"Lucius, the horsemen are returned from viewing
The number, strength, and posture of our foes,
Who now encamp within a short hour's march.
On the high point of yonder western tower,
We ken them from afar, the setting sun
Plays on their shining arms and burnished helmets,
And covers all the field with gleams of fire."
Cato, Act v.
Ere noon next day, while the division was traversing the grassy plain amid which lies the ancient city of Merida, the sound of distant firing on their right flank announced the repulse, by the guerillas, of some of the cavalry of Laborde's corps, when making a reconnoissance. The light white puffs of the musketry that curled along the green hill-sides, came nearer and nearer, and it soon became known that the band of the formidable De Saldos el Estudiente, above two thousand strong, had joined the division of Sir John Hope; as the newspaper of Lord Rohallion had it, a measure fully arranged "by the skill and courage" of our young volunteer. But though the army continued its march for several days, no recognition of his service, in orders or otherwise, ever reached him from head-quarters, and happily for himself, he saw nothing of the dreaded Baltasar, who fortunately was left in the rear, with an open sabre cut.
Ribeaupierre's cavalry brigade abandoned Valencia de Alcantara without firing a shot, on its flank being turned, and fell back, no one knew exactly where or in what direction.
Hope's division halted at Merida, a place eminently calculated to excite the deepest interest in the thinking or historical visitor, by its ancient remains; its great bridge of more than eighty arches spanning the broad waters of the Guadiana; the ruins of its Roman castle, which Alfonso the Astrologer gifted to the knights of Santiago, and in the vaults of which Baltasar's guerillas had thrust some unfortunate French prisoners; its triumphal arch of Julius Cæsar, under which the division passed with drums beating and colours flying, and its crumbling amphitheatre:—Merida, of old the Rome of Spain, and the home of the aged and disabled soldiers of the 5th and 10th legions of Augustus Cæsar, whose great pyramid still towers there, amid the ruins of its contemporaries.
There was ample accommodation in the town for the officers of the division; but yet not enough to prevent a dispute about rank, or precedence, or something else, between a Captain Winton of the Borderers, and an officer of the German Legion. So they met about daybreak near the Baths of Diana. The former was attended by Askerne of the Grenadiers, and the latter by Major Burgwesel of his own corps, and at the second fire Winton shot his man dead, Cosmo coolly lending his pistols for this occasion, without comment or inquiry, either of which would have been ungentlemanly, according to the temper or spirit of the service then.
Prior to this event, on the evening the division halted, Quentin, about the hour of sunset, had wandered to the old Roman aqueduct which lies near the city, and he remained for a time lost in thought while surveying its mouldering arches, and the piles of columns, bases, flowered capitals, enriched friezes, Corinthian entablatures, and broken statues, lying amid the weeds and long grass, the remains of the once superb temples, ruined by the Goths and Moors; and perhaps he was thinking of his old dominie at Rohallion, and the worthy pedant's profound veneration for the ancient days of Rome, the mistress of all the then known world.
The place was solitary and almost buried amid old vineyards and groves of now leafless trees. Under one of the mouldering arches, from which, notwithstanding the lateness of the season, masses of luxuriant creepers and trailers were yet hanging, Quentin, leaning on his musket, lingered to admire the scenery and the glory of the golden sunset, which spread its farewell radiance over the vast plain, of which Merida, from its situation on a lofty eminence, commands a view in every direction—the olive groves yet green and waving in the breeze, and the winding Guadiana, while far away in distance, all tinted in dusky blue or russet brown, but edged with flaming gold, stretched the mountain sierras, range over range, towards the north.
From the pleasant contemplation of this evening landscape he was suddenly roused by seeing a pair of fierce dark eyes glaring into his own.
It was the guerilla Trevino, of whom it seems a mockery to give his once prefix of Padre!
"So, senor," said he, with a terrible grimace, "we meet again, do we?"
"It seems so, senor," replied Quentin, haughtily, as he stepped back a pace, "and what then?"
"Only that I find you in very bad company."
"I am alone, senor."
"Well, and you alone form the company I refer to," replied the Spaniard, insolently, and with a savage grin, while the fingers of his right hand clutched the haft of his knife, and his thumb was firmly planted on the pommel. There was no mistaking this action or his air for anything else than open hostility, so Quentin warily stepped back another pace, and glanced hastily round to be assured that no other guerillas were lurking near, and then grasping the barrel of his musket, which was unloaded, he stood ready on his defence against an antagonist who possessed, perhaps, twice his bodily strength.
"What do you mean, Senor Trevino, by accosting me in this manner?" he demanded.
"I mean, hombre, that I have been lately at the Convent of Sant Engracia, and that Donna Isidora has not been heard of there; so, in the meantime, I and two or three others have sworn across our knives to kill you, that is all; leaving to time to reveal what you have done with her."
Something of this kind was what Quentin had long dreaded; but disdaining any attempt to explain or expostulate, and exasperated by the injustice to which he was subjected, he clutched his musket and said sternly—
"Stand back, fellow!"
"Ha! perro y ladron (dog and thief)—you will have it, then!"
With head stooped, body crouching, and knife drawn, the Spaniard was springing like a tiger upon Quentin, when the brass butt of Brown Bess, swung by no sparing or erring hand, fell full on his left temple, from whence it slid very unpleasantly down on his collar-bone, and tumbled him bleeding and senseless on the ground.
After this, Quentin, who was in no mood to feel any compunction about the affair, turned and left him to recover as he might, resolving, until in a more secure neighbourhood, not to indulge his taste for the picturesque or antique, and feeling exceeding thankful that he had not left his musket as usual in his tent.
"You were just in time, sir," said a voice, as Quentin turned to leave the ruined aqueduct; "an instant later and that Spanish thief had put his knife into you."
The speaker was Allan Grange, of the 25th, who, stooping down, took from Trevino's relaxed hand his knife, a very ugly pig-butcher-like weapon. A guerilla, doubtless some friend of Trevino's, was hastening forward at this moment, but on seeing Quentin joined by a comrade he drew back a little way, and so the affair ended for the time; but this was not the last that Quentin was fated to hear of the encounter.
By the ruinous town of Medellin (the birthplace of the conqueror of Mexico), where the Guadiana was fabled of old to rise, after running twenty miles under ground; by the wretched town of Miajadas, and by Truxillo, with its feudal towers and Moorish walls, when the French had ruined alike the house in which Pizarro was born and the noble palace of the Conde de Lopesa, the division continued its march amid rough and stormy weather, and, after passing Talavera de la Reyna—so called from the queen of Alonzo XI., to distinguish it from other places of the same name—halted, on the 22nd day of November, at the Escurial, that magnificent palace, twenty-five miles from Madrid, built by Philip II. in commemoration of the battle of St. Quentin, a holy personage, to whom he solemnly dedicated it.
With his regiment, our hero bivouacked outside the little village of Escurial de Abajo. The night was a fearful one of storm. Over the bare and desolate country the winter wind swept in tempestuous gusts and the rain fell in torrents, swelling all the streams of the Guadarama—for the weather was completely broken now.
In that horrible bivouac poor Quentin lost his blanket—his whole household furniture. Near him lay a soldier's wife with a sick infant; he spread it over both and left it with them; when the regiment shifted its ground next day the mother and child dropped by the wayside, so Quentin never saw them or his blanket again.
Here, as Sir John Moore had foreseen, and as General Hope had stated his fears to Cosmo, the enemy did press forward from Valladolid and Tordesillas, and the advanced posts of their cavalry being reported in sight, strong guards were posted and picquets thrown forward in front of the Escurial.
This forward movement of the French threatened to cut off Hope's communication with Sir John Moore, who was then at Salamanca, and might lose his artillery.
To prevent this, and effect a junction with the main body under the general, Hope marched from the Escurial on the 27th of November, and crossed the long and lofty mountain chain of the Guadarama, the cliffs of which are so steep that the Spaniards of old likened them to straight spindles. Moving by Villa Castin, a market-town at their base, he halted at Avila, on the right bank of the Ajada, where Quentin was billeted in the same house with Monkton, in that dark and narrow street in which the spiritual Maria Theresa was born—"Nuestra Serifica Madre," as she is named by the old Castilians.
The enemy's light cavalry were still pressing on, and at times their carbines were heard popping in the distance, when responding to our skirmishers. It was the gloomy morning of the first day of December; the rain was still falling in torrents, and the sky looked dark and louring.
Save an occasional exchange of shots between outposts and petty skirmishes, nothing of interest had taken place with the enemy, and the toil of this retrograde movement dispirited the troops. Even Monkton, one of the most heedless men in the regiment, was sullen and spiritless. Wearied by their long march, he and Quentin sat in their bare and miserable billet, silent and moody. It was in the house of a hatter, or maker of sombreros, facing the dark and narrow street, which was overshadowed by a gigantic parish church, the bells of which were ringing in honour of the British, and their notes came mournfully on the passing gusts of wind.
