Death to the French (aka Rifleman Dodd) (14 page)

He was dying from one of the diseases of famine or exposure, typhus or plague, or pneumonia- pneumonia, most likely, to judge from his rapid laboured breathing and the fluttering of his nostrils. There were tears in the stunted man's eyes when he backed out of the shelter again and turned to face Dodd and Bernardino; tears which ran down his cheeks and lost themselves among the sparse hairs of his beard.

Bernardino was too young, and had seen too much of war lately, to be much moved by the sight of the illness of an old man who was bound to die rather sooner than later anyway.

He explained that Dodd was anxious to see Santarem, to inspect the cause of the gunfire there. The stunted man shook his head, and indicated his father. He said he could not leave him. An argument developed there in the little clearing, while the light faded and the rain dripped dismally among the branches. Dodd played his part in the argument.

'I go Santarem,' he said, and then, his small vocabulary failing because he did not know the Portuguese for 'cannon' nor for 'see,' he looked out under his hand and then said 'Boom, boom.'

The stunted man nodded; Bernardino had already given quite an adequate account of what this Englishman wanted to do. But the stunted man pointed to his father and shook his head. He would not leave his father to act as a guide to them. Bernardino demanded if they could make their way to within sight of Santarem without his guiding them, but the stunted man shook his head again. There were very many Frenchmen in the way. It would be quite impossible. He could take them by night, but no one who did not know the country could hope to get through. There was nothing for it but to wait for the old man to die; fortunately that did not take long- only thirty-six hours.

Dodd and Bernardino helped the son to bury him- Bernardino very sulky and dodging as much of the work as possible. He looked on it as very unnecessary labour and none of his business; but the stunted man wept bitterly, and constantly bewailed the fact that his father had died unshriven, and without a priest to bury him, and with uncounted years of purgatory before him in consequence. Dodd was not much moved, anyway. His trade was in death, and he had seen much of it of late years. He was engaged in war, and war without death was a quite unthinkable thing. And seeing that England had been engaged in one continuous war since he was a child in petticoats a world without war was equally unthinkable. And Dodd had far too much practical common sense ever to begin to think about such a fantastic notion as a world without the possibility of war. He was far too deeply occupied, moreover, with his present business of killing Frenchmen, or aiding them to starve to death, or tormenting them with disease.

WHEN night fell again after they had scooped the shallow grave in the leafmould and had covered up the wasted body and the white hair, they set out again for Santarem. The stunted man had been speaking the truth when he had said that they could not find the way by night without his aid.

They crept across several fields, following a zigzag route through the rainy darkness, apparently to make sure of their direction by going from one landmark to another-a tree or a disused plough. At one place the stunted man enjoined special precaution. They could just see him in the darkness lower himself down into a drainage ditch alongside a field, and crept after him along it-there was a trough in the bottom of the ditch and they could walk with one foot on each side of the water. Only thirty yards away they heard the challenge of a sentry and the reply of the visiting rounds -apparently they were creeping past a viillage. After a long wait they crept along the ditch. Some distance along they emerged, crept across the pave of the road, and plunged into another ditch. Then there was more creeping and crawling. They crossed a field thick with weeds, apparently, and at last they heard the rushing gurgling sound of the Tagus close at hand. Soon they were on its very bank, and could just discern the dark surface of the water. They crept along above the river for a few more yards, and then their guide checked them, and lowered himself with infinite precaution over the edge. They followed him, and, guided by his whispers and sharp pokes from his fingers, they lay down under the edge of the bank. Here the river rose within ten feet of the level of the surrounding country; it had reached its maximum winter level now. The strip of vertical bank still exposed was covered with vegetation dragging out a miserable existence among the rocks-myrtle bushes, Dodd thought. They afforded very fair cover, and here they waited for the dawn, wet and weary. Bernardino's teeth chattered. Morning came with a mist from the river, which only later dissolved into the perpetual rain which had been falling for weeks now. It was only occasionally that the weather cleared sufficiently to afford a good view. During those bright intervals it was evident that their guide had done his work well. Looking across the arc of a wide bend in the river they could see the white houses of Santarem ranged along the quays of the town, and on the quays they could see a good deal of bustle and activity. Then on the farther bank they saw something which set Dodd's heart beating strangely-a line of red-coats; the watery sun was reflected from the sloped musket barrels. There was British infantry across the river, then-Dodd had seen Portuguese cavalry there a long time ago. The red streak moved steadily along the river bank down stream; as he watched a dip in the contour of land gradually swallowed it up. So that enough troops had been spared from the garrison of the Lines to establish a solid force beyond the river. The French were properly ringed in now, between the Lines and the irregulars and the river and troops across the river. But that still did not explain the cannonade at Santarem; they had to wait a little longer for the explanation of that.

