TOO LATE.
"The storm of fight is hushed; the mingled roar
Of charging squadrons swells the blast no more:
Gone are the bands of France; the crested pride
Of war, which lately clothed the mountain side,
Gone--as the winter cloud which tempests bear,
In broken shadows through the waste of air."
Grey dawn came slowly in, stealing over land and sea, as Quentin rode
from the citadel of Corunna.
It was difficult to believe that one night--one short night
only--filled the interval of time since the fierce excitement of
yesterday. Within those few hours how much had happened! Many an
eye that met his with a kind smile was sightless now, and many a
cheerful and hearty voice with which he was familiar was silenced for
ever.
When passing through one of the streets, he came suddenly upon Sir
John Hope, who now commanded the army, and who said, while reining in
his horse, which looked jaded and weary as himself--
"Oh--glad I've seen you, Mr. Kennedy; is your horse fresh?"
"Tolerably so, sir," replied Quentin.
"Then you will oblige me by riding round by the Santiago road, over
the ground where Fraser's division was posted yesterday, before he
advanced to support Paget, and bring off any stragglers you may see
there. We have not a moment to lose, as the French are getting
several guns into position above the San Diego Point, to open on our
transports."
Without waiting for an answer, and as if his expressed wish was quite
sufficient, the general cantered off towards the mole.
No way delighted with this duty, in the grey twilight of the morning,
Quentin galloped through the Pescadera, quitted the outer
fortifications, issued upon the road that led to Santiago de
Compostella, and ere long found himself on that which he had now no
heart to look upon--the field of battle--that vast sepulchre--that
ripe harvest of death and suffering!
The dead were there mutilated in every conceivable mode, and lying in
every conceivable position; some lay in little piles where the grape
had mowed them down. Red-coat and blue-coat, Frank and Briton, the
red-trowsered Celt of Gaul and the kilted Celt of Scotland, lay over
each other in heaps, many of them yet in the death clutch of each
other, but all sleeping peacefully the long, long slumber that knows
no waking. It was a sad and terrible homily!
Muskets smashed at the stock, swords broken, bayonets bent, caps
crushed; belts, plumes, and epaulettes torn; drums broken and bugles
trod flat; half-buried shot and exploded shells, strewed all the
ground, which was furrowed, torn up, and soaked in blood; trees were
barked and lopped by the passing bullets, and hedges were scorched by
fire.
Already the plunderers had been at work; an officer, covered with
wounds, lay stripped, nearly nude, so his uniform had doubtless been
a rich one. He was quite dead, and wore on his left arm a bracelet
of female hair--a love relic; his head rested in the lap of a
beautiful Spanish girl, so dark that she was half like a mulatto or
gitana of Granada, and such she appeared to be by her picturesque
costume. She was weeping bitterly, and over her dark cheeks and
quivering lips the hot tears fell upon the cold face of the dead man.
Her sobs were quite inaudible, for her grief was too deep for
utterance.
Close by, with the medals of many an honourable battle on his breast,
lay a grey-haired grenadier of the Garde Impériale, who had died
about twenty minutes before, and the calm of dissolution was
smoothing out the wrinkles that care, it might be a hidden sorrow,
had traced upon his now ghastly face--so smoothly then that he became
in aspect almost young again, as when, perhaps, a conscript he left
his father's cottage and his mother's arms.
As Quentin rode on many called to him for succour that he was unable
to yield, and to their piteous cries he was compelled to turn a deaf
ear. Many lay wounded, faint and unseen, among the long rich grass,
where they were lulled alike by weakness and the hum of insect life
awaking with the rising sun; and these scarcely noticed him as he
trotted slowly past, carefully guiding his horse among them.
Tormented by thirst, many crawled, like bruised worms, to where a
little runnel ran down the green slope from San Cristoval, and drank
thirstily of its water in the hollow of their hands, and without a
shudder, though the purity of the stream was tainted by blood, for
further up lay a soldier of the Cameron Highlanders, dead, with his
head buried in the stream. He, too, had crawled there; but the
weight of his knapsack had pressed his head and shoulders below the
water, and thus, unable to rise from weakness, the poor fellow had
actually been choked in a hole about twelve inches deep.
No stragglers were visible, and an awful stillness had succeeded to
the roar of sound that rung there yesternight; and now from his
reverie Quentin was roused by the boom of a cannon at a distance.
Others followed rapidly, and at irregular intervals. It was the
French guns above St. Lucia firing over the flat point of San Diego
on the last of the transports and the last of our troops who were
embarking. Hill's brigade had now left the citadel, and Beresford,
with the rearguard, had already put off from the shore.
Such were the startling tidings Quentin received from a mounted
Spaniard, a fellow not unlike a contrabandista, who passed, spurring
with his box-stirrups recklessly over the field towards Santiago. On
hearing this, Quentin instantly galloped towards the harbour.
