At ten o'clock on the night of April 6th, 1812, our troops were to
assault Badajos. It was now a few minutes past nine.
The night had closed in without rain, but cloudy and thick, with river
fog. The moon would not rise for another hour or more. After the day's
furious bombardment silence had fallen on besieged and besiegers; but
now and then a light flitted upon the ramparts, and at intervals the
British in the trenches could hear the call of a sentinel proclaiming
that all was well in Badajos.
In the trenches a low continuous murmur mingled with the voices of
running water. On the right by the Guadiana waited Picton's Third
Division, breathing hard as the time drew nearer. Kempt commanded
these for the moment. Picton was in camp attending to a hurt, but his
men knew that before ten o'clock he would arrive to lead across the
Rivillas by the narrow bridge and up to the walls of the Castle
frowning over the river at the city's north-east corner.
In the centre and over against the wall to the left of the Castle
were assembled Colville's and Barnard's men of the Fourth and Light
Divisions. Theirs, according to the General's plan, was to be the main
business to-night--to carry the breaches hammered in the Trinidad and
Santa Maria bastions and the curtain between; the Fourth told off
for the Trinidad and the curtain, the Light Bobs for the Santa
Maria--heroes these of Moore's famous rear-guard, tried men of the
52nd Foot and the 95th Rifles, with the 43rd beside them, and destined
to pay the heaviest price of all to-night for the glory of such
comradeship. But, indeed, Ciudad Rodrigo had given the 43rd a title to
stand among the best.
And far away to the left, on the lower slopes of the hills, Leigh's
Fifth Division was halted in deep columns. A knoll separated his two
brigades, and across the interval of darkness they could hear each
other's movements. They were to operate independently; and concerning
the task before the brigade on the right there could be no doubt: a
dash across the gorge at their feet, and an assault upon the outlying
Pardaleras, on the opposite slope. But the business before Walker's
brigade, on the left, was by no means so simple. The storming party
had been marching light, with two companies of Portuguese to carry
their ladders, and stood discussing prospects: for as yet they were
well out of earshot of the walls, and the moment for strict silence
had not arrived.
"The Vincenty," grumbled Teddy Butson; "and by shot to me if I even
know what it's like."
"Like!" McInnes' jaws shut on the word like a steel trap. "The scarp's
thirty feet high, and the ditch accordin'. The last on the west side
it will be--over by the river. I know it like your face, and its
uglier, if that's possible."
"Dick Webster was saying it's mined," put in Nat, commanding a firm
voice.
"Eh? The glacis? I shouldn't wonder. Walker will know."
"But what'll he do?"
"Well, now"--Dave seemed to be considering--"it will not be for the
likes of me to be telling the brigadier-general. But if Walker comes
to me and says, 'Dave, there's a mine hereabouts. What will I be
doing?' it's like enough I shall say: 'Your honour knows best; but the
usual course is to walk round it.'"
Teddy Butson chuckled, and rubbed the back of his axe approvingly. Nat
held his tongue for a minute almost, and then broke out irritably: "To
hell with this waiting!"
His nerves were raw. Two minutes later a man on his right kicked
awkwardly against his foot. It startled him, and he cursed furiously.
"Hold hard, Spuds, my boy," said the man cheerfully; "you ain't Lord
Wellington, nor his next-of-kin, to be makin' all the noise."
Teddy Butson wagged his head solemnly at a light which showed foggily
for a moment on the distant ramparts.
"All right," said he, "you----town! Little you know 'tis Teddy's
birthday."
"There will be wine," said Dave, dreamily.
"Lashins of it; wine and women, and loot things. I wonder how our boys
are feeling on the right? What's that?"--as a light shot up over the
ridge to the eastward. "Wish I could see what's doing over there. My
belief we're only put up for a feint."
"O hush it, you royal mill-clappers!" This came from the darkness
behind--from some man of the 30th, no doubt.
The voice was tense, with a note of nervousness in it, which Nat
recognised at once. He turned with a sudden desire to see the
speaker's face. Here was one who felt as he did, one who could
understand him, but his eyes sought in vain among the lines of
glimmering black shakos.
"Silence in the ranks!" Two officers came forward, talking together
and pausing to watch the curious light now rising and sinking and
rising again in the sky over the eastern ridges. "They must have
caught sight of our fellows--listen, wasn't that a cheer? What time is
it?" The officer was Captain Hopkins commanding Nat's Company, but now
in charge of the stormers. A voice hailed him, and he ran back. "Yes,
sir, I think so decidedly," Nat heard him saying, and he came running
clutching his sword sheath. "Silence men--the brigade will advance."
The Portuguese picked up and shouldered their ladders: the orders were
given, and the columns began to move down the slope. For a while they
could hear the tramp of the other brigade moving parallel with them on
the other side of the knoll, then fainter and fainter as it wheeled
aside and down the gorge to the right. At the foot of the slope they
opened a view up the gorge lit for a moment by a flare burning on the
ramparts of the Pardaleras, and saw their comrades moving down and
across the bottom like a stream of red lava pouring towards the foot.
The flare died down and our brigade struck away to the left over the
level country. On this side Badajos remained dark and silent.