Soon guns boomed from the farther bank, and were instantly answered by guns from Santarem. Dodd, gazing anxiously across the bend, tried to make out at what the British guns were aimed, but it was hard to detect the fall of shot at that distance. Then he saw something else. A long streak of smoke shot from the bank, and described a wide curve across the river, ending among the houses of Santarem. Another followed it, and another, while the fire of the French guns was redoubled.

Dodd scratched his head in some bewilderment before be hit on an explanation of the phenomenon. Rockets! There had long been one or two rocket batteries in the English army, the source of a good deal of amusement to everybody. Rockets were such unreliable and irregular weapons. They might serve to terrify savages, perhaps, or to- Dodd guessed their purpose now. There was something in Santarem which the English were anxious to set on fire. Presumably that something must be within sight of the farther bank, and therefore must be close to the water's edge. Dodd was enough of a soldier to guess what it must be- a bridge or bridging material, boats or pontoons and roadway stuff. Dodd pulled at the bristling beard which had sprouted on his chin during the last few weeks and fell into deep thought.

Rocket after rocket curved across the river, while the guns from Santarem strove to put the rocket battery out of action and the guns on the other bank strove to silence them. In the middle of the action they heard a noise overhead which startled them. They looked at each other in fear and cowered back amid the myrtles. There came a cracking of whips and a clattering of harness and loud orders in French from the field under whose edge they lay. Horses neighed and men shouted. Dodd knew what was happening, but he dared not make a sound to enlighten his companions, even if his command of the language had enabled him to do so.

He knew the sound of a battery going into action well enough. Bernardino and the stunted man did not have to wait long in ignorance. With an appalling crash the six guns fifty yards behind them opened simultaneously. They had been moved up here to take the English in flank. The powder smoke from the guns, keeping low along the ground, came drifting down upon them. It would have set them coughing had they dared to allow themselves to cough. They heard the orders of the officers correcting the direction and elevation, and then the guns roared out again, and again, and again. Dodd was too low down to see what they were firing at, and he certainly was not going to try and find out. They were in deadly peril here in their hiding-place. They crouched down among the myrtle bushes, striving after complete concealment. Bernardino's lips were moving in prayer, but he was stupid, because he allowed the noise to add to his terror; despite his common sense, he could not make himself believe that the appalling explosions added nothing to their danger.

A moment of far greater danger came, all the same, a few minutes later, when someone came to the edge of the river some distance away and looked over at the water. The three of them lay frozen among the bushes-a searching glance from the new arrival might have disclosed them nevertheless. But he was not looking for men; he would have been extremely surprised to find an English soldier and a couple of Portuguese hidden under the very muzzles of his guns. He was looking for a place to water the horses, and the immediate neighbourhood, with a ten-foot drop to the surface of the river, was clearly not suitable. It was at a place three hundred yards away that the horses were eventually led to the water's edge- dangerous enough, but not too much so.

