UNDER CANVAS
In a short time O'Grady returned, followed by Hoolan, carrying a small
barrel of wine.
"It is good, I hope," the major said, as the barrel was set down in one
corner of the room.
"I think that it is the best they have; one of the girls went down with
Tim into the cellar and pointed it out to him. I told him to ask her for
_bueno vino_. I don't know whether it was right or not, but I think she
understood."
"How much does it hold, O'Grady?"
"I cannot say; five or six gallons, I should think; anyhow, I paid three
dollars for it."
"You must put down all the outgoings, O'Grady, and we will square up when
we leave here."
"I will put them down, Major. How long do you think we shall stop here?"
"That is more than anyone can say; we have to wait for Anstruther and
Spencer. It may be three or four days; it may be a fortnight."
Dick Ryan assisted Terence in the cooking, while Tim went down to get
something to drink out of. He returned with three mugs and two horns.
"Divil a thing else is there that can be found, yer honour," he said, as
he placed them on the table; "every mortial thing is in use."
"That will do to begin with," the major said; "we will get our own things
up this afternoon. We must manage as best we can for this meal; it is
better than I expected by a long way."
Tim now relieved the two young officers at the gridiron, and sitting down
at the benches along the table the meal was eaten with much laughter and
fun.
"After all, there is nothing like getting things straight from the
gridiron," the major said.
O'Grady had got the bung out of the barrel and filled the five drinking
vessels, and the wine was pronounced to be very fair. One by one the other
officers dropped in, and Hoolan was for an hour kept busy. The major, who
spoke a little Spanish, went down and returned with a dozen bottles of
spirits, two or three of which were opened and the contents consumed.
"It is poor stuff by the side of whisky," O'Grady said, as he swallowed a
stiff glass of it; "still, I will not be denying that it is warming and
comforting, and if we can get enough of it we can hold on till we get home
again. Here is success to the campaign. I will trouble you for that
bottle, O'Driscol."
"Here it is. I shall stick to wine; I don't care for that fiery stuff.
Here is success to the campaign, and may we meet the French before long!
"We are pretty sure to do that," he went on, as he set his horn down on
the table. "If Junot knows his business he won't lose a day before
marching against us directly he hears of our landing. He will know well
enough that unless he crushes us at once he will have all Portugal up in
arms. Here, Terence, you can have this horn."
The difficulty of drinking had to some extent been solved by Hoolan, who
had gone downstairs, and returned with a tin pot capable of holding about
a couple of quarts. This he had cleaned by rubbing it with sand and water,
and it went round as a loving-cup among those unprovided with mugs or
horns. When all had finished, the two soldier servants, who had now
arrived with the rations, were left in charge. O'Driscol's servant had
brought in a dozen fowls and a large basket full of eggs, and, ordering
supper to be ready at eight, the officers returned to their camp. They
found that their comrades had done fairly well. Several rooms had been
obtained in the village, and hams, black sausages, and other provisions
purchased, and cooked in a rough way on a gridiron.
"I am afraid that it is too good to last," the colonel said, as the
officers gathered around him as the bugle sounded for parade; "a week of
this and the last scrap of provisions here will have been eaten, and we
shall have nothing but our rations to fall back upon. There is one thing,
however, that is not likely to give out, that is wine. They grow it about
here, and I hear that the commissariat have bought up large quantities
without difficulty to serve out to the troops."
The regiment had a long afternoon's drill to get them out of the slackness
occasioned by their enforced idleness on the voyage. When it was over they
were formed up, and the colonel addressed a few words to the men.
"Men of the Mayo regiment," he said, "I trust that, now we are fairly
embarked upon the campaign, you will so behave as to do credit to
yourselves and to Ireland. Perhaps some of you think that, now that you
are on a campaign, you can do just as you like. Those who think so are
wrong; it is just the other way. When you were at home I did not think it
necessary that I should be severe with you; and as long as a man was able,
when he came into barracks, to walk to his quarters, I did not trouble
about him. But it is different here; any breach of duty will be most
severely punished, and any man who is found drunk will be flogged. Any man
plundering or ill-treating the people of the country will be handed over
to the provost-marshal, and, unless I am mistaken, he is likely to be
shot.
"Sir Arthur Wellesley is not the man to stand nonsense. There must be no
straggling; you must keep within the bounds of the camps, and no one must
go into the village without a permit from the captain of his company. As
to your fighting--well, I have no fear of that; we will say nothing about
it. Before the enemy I know that you will all do your duty, and it is just
as necessary that you should do your duty and be a credit to your regiment
at other times. There are blackguards in the regiment, as there are in
every other, but I tell them that a sharp eye will be kept upon them, and
that no mercy will be shown them if they misbehave while they are in
Portugal. That is all I have to say to you."