They were marching quickly, yet the pace did not satisfy Nat. He
wanted to be through with it, to come face to face with the worst
and know it. And yet he feared it abominably. For two years he had
contrived to hide his secret. He had marched, counter-marched, fed,
slept, and fought with his comrades; had dodged with them behind
cover, loaded, fired, charged with them; had behaved outwardly like a
decent soldier, but almost always with a sickening void in the pit of
the stomach. Once or twice in particularly bad moments he had caught
himself blubbering, and with a deadly shame. He had not an idea that
at least a dozen of his comrades--among them Dave and Teddy--had seen
it, and thought nothing of it; still less did he imagine that those
had been his most courageous moments. Soldiers fight differently.
Teddy Butson, for instance, talked all the time until his tongue
swelled, and then he barked like a dog. Dave shut his teeth and
groaned. But these symptoms escaped Nat, whose habit was to think all
the while of himself. Of one thing he felt sure, that he had never yet
been anything but glad to hear the recall sounded.
Well, so far he had escaped. Heaven knew how he had managed it; he
only knew that the last two years had been as long as fifty, and he
seemed to have been living since the beginning of the world. But here
he was, and actually keeping step with a storming party. He kept his
eyes on Dave's long lean back immediately in front and trudged on,
divided between an insane desire to know of what Dave was thinking,
and an equally insane wonder what Dave's body might be worth to him as
cover.
What was the silly word capering in his head? "Mill-clappers." Why on
earth "Mill-clappers?" It put him in mind of home: but he had no silly
tender thoughts to waste on home, or the folks there. He had never
written to them. If they should happen on the copy of the Gazette--and
the chances were hundred to one against it--the name of Nathaniel
Varcoe among the killed or wounded would mean nothing to them. He
tramped on, chewing his fancy, and extracted this from it: "A man with
never a friend at home hasn't even an excuse to be a coward, curse
it!"
Suddenly the column halted, in a bank of fog through which his ear
caught the lazy ripple of water. He woke up with a start. The fog was
all about them.
"What's this?" he demanded aloud; then, with a catch of his breath,
"Mines?"
"Eh, be quiet," said Teddy Butson at his elbow; "listen to yonder."
And the word was hardly out when an explosion split the sky and was
followed by peal after peal of musketry. Nat had a swift vision of a
high black wall against a background of flame, and then night came
down again as you might close a shutter. But the musketry continued.
"That will be at the breaches," Dave flung the words over his left
shoulder. Then followed another flash and another explosion. This
time, however, the light, though less vivid than the first flash, did
not vanish. While he wondered at this Nat saw first of all the rim of
the moon through the slant of an embrasure, and then Teddy's pale but
cheerful face.
The head of the column had been halted a few yards only from a
breastwork, with a stockade above it and a _chevaux de frise_ on top
of all. As far as knowledge of his whereabouts went, Nat might have
been east, west, north or south of Badajos, or somewhere in another
planet. But the past two years had somehow taught him to divine that
behind this ugly obstruction lay a covered way with a guard house. And
sure enough the men, keeping dead silence now, could hear the French
soldiers chatting in that unseen guard house and laughing.
"Now's the time." Nat heard the word passed back by the young engineer
officer who had crept forward to reconnoitre: and then an order given
in Portuguese.
"Ay, bring up the ladders, you greasers, and let's put it through."
This from Teddy Butson chafing by Nat's side.
The two Portuguese companies came forward with the ladders as the
storming party moved up to the gateway. And just at that moment there
the sentry let off his alarm shot. It set all within the San Vincente
bastion moving and whirring like the works of a mechanical toy; feet
came running along the covered way; muskets clinked on the stone
parapet; tongues of fire spat forth from the embrasures; and then,
as the musketry quickened, a flash and a roar lifted the glacis away
behind, to the right of our column, so near that the wind of it drove
our men sideways.
"All right, Johnny," Dave grunted, recovering himself as the clods of
earth began to fall: "Blaze away, my silly ducks--we're not there!"
But the Portuguese companies as the mine exploded cast down the
ladders and ran. Half a dozen came charging back along the column's
right flank, and our soldiers cursed and struck at them as they fled.
But the curses were as nothing beside those of the Portuguese officers
striving to rally their men.
"My word," said Teddy. "Hear them scandalous greasers! It's poor talk,
is English."
"On with you, lads"--it was Walker himself who shouted. "Pick up the
ladders, and on with you!"
They hardly waited for the word, but, shouldering the ladders, ran
forward through the dropping bullets to the gate, cheering and cheered
by the rear ranks.
But they flung themselves in vain on the gate. On its iron-bound and
iron-studded framework their axes made no impression. A dozen men
charged it, using a ladder as a battering ram. "Aisy with that, ye
blind ijjits!" yelled an Irish sergeant. "Ye'll be needin' them
ladders prisintly!" Our three privates found themselves in the crowd
surging towards the breastwork to the right of the gate. "Nip on my
shoulders, Teddy lad," grunted McInnes, and Teddy nipped up and began
hacking at the _chevaux de frise_ with his axe. "That's av ut, bhoys,"
yelled the Irish sergeant again. "Lave them spoikes an' go for the
stockade. Good for you, little man--whirro!" Nat by this time was on
a comrade's back, and using his axe for dear life; one of twenty men
hacking, ripping, tearing down the wooden stakes. But it was Teddy who
wriggled through first with Dave at his heels. The man beneath Nat
gave a heave with his shoulders and shot him through his gap, a
splinter tearing his cheek open. He fell head foremost sprawling down
the slippery slope of the ditch.
While he picked himself up and stretched out a hand to recover his axe
a bullet struck the blