Death to the French (aka Rifleman Dodd) (24 page)

When the bugles blew and the men fell in to resume the advance they did so lightheartedly. They were marching forward, and the French were falling back before them in ruin. They could guess at the triumphs yet to come, even though the great names of Salamanca and Vittoria were still hidden in the future. There was exhilaration in the ranks, and jests flew backwards and forwards as they marched. As for Dodd, he might as well have been in heaven. He was back in the regiment, in the old atmosphere of comradeship and good-fellowship. Up at the head of the line the bugle band was blowing away lustily with half the buglers, as ever, blowing horribly flat. The very dust of the road and the smell of the sweating ranks were like the scent of paradise. The tread of marching feet and the click of accoutrements were like the harps and cymbals. He tramped along with them in a dreamy ecstasy.

At the allotted camping ground the Portuguese guard turned out and presented arms; they were saluting the Ninety Fifth; there was no thought of saluting the man who had just returned from an adventure calling for as much courage and resolution and initiative as any that the regimental history could boast. Dodd would have scoffed at any such idea. He was looking forward to his bread ration; he was hungry for bread. And there would be salt too; it was weeks since he had tasted salt- there had been none with which to savour the stinking mule meat of his recent meals. And there would be a go of brandy, too, with any luck. As he sat and munched, warming himself deliciously at the fire, his eye caught sight of a twinkling point of light far away on a hill-top, beyond the lines of the English fires. He did not think twice about it; it might be the fire of a French outpost or of a party of irregulars.

Actually, it had been lighted by irregulars; in it they were burning Sergeant Godinot to death. Dodd did not know. He did not know there had ever been such a man as Sergeant Godinot. What he did know was that he had borrowed an extra lot of salt from Eccles. He dipped his bread in it luxuriously, and munched and munched and munched.

The End