"That was the sort of thing, I think, Major," he said, as, after the men
were dismissed, he walked back to his tent with Major Harrison.
"Just the sort of thing, Colonel," the other said, smiling; "and said in
the sort of way that they will understand. I am afraid that we shall have
trouble with some of them. Wine and spirits are cheap, and it will be very
difficult to keep them from it altogether. Still, if we make an example of
the first fellow who is caught drunk it will be a useful lesson to the
whole. A few floggings at the start may save some hanging afterwards. I
know you are averse to flogging--there have only been four men flogged in
the last six months--but this is a case where punishment must be dealt out
sharply if discipline is to be maintained, and the credit of the regiment
be kept up."
O'Grady and one of the other officers called upon the priest to thank him
for his good offices in obtaining the room for them.
"I am afraid from what my man tells me that he did not state the case
quite fairly to you. Our regiment was, as he said, raised in Ireland, and
the greater portion of the men are naturally of your faith, Father, but we
really have no claim to your services whatever."
The priest smiled.
"I am, nevertheless, glad to have been of service to you, gentlemen," he
said, courteously; "at least you are Irishmen, and I have many good
friends countrymen of yours. And you have still another claim upon us all,
for are you not here to aid us to shake off this French domination? I hope
that you are comfortable, but judging from what I see and hear when
passing I fear that your lodging is a somewhat noisy one."
"You may well say that, Father; and we do our full share towards making it
so; but having the room makes all the difference to us. They have no time
to cook downstairs, and it is done by our own servants; but it is handy to
have the wine and other things within call, and if we always do as well,
we shall have good cause to feel mighty contented; for barring that we are
rather crowded, we are just as well off here as we were at home, saving
only in the quality of the spirits. Now, Father, we cannot ask you up
there, seeing that it is your own village, but if you would like to take a
walk through the camps we should be glad to show you what there is to be
seen, and can give you a little of the real cratur. It is not much of it
that we have been able to bring ashore, for the general is mighty stiff in
the matter of baggage, but I doubt whether there is one of us who did not
manage to smuggle a bottle or two of the real stuff hidden in his kit."
The priest accepted the invitation, and was taken through the brigade
camp, staying some time in that of the Mayos, and astonishing some of the
soldiers by chatting to them in English, and with a brogue almost as
strong as their own. He then spent half an hour in O'Grady's tent, and
sampled the whisky, which he pronounced excellent, and of which his
entertainer insisted upon his taking a bottle away with him.
Three days later it was known in camp that two French divisions had been
set in motion against them, the one from Abrantes to the east under
Loison, the other from the south under Laborde. Junot himself remained at
Lisbon. The rising in the south, and the news of the British landing
caused an intense feeling among the population, and the French general
feared that at any moment an insurrection might break out. The natural
point of junction of these two columns would be at Leirya. That night
orders were issued for the tents of the division to which the Mayo
regiment belonged to be struck before daylight, and the troops were to be
under arms and ready to march at six o'clock.
"Good news!" O'Grady said, as he entered the mess-room at four o'clock in
the afternoon, after having learned from the colonel the orders for the
next morning; "our brigade is to form the advanced guard, and we are to
march at six tomorrow."
A general exclamation of pleasure broke from the five or six officers
present. "We shall have the first of the fun, boys; hand me that horn,
Terence. Here is to Sir Arthur; good-luck to him, and bad cess to the
French!"
The toast was drunk with some laughter. "Now we are going to campaign in
earnest," he went on; "no more wine swilling, no more devilled ham----"
"No more spirits, O'Grady," one of the group cut in; "and as for the wine,
you have drunk your share, besides twice your share of the spirits."
"Whin there is nothing to do, Debenham, I can take me liquor in
moderation."
"I have never remarked that, O'Grady," one of the others put in.
"In great moderation," O'Grady said, gravely, but he was again interrupted
by a shout of laughter.
"Ye had to be helped home last night, O'Grady, and it took Hoolan a
quarter of an hour to wake you this morning. I heard him say, 'Now, master
dear, the bugle will sound in a minute or two; it's wake you must, or
there will be a divil of botheration over it.' I looked in, and there you
were. Hoolan was standing by the side of you shaking his head gravely, as
if it was a hopeless job that he had in hand, and if I had not emptied a
water-bottle over you, you would never have been on parade in time."
"Oh! it was you, was it?" O'Grady said, wrathfully. "Hoolan swore by all
the saints that he had not seen who it was. Never mind, me boy, I will be
even wid ye yet; the O'Grady is not to be waked in that fashion; mind I
owe you one, though I am not saying that I should have been on parade in
time if you had not done it; I only just saved my bacon."
"And hardly that," Terence laughed, "for the adjutant was down upon you
pretty sharply; your coatee was all buttoned up wrong; your hair had not
been brushed, and stuck up all ways below your shako; your sword-belt was
all awry, and you looked worse than you did when I brought you home."
"Well, it is a poor heart that never rejoices, Terence. We must make a
night of it, boys; if the tents are to be struck before daylight it will
be mighty little use your turning in."
"You won't catch me sitting up all night," Terence said, "with perhaps a
twenty-mile march in the morning, and maybe a fight at the end of it. If
it is to Leirya we are going it will be nearer thirty miles than twenty,
and even you, seasoned vessel as you are, will find it a long walk after
being up all night, and having had pretty hard work to-day."
"I cannot hold wid the general there," O'Grady said, gravely; "he has been
kapeing us all at it from daybreak till night, ivery day since we landed,
and marching the men's feet off. It is all very well to march when we have
got to march, but to keep us tramping fifteen or twenty miles a day when
there is no occasion for it is out of all reason."
"We shall march all the better for it to-morrow, O'Grady. It has been hard
work, certainly, but not harder than it was marching down to Cork; and we
should have a good many stragglers to-morrow if it had not been for the
last week's work. We have got half a dozen footsore men in my company
alone, and you would have fifty to-morrow night if the men had not had all
this marching to get them fit."
"It is all very well for you, Terence, who have been tramping all over the
hills round Athlone since you were a gossoon; but I am sure that if I had
not had that day off duty when I showed the priest round the camp I should
have been kilt."
"Here is the general order of the day," the adjutant said, as he came in
with Captain O'Connor. "The general says that now the army is about to
take the field he shall expect the strictest discipline to be maintained,
and that all stragglers from the ranks will at once be handed over to the
provost-marshal, and all offences against the peasantry or their property
will be severely punished. Then there are two or three orders that do not
concern us particularly, and then there is one that concerns you, Terence.
The general has received a report from Colonel Corcoran of the Mayo
Fusiliers stating that 'the transport carrying the left wing of that
regiment was attacked by two French privateers, and would have been
compelled to surrender, she being practically unarmed, had it not been for
the coolness and quick wit of Ensign Terence O'Connor. Having read the
report the general commanding fully concurs, and expresses his high
satisfaction at the conduct of Ensign O'Connor, which undoubtedly saved
from capture the wing of the regiment.'
"There, Terence, that is a feather in your cap. Sir Arthur is not given to
praise unduly, and it is seldom that an ensign gets into general orders.
It will do you good some day, perhaps when you least expect it."
"I am heartily pleased, my lad," Captain O'Connor said, as he laid his
hand upon Terence's shoulder. "I am proud of you. I have never seen my own
name in general orders, but I am heartily glad to see yours. Bedad, when I
think that a couple of months ago you were running wild and getting into
all sorts of mischief, it seems hard to believe that you should not only
be one of us, but have got your name into general orders."
"And all for nothing, father," Terence said. "I call it a beastly shame
that just because I thought of using that lugger I should be cracked up
more than the others."
"It was not only that, though, Terence; those guns that crippled the
lugger could not have been fired if you had not thought of putting rope
round them, and that French frigate would never have left you alone had
not you suggested to the major how to throw dust into their eyes. No, my
lad, you thoroughly deserve the credit that you have got, and I am sure
that there is not a man in the regiment who would not say the same."
"Gintlemen," Captain O'Grady said, solemnly, "we will drink to the health
of Ensign Terence O'Connor; more power to his elbow!" And the toast was
duly honoured.
"It is mighty good of me to propose it," O'Grady went on, after Terence
had said a few words of thanks, "because I have a strong idea that in
another two or three minutes I should have made just the same suggestion
that you did, me lad. I knew at the time that there was a plan I wanted to
propose, but sorra a word came to me lips. I was just brimful with it when
you came up and took the words out of me mouth. If I had spoken first it
is a brevet majority I had got, sure enough."
