, if you don't get fighting enough it's not my fault."

This was all he said, but it went to the men's hearts. "You'll give us another chance, Sir?" answered one or two. He had given them back already some of their old self-esteem, and if they were disappointed of a scrimmage, so was he.

But it would never do, since the French shirked a direct attack, to linger and be turned in flank by the numbers crossing the fords. So, having horsed his guns and sent them forward to overtake the reserve, Paget ordered the 28th to quit their position and resume the march.

No sooner were they in motion than the enemy's leading column began to pour across the bridge; its light companies, falling in with the scattered troops from the fords, pressed down upon the British rear; and the 28th took up once more the Parthian game in which they were growing expert. For three miles along the climbing road they marched, faced about for a skirmish, drove back their pursuers, and marched forward again, always in good order; the enemy being encumbered by its cavalry, which, useless from the first in this rough and wavering track, at length became an impediment and a serious peril. It was by fairly stampeding a troop back upon the foot-soldiers following that the British in the end checked the immediate danger, and, hurrying forward unmolested for a couple of miles, gained a new position in which they could not easily be assailed. The road here wound between a line of cliffs and a precipice giving a sheer drop into the ravine; and here, without need of flankers or, indeed, possibility of using them, the rearmost (light) company, halted for a while and faced about.

This brought their right shoulders round to the precipice, at the foot of which, and close upon three hundred feet below, a narrow plateau (or so it seemed) curved around the rock-face. The French, held at check, and once more declining a frontal attack, detached a body of cavalry and voltigeurs to follow this path in the hope of turning one flank. But a week's snow had smoothed over the true contour of the valley, and this apparent plateau proved to be but a gorge piled to its brim with drifts, in which men and horses plunged and sank until, repenting, they had much ado to extricate themselves.

On the ledge over their heads a young subaltern of the 28th--the same that Paget had sent to count the numbers crossing the fords--was looking down and laughing, when a pompous voice at his elbow inquired--

"Pray, Sir, where is General Paget?"

The subaltern, glancing up quickly, saw, planted on horseback before him, with legs astraddle, a podgy, red-faced man in a blue uniform buttoned to the chin. The General himself happened to be standing less than five yards away, resting his elbows on the wall of the road while he scanned the valley and the struggling Frenchmen through his glass: and the subaltern, knowing that he must have heard the question, for the moment made no reply.

"Be so good as to answer at once, Sir? Where is General Paget?"

The General closed his glass leisurably and came forward.

"I am General Paget, Sir--at your commands."

"Oh--ah--er, I beg pardon," said the little blue-coated man, slewing about in his saddle. "I am Paymaster-General, and--er--the fact is----"

"Paymaster-General?" echoed Paget in a soft and musing tone, as if deliberately searching his memory.

"Assistant," the little man corrected.

"Get down from your horse, Sir."

"I beg pardon----"

"Get down from your horse."

The Assistant-Paymaster clambered off. His vanity was wounded and he showed it; the mottles on his face deepened to crimson. "Beg pardon--ceremony--hardly an occasion--treasure of the army in danger."

Paget eyed him calmly, but with a darkening at the corner of the eye; a sign which the watching subaltern knew to be ominous.

"Be a little more explicit, if you please."

"The treasure, Sir, for which I am responsible----"

"Yes? How much?"

"I am not sure that I ought----"

"How much?"

"If you press the question, Sir, it might be twenty-five thousand pounds. I should not have mentioned it in the hearing of your men----" he hesitated.

The General concluded his sentence for him. "--Had not your foresight placed it in safety and out of their reach: that's understood. Well, Sir,--what then?"

"But, on the contrary, General, it is in imminent peril! The carts conveying it have stuck fast, not a mile ahead: the bullocks are foundered and cannot proceed; and I have ridden back to request that you supply me with fresh animals."

"Look at me, Sir, and then pray look about you."