It was too late now to think of getting his horse off, so he resolved
to abandon it and take the first boat he could obtain. The last of
the troops were gone now in the English launches, and not a single
Spanish barquero could he prevail upon to put off; and so furious was
the cannonade which the French had opened from the headland to the
southward of Corunna, that many of the masters of our crowded
transports cut their cables; four ran foul of each other and went
aground in shoal water. Then, amid the cries, cheers, uproar, and a
thousand other sounds on land and sea, the troops were removed from
them to others, and they were set on fire, while the first ships of
the fleet were standing out to sea, and had already made an offing.
This delay nearly proved favourable to Quentin. A Spanish boatman at
last offered for ten duros to take him off to the nearest ship, which
lay about a mile distant; but just as he dismounted to embark, a yell
of rage and terror was uttered by the crowd upon the mole, and a
party of French light dragoons rode through them recklessly, treading
some under foot and sabreing others.
At the risk of being pistolled, Quentin was about to spring into the
sea, when an officer made an attempt to cut him down, but his cap
saved his head from the first stroke. In wild desperation, with one
hand he clung to the chasseur's bridle, and with the other strove to
grasp his uplifted sword-arm.
"Rendez-vous!" cried the Frenchman, furiously.
"Eugene--sauvez-moi!" was all that Quentin could utter, ere his
assailant, whom at that moment he recognised, cut him over the head,
and he fell, blinded in his own blood.
It was the _last_ blow struck in our first campaign in Spain.
When Quentin partially recovered he found himself supported in the
arms of the young Lieutenant de Ribeaupierre, who was profuse in his
exclamations of sorrow and regret as he bound the wound up with his
own hands, and led him away from the mole, expressing genuine anxiety
and commiseration.
"Take care of your prisoner, M. le Lieutenant," said an officer,
authoritatively. "_Sangdieu!_ we have not picked up so many!"
"I shall be answerable for him. Ah, mon Dieu! why did I not know you
sooner? Why did you not speak first, my dear friend?" Ribeaupierre
continued to repeat.
The captain of his troop gave them a stern and scrutinizing glance.
He was a forbidding looking man, with that swaggering
spur-and-sabre-clattering bearing peculiar to some of those who had
found their epaulettes on the barricades or among the ruins of the
Bastile--a species of military ruffian, whose bearing was tempered
only by the politeness which all military discipline--French
especially--infuses in the manners of men.
"Take his sword away," said this personage, gruffly.
"Eugene, ask him if I may retain it--it was the last gift of Sir John
Moore?" said Quentin, with intense anxiety.
"That is well--you shall keep it, monsieur," said the gruff captain;
"Sir John Moore was indeed a soldier!"
"Am I, then, a prisoner?" said Quentin, with a sigh of intense
bitterness, as he looked after the distant ships, now beyond even the
range of the guns at San Diego, and bearing away with all their sails
set--away for England!
"My captain has seen you--it must be so," replied Ribeaupierre,
leading him into the city; "but prisoner or not, remember, mon ami,
that you are with _me_."
The measured tramp of infantry was now heard, and guarded by fixed
bayonets, some thirty or forty British prisoners passed with an air
of sullen defiance in their faces and bearing. They were men of all
regiments, gleaned up on the field or in the suburbs, and they were
marched towards the citadel. Quentin gave a convulsive start as he
recognised the face of Cosmo among them!
He saw Quentin covered with blood--wounded to all appearance
severely, and a prisoner too; so he gave him a parting smile full of
malignity and hate.
Quentin cared not for this, he sprang forward to speak with him; but
at that moment the blood burst forth afresh, his senses reeled, and
he fainted.
On that evening the tricolour was seen hoisted half-mast high on the
citadel of Corunna, and the British fleet, though "far away on the
billow," could hear the French artillery as they fired a funeral
salute over the grave of Sir John Moore, in a spirit that was worthy
of France and the best days of France's chivalry!
True it is, indeed, that "he whose talents exacted the praises of
Soult, of Wellington, and of NAPOLEON, could be no ordinary soldier."
But there was one in whose heart a blank remained that no posthumous
honours could ever fill up--the heart of his mother, to whom Sir John
Moore was ever a tender and affectionate son, and whom he loved with
great filial devotion.
It was not for some weeks after all this that Quentin learned that
the Master of Rohallion had been sent a prisoner of war to Verdun, in
the department of the Meuse, where his fierce pride having procured
him the enmity of the commandant, he could never effect an exchange;
thus he remained on parole five long and miserable years, even until
the battle of Toulouse was fought; and, in the meantime, worthy old
Jack Middleton recovered from his wound, and was appointed
lieutenant-colonel of the 2nd Battalion of the King's Own Borderers.