"You must be quicker next time, O'Grady," the adjutant said, when the
laughter had subsided; "as you say, you have missed a good thing by your
slowness. I am afraid your brain was still a little muddled by your
indulgence the night before."
"Just the contrary, me boy; I feel that if I had taken just one glass more
of the cratur me brain would have been clearer and I should have been to
the fore. But I bear you no malice, Terence. Maybe the ideas would not
have managed to straighten themselves out until after we had had to haul
down the flag, and then it would have been too late to have been any good.
It has happened to me more than once before that I have just thought of a
good thing when it was too late."
"It has occurred to most of us, O'Grady," Captain O'Connor said, laughing.
"Terence, you see, doesn't care for whisky, and perhaps that has something
to do with his ideas coming faster than ours. Well, so we are off
to-morrow; though, of course, no one knows which way we are going to
march, it must be either to Leirya or along the coast road. It is a good
thing Spencer has come up in time, for there is no saying how strong the
French may be; though I fancy they are all so scattered about that, after
leaving a garrison to keep Lisbon in order, and holding other points,
Junot will hardly be able at such short notice to gather a force much
superior to ours. But from what I hear there are some mighty strong
positions between this and Lisbon, and if he sticks himself up on the top
of a hill we shall have all our work to turn him off again."
"I fancy it will be to Leirya," the adjutant said; "the Portuguese report
that one French division is at Candieros and another coming from Abrantes,
and Sir Arthur is likely to endeavour to prevent them from uniting."
That evening there was a grand feast at the mess-room. The colonel had
been specially invited, and every effort was made to do honour to the
occasion. Tim Hoolan had been very successful in a foraging expedition,
and had brought in a goose and four ducks, and had persuaded the
landlord's nieces to let him and the cook have sole possession of the
kitchen. The banquet was a great success, but the majority of those
present did not sit very long afterwards. The colonel set the example of
rising early.
"I should advise you, gentlemen, to turn in soon," he said. "I do not say
where we are to march to-morrow, but I can tell you at least that the
march is a very long one, and that it were best to get as much sleep as
possible, for I can assure you that it will be no child's play; and I
think that it is quite probable we shall smell powder before the day is
over."
Accordingly, all the young officers and several of the seniors left with
him, but O'Grady and several of the hard drinkers kept it up until
midnight, observing, however, more moderation than usual in their
potations.
There was none of the grumbling common when men are turned out of their
beds before dawn; all were in high spirits that the time for action had
arrived; the men were as eager to meet the enemy as were their officers;
and the tents were all down and placed in the waggons before daylight. The
regimental cooks had already been at work, and the officers went round and
saw that all had had breakfast before they fell in. At six o'clock the
whole were under arms and in their place as the central regiment in the
brigade. They tramped on without a halt until eleven; then the bugle
sounded, and they fell out for half an hour.
The men made a meal from bread and the meat that had been cooked the night
before, each man carrying three days' rations in his haversack. There was
another halt, and a longer one, at two o'clock, when the brigade rested
for an hour in the shade of a grove.
"It is mighty pleasant to rest," O'Grady said, as the officers threw
themselves down on the grass, "but it is the starting that bates one. I
feel that my feet have swollen so that every step I take I expect my boots
to burst with an explosion. Faith, if it comes to fighting I shall take
them off altogether, and swing them at my belt. How can I run after the
French when I am a cripple?"
"You had better take your boots off now, O'Grady," one of the others
suggested.
"It is not aisy to get them off, and how should I get them on again? No;
they have got there, and there they have got to stop, bad cess to them! I
told Hoolan to rub grease into them for an hour last night, but the rascal
was as drunk as an owl."
There was no more talking, for every man felt that an hour's sleep would
do wonders for him; soon absolute quiet reigned in the grove, and
continued until the bugle again called them to their feet. All knew now
that it was Leirya they were making for, and that another ten miles still
remained to be accomplished. A small body of cavalry which accompanied
them now pushed on ahead, and when half the distance had been traversed a
trooper brought back the news that the enemy had not yet reached the town.
It was just six o'clock when the brigade marched in amid the cheers and
wild excitement of the inhabitants. The waggons were not yet up, and the
troops were quartered in the town, tired, and many of them foot-sore, but
proud of the march they had accomplished, and that it had enabled them to
forestall the French.