"I beg your pardon----"

"You ought to. Am I a bullock-driver, Sir, or a muleteer? And in this country"--with a sharp wave of his hand--"can I breed full-grown mules or bullocks at a moment's notice to repair your d----d incompetence? Or, knowing me, have you the assurance to tell me coolly that you have lost--yes, lost--the treasure committed to you?--to confess that you, who ought to be a day's march ahead of the main body, are hanging back upon the rearmost company of the rearguard?--and come to me whining when that company is actually engaged with the enemy? Look, Sir"--and it seemed to some of the 28th that their General mischievously prolonged his address to give the Assistant-Paymaster a taste of rearguard work, for Soult's heavy columns were by this time pressing near to the entrance of the defile--"Observe the kind of strife in which we have been engaged since dawn; reflect that our tempers must needs be short; and congratulate yourself that, if this mountain be bare of fresh bullocks, it also fails to supply a handy tree."

The little man waited no longer on the road, along which French bullets were beginning to whistle, but clambered on his horse, and galloped off with hunched shoulders to rejoin his carts.

The rearguard, galled now by musketry and finding that, for all their floundering, the enemy were creeping past the rocky barrier below, retired in good order but briskly, and so, in about twenty minutes, overtook the two treasure-carts and their lines of exhausted cattle. Plainly this procession had come to the end of its powers and could not budge: and as plainly the officers in charge of it were at loggerheads. Paget surveyed the scene, his brow darkening thunderously: for, of the guns he had sent forward to overtake the reserve, two stood planted to protect the carts, and the artillery-captain in charge of them was being harangued by the fuming Assistant-Paymaster, while the actual guard of the treasure--a subaltern's party of the 4th (King's Own)--stood watching the altercation in surly contempt. Now the 28th and the King's Own were old friends, having been brigaded together through the early days of the campaign. As Paget rode forward they exchanged hilarious grins.

"Pray, Sir," he addressed the artilleryman, "why are you loitering here when ordered to overtake the main body with all speed? And what are you discussing with this person?"

"The Colonel, Sir, detached me at this officer's request."

"Hey?" Paget swung round on the Assistant-Paymaster. "You _dared_ to interfere with an order of mine? And, having done so, you forbore to tell me, just now, the extent of your impudence!"

"But--but the bullocks can go no farther!" stammered the poor man.

"And if so, who is responsible? Are _you, Sir_?" Paget demanded suddenly of the subaltern.

"No, General," the young man answered, saluting. "I beg to say that as far back as Nogales I pointed out the condition of these beasts, and also where in that place fresh animals were to be found: but I was bidden to hold my tongue."

"Do you admit this?" Paget swung round again upon the Assistant-Paymaster.

"Upon my word, Sir," the poor man tried to bluster, "I am not to be cross-examined in this fashion. I do not belong to the reserve, and I take my orders----"

"Then what the devil are you doing here? And how is it I catch you ordering my reserve about? By the look of it, a moment ago you were even attempting to teach my horse-artillery its business."

"He was urging me, Sir," said the artillery-captain grimly, "to abandon my guns and hitch my teams on to his carts."

The General's expression changed, and he bent upon the little man in blue a smile that was almost caressing. "I beg your pardon, Sir: it appears that I have quite failed to appreciate you."

"Do not mention it, Sir. You see, with a sum of twenty-five thousand pounds at stake----"

"And your reputation."

"To be sure, and my reputation; though that, I assure you, was less in my thoughts. With all this at stake----"

"Say rather 'lost.' I am going to pitch it down the mountain."

"But it is money!" almost screamed the little man.

"So are shot and shells. Twenty-eighth, forward, and help the guard to overturn the carts!"

Even the soldiers were staggered for a moment by this order. Impossible as they saw it to be to save the treasure, they were men; and the instinct of man revolts from pouring twenty-five thousand pounds over a precipice. They approached, unstrapped the tarpaulin covers, and feasted their eyes on stacks of silver Spanish dollars.

"You cannot mean it, Sir! I hold you responsible----" Speech choked the Assistant-Paymaster, and he waved wild arms in dumbshow.

But the General did mean it. At a word from him the artillerymen stood to their guns, and at another word the fatigue party of the 28th climbed off the carts, put their shoulders to the wheels and axle-trees, and with a heave sent the treasure over in a jingling avalanche. A few ran and craned their necks to mark where it fell: but the cliffs just here were sharply undercut, and everywhere below spread deep drifts to receive and cover it noiselessly. After the first rush and slide no sound came up from the depths into which it had disappeared. The men strained their ears to listen. They were listening still when, with a roar, the two guns behind them spoke out, hurling their salutation into Soult's advance guard as it swung into view around the corner of the road.