It was indeed a wild evening in Avila. The rain was pouring down in one uniform and ceaseless sheet, the wind bellowing in the thoroughfares with a melancholy sound, and the swollen Ajada was boiling in foam against the piers of its ancient bridge.
A miserable meal of tough beef, boiled with a little rice in a pipkin, had been served up by Monkton's servant, a poor half-starved fellow, whose single shirt had long since been reduced to its collar and wristbands, whose red coat showed innumerable darns and patches, and who now regretted the days when he forsook his plough on Tweedside to become a soldier. With their feet planted on a brasero of charcoal, cloaks muffled about them for warmth, and cigars in their mouths, our two warriors ruefully surveyed the bare whitewashed walls of their room, and then looked at each other.
"Rain, rain!" exclaimed Monkton; "what an infernal climate! And this is the land of grapes and sunshine! I've never seen such drops since I was in the West Indies with our flank companies, at the capture of Martinique."
At that moment, amid the lashing of the rain on wall and window, the roar of the wind, and the rush of the gorged gutters, the tramp of a horse was heard, and the voice of Buckle, who was brigade-adjutant for the day, was heard shouting—
"Fall in, the outlying picquets of the 1st brigade—sound bugle!"
But his voice and the half-strangled bugle notes were alike borne away by the tempest.
A heavy malediction escaped Monkton. This worthy sub had puffed at his fragrant Havannah till he had smoked himself into such a soothed state that he was quite indisposed "to be bothered about anything or anybody," as he said; and now he remembered that on halting the sergeant-major had warned him for out-picquet.
He sprang up and kicked the brasero aside, sending the smouldering charcoal flying right and left.
"Out-picquet!" he exclaimed, "and the rain coming down in bucketfuls! Damme, who would be a soldier abroad, while there are chimneys to sweep at home?"
A smart single knock now came to the door, as he belted his sword beneath his cloak.
"Come in—is that you, sergeant-major?"
"Yes, sir," said old Norman Calder, who was muffled in his grey great-coat, which, as he said, "smoked like a killogie."
"Where are these infernal picquets parading?"
"I've just come to show you, sir; they are falling in under the arcades opposite the Bishop's palace, where the staff are quartered. Fresh ammunition has just been served out to all."
"That looks like work."
"Yes, sir; the enemy's cavalry are in force upon the road towards Villa Castin, in our rear."
"We have heard little else since we fell back from the Escurial."
As a volunteer is always the first man for any perilous duty, Quentin buttoned his great-coat over his accoutrements and musket, and set out to join Monkton's picquet, which Buckle was parading, with several others, under some quaint old arcades of stone, above which the houses, with broad balconies and rich entablatures, remnants of the days when Avila was rich and flourishing, rose to a considerable height.
The daylight was nearly gone now, and already the half-drenched and half-fed soldiers looked pale and weary.
"As the weather has been frequently wet, and as the duty of to-night is an important one, you will be careful, gentlemen, to inspect the arms, flints, and ammunition of your picquets," said Buckle; "and as the prickers may not be deemed sufficient to indicate the state of the touch-holes, the butts will be brought to the front."
"Butts to the front," an order then in use, was given by Monkton and each officer in succession, after which the ranks were opened, and every man blew down the barrel of his musket, so that by applying a hand to the touch-hole the real state of the vent was ascertained by the inspector.
"Handle arms—with ball cartridge, prime, and load—secure arms!" followed rapidly, and away went the out-picquets, double-quick, through rain and mire, wind and storm, to their several posts, Monkton's being a mile and a half beyond the bridge of the Ajada, in tolerably open ground, interspersed with groups of little trees.
Under one of these he sheltered his picquet, and two hundred yards in front of it posted his line of sentinels, with orders not to walk to and fro, but to stand steadily on their posts, to look straight to their front, to fire on all who could not give the countersign, and to keep up a regular communication with each other and with those of the picquets on both flanks; and then each man was left for his solitary hour, the time allotted for such duty when in front of an enemy.
About daybreak, after a short nap in the thicket, and after imbibing a sip from his canteen of rum grog—the last of its contents—Quentin found himself on this solitary but important duty, posted on the centre of the highway, gazing steadily into the murky obscurity before him, and thanking Heaven in his heart that the rain had ceased, and that the cold and biting December wind was passing away.