Laborde, indeed, arrived the same night at Batalha, eight miles distant,
but on receiving the news in the morning that the British had already
occupied Leirya, he advanced no farther. His position was an exceedingly
difficult one; his orders were to cover the march of Loison from Abrantes,
and to form a junction with that general; but to do so now would be to
leave open the road through Alcobaca and Obidos to the commanding position
at Torres Vedras. Batalha offered no position that he could hope to defend
until the arrival of Loison; therefore, sending word to that general to
move from Torras Novas, as soon as he reached that town, to Santarem, and
then to march to join him at Rolica, he fell back to Alcobaca and then to
Obidos, a town with a Moorish castle, built on a gentle eminence in the
middle of a valley.
Leaving a detachment here, he retired to Rolica, six miles to the south of
it. At this point several roads met, and he at once covered all the
approaches to Torres Vedras, and the important port of Peniche, and could
be joined by Loison marching down from Santarem.
The advanced brigade of the British force remained in quiet possession of
Leirya during the next day, and on the following, the 11th of August, the
main body of the army arrived, having taken two days on the march. The
Portuguese force also came in under Friere. That general at once took
possession of the magazines there, and although he had promised the
English general that their contents should be entirely devoted to the
maintenance of the English army, he divided them among his own force.
Disgusted as the British commander was at this barefaced dishonesty, he
was not in a position to quarrel with the Portuguese. It was essential to
him that they should accompany him, not for the sake of the assistance
that they would give, for he knew that none was to be expected from them,
but from a political point of view. It was most important that the people
at large should feel that their own troops were acting with the British,
and that no feelings of jealousy or suspicion of the latter should arise.
Friere was acting under the orders of the Bishop and Junta of Oporto,
whose great object was to keep the Portuguese army together and not to
risk a defeat, as they desired to keep this body intact in order that, if
the British were defeated, they should be able to make favourable terms
for themselves. Consequently, even after appropriating the whole of the
stores and provisions found at Leirya, Friere continued to make exorbitant
demands, and to offer a vigorous opposition to any further advance.
So far did he carry this that the British general, finding that in no
other way could he get the Portuguese to advance with him, proposed that
they should follow behind him and wait the result of the battle, to which
Friere at last consented. The Portuguese, in fact, had no belief whatever
that the British troops would be able to withstand the onslaught of the
French, whom they regarded as invincible. Colonel Trant, however, one of
our military agents, succeeded in inducing Friere to place 1,400 infantry
and 250 cavalry under the command of Sir Arthur.
The addition of the cavalry was a very useful one, for the English had
with them only 180 mounted men; the country was entirely new to them,
scarcely an officer could speak the language, and there was no means,
therefore, of obtaining information as to the movements of the enemy.
Moving forward through Batalha, and regaining the coast road at Alcobaca,
the British forces arrived at Caldas on the 15th; and on the same day
Junot quitted Lisbon with a force of 2,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry, and
ten pieces of artillery, leaving 7,000 to garrison the forts and keep down
the population of the city. His force was conveyed to Villa Franca by
water, and the general then pushed forward to Santarem, where he found
Loison, and took command of his division.
The British advanced guard, after arriving at Caldas, pushed forward,
drove the French pickets out of Brilos, and then from Obidos. Here,
however, a slight reverse took place. Some companies of the 95th and 60th
Rifles pressed forward three miles farther in pursuit, when they were
suddenly attacked in flank by a greatly superior force, and had it not
been that General Spencer, whose division was but a short distance behind,
pressed forward to their assistance, they would have suffered heavily; as
it was they escaped with the loss of two officers and twenty-seven men
killed and wounded. Their rashness, however, led to the discovery that
Laborde's force had taken up a strong position in front of the village of
Rolica, and that he apparently intended to give battle there.
The next day was spent in reconnoitring the French position. It was a very
strong one. Rolica stood on a table-land rising in a valley, affording a
view of the road as far as Obidos. The various points of defence there,
and on the flank, were held by strong parties of the enemy. A mile in the
rear was a steep and lofty ridge that afforded a strong second line of
defence. By the side of this ridge the road passed through a deep defile,
and then mounted over a pass through the range of hills extending from the
sea to the Tagus, and occupying the intermediate ground until close to
Lisbon. Laborde's position was an embarrassing one. If he retired upon
Torres Vedras his line of communication with Loison would be lost, if he
moved to meet Loison he would leave open the direct road to Lisbon, while
if he remained at Rolica he had to encounter a force almost three times
his own strength.
Trusting in the advantages of his position, and confident in the valour of
his troops, he chose the last alternative. Very anxiously, during the day,
the British officers watched the French line of defence, fearful lest the
enemy would again retreat. By sunset they came to the conclusion that
Laborde intended to stay where he was, and to meet them. The French,
indeed, had been so accustomed to beat the Spanish and Portuguese, that
they had not woke up to the fact that they had troops of a very different
material facing them.