Dodd and Bernardino and the stunted man cowered among the bushes all day long, while the guns roared above them at intervals whenever their target was not obscured, while the horses were being watered quite close at hand, and the rockets still strung their arcs of smoke across the river. As far as Dodd could see, they produced not the least effect. For a rocket to start a fire while a numerous and vigilant fire-fighting party was on the watch would call for a far more propitious combination of circumstances than could ever be expected; and, anyway, no rocket could be expected to come to earth less than a hundred yards from the point aimed at. In fact, in Dodd's opinion, everyone concerned was simply wasting gunpowder.

Perhaps the British officer in command of the rocket battery and artillery beyond the river came to the same opinion as the day wore on, for the firing died away. The battery in the field above the trio ceased fire, presumably because the enemy had withdrawn from sight, and silence descended again, broken only by occasional bursts of laughter and conversation from the unseen artillery men, and by the unceasing gurgle of the eddies of the river below them. Later in the afternoon their good fortune displayed itself once more. They heard the clink and clatter of harness as the horses were put to the guns again, and they heard the whip cracking and shouts of the drivers as the beasts were stimulated to the wild effort necessary to heave the guns out of the earth into which they had sunk under the impulse of their firing. Then the guns jingled and clattered across the field, and they heard the noise of their progress rise to a roar when they reached the paved high road, and the roar gradually died away with the increasing distance.

The battery had departed, and Bernardino, with the impatience of his years and inexperience, began to stretch his cramped limbs as a matter of course; he intended to climb up and look over the edge of the cliff to see if any of the enemy remained above them, but Dodd seized his shoulder and forced him into passivity again. Whether the enemy had gone or not they would not be able to move from their present position until nightfall. To look over the edge was running a risk for no reward save the satisfaction of curiosity, and although Dodd's curiosity in the matter was just as acute as Bernardino's he had no intention of imperilling himself on that account. No comfort of mind or body could compare in Dodd's opinion with the negative comfort of remaining alive as long as duty permitted-this opinion of Dodd's goes far to explain why he had been able to survive five campaigns.

They stayed for the rest of the day immobile among the bushes, wetted through at intervals by the rain. They would probably pay no immediate penalty for that; colds in the head are very infrequent among people living all their time out of doors. Yet they could boast no such immunity from pneumonia or rheumatic fever, and in after years, were they to live so long, they would be bent and crippled and agonized with rheumatism-say in thirty years' time. But men in the early twenties-least of all soldiers-do not often stop to think about possible illness in thirty years' time.

All Dodd's cogitation during the afternoon led him no nearer any definite decision. There was bridging material at Santarem which the English wanted burnt; that made it his duty to burn it if he could. That was clear enough; it was none of Dodd's business to bear in mind the fact that the motive for desiring the destruction of the bridge might be very slight indeed-no stronger than the result of the very ordinary decision that it ought to be a good move to destroy anything that the enemy considers it desirable to construct. If horse, foot and guns had been brought up to burn the bridge, then Dodd ought to try as well; the unanswerable question at the moment was how to do it. He could see Santarem clearly enough, and the towering warehouses on the quays. There were several thousand men there; at night (such must be the crowding in the town) there would be men asleep or on guard all round the stuff, and upon it and underneath it. Reluctantly he decided that it would be an impossible task-as far as he could judge at the moment-to penetrate into Santarem and set fire to the bridge. It might be done by a man not in uniform, but to discard his uniform would make him a spy, liable to the death of a spy, and Dodd, with the usual fantastic notions of military honour, refused to consider it, although he knew well enough that if the French were to catch him this far within their cantonments they would probably shoot him or hang him anyway. Yet, although the business seemed so impossible, Dodd did not entirely put away all thought of it. Some other way round the difficulty might present itself. Prolonged reconnaissance from the inland corner of the wood where they had found their present guide might suggest something- Dodd could not imagine what, but he hoped. So as dusk crept down upon them he made ready with the others for a return to the stunted man's hiding-place.