"We ought to have easy work," Major Harrison said, as the officers
gathered round the fire that had been built in front of the colonel's
tent; "the people here all declare that Laborde has not above 5,000 troops
with him, while, counting Trant's Portuguese, we have nearly 14,000."
"There will be no credit in thrashing them with such odds as that," Dick
Ryan grumbled.
"I suppose, Ryan," Major Harrison said, "if you had been in Sir Arthur's
place you would have preferred remaining at Leirya until Junot could have
gathered all his forces, and obtained a reinforcement of some fifty
thousand or so from Spain, then you would have issued a general order
saying, that as the enemy had now a hundred thousand troops ready, the
army would advance and smite them."
"Not so bad as that, Major," the young ensign said, colouring, as there
was a general laugh from the rest; "but there does not seem much
satisfaction in thrashing an enemy when we are three to one against him."
"But that is just the art of war, Ryan. Of course, it is glorious to
defeat a greatly superior army and to lose half your own in doing so; that
may be heroic, but it is not modern war. The object of a general is, if
possible, to defeat an enemy in detail, and to so manoeuvre that he is
always superior in strength to the force that is immediately in front of
him, and so to ensure victory after victory until the enemy are destroyed.
That is what the general is doing by his skilful manoeuvring; he has
prevented Junot from massing the whole of the army of Portugal against us.
"To-morrow we shall defeat Laborde, and doubtless a day or two later we
shall fight Loison; then I suppose we shall advance against Lisbon, Junot
will collect his beaten troops and his garrison, there will be another
battle, and then we shall capture Lisbon, and the French will have to
evacuate Portugal. Whereas, if all the French were at Rolica they would
probably smash us into a cocked hat, in spite of any valour we might show;
and as we have no cavalry to cover a retreat, as the miserable horses can
scarcely drag the few guns that we have got, and the carriages are so
rickety that the artillery officers are afraid that as soon as they fire
them they will shake to pieces, it is not probable that a single man would
regain our ships."
"Please say no more, Major; I see I was a fool."
"Still," Captain O'Connor said, "you must own, Major, that one does like
to win against odds."
"Quite so, O'Connor; individuals who may survive such a battle no doubt
would be glad that it was a superior force that they had beaten, but then
you see battles are not fought for the satisfaction of individuals.
Moreover, you must remember that the proportion of loss is much heavier
when the numbers are pretty equally matched, for in that case they must
meet to a certain extent face to face. Skill on the part of the general
may do a great deal, but in the end it must come to sheer hard fighting.
Now, I expect that to-morrow, although there may be hard fighting, it is
not upon that that Sir Arthur will principally rely for turning the French
out of those strong positions.
"He will, no doubt, advance directly against them with perhaps half his
force, but the rest will move along on the top of the heights, and so
threaten to cut the French line of retreat altogether. Laborde is, they
say, a good general, and therefore won't wait until he is caught in a
trap, but will fall back as soon as he sees that the line of retreat is
seriously menaced. I fancy, too, that he must expect Loison up some time
tomorrow, or he would hardly make a stand, and if Loison does come up,
Ryan's wish will be gratified and we shall be having the odds against us.
"Then you must remember that our army is a very raw one. A large
proportion of it is newly raised, and though there may be a few men here
who fought in Egypt, the great bulk have never seen a shot fired in
earnest; while, on the other hand, the French have been fighting all over
Europe. They are accustomed to victory, and are confident in their own
valour and discipline. Our officers are as raw as our men, and we must
expect that all sorts of blunders will be made at first. I can tell you
that I am very well satisfied that our first battle is going to be fought
with the odds greatly on our side. In six months I should feel pretty
confident, even if the French had the same odds on their side."
"The major gave it you rather hotly, Dick," Terence said to his friend, as
they sauntered off together from the group. "I am glad that you spoke
first, for I had it on the tip of my tongue to say just what you did, and
I expect that a good many of the others felt just the same."
"Yes, I put my foot in it badly, Terence. I have no doubt the major was
right; anyhow, I have nothing to say against it. But for all that I wish
that either we were not so strong or that they were stronger. What credit
is there, I should like to know, in thrashing them when we are three to
one? Anyhow, I hope that we shall have some share in the scrimmage. We
shall get an idea when the orders are published to-night, and shall see
where Fane's brigade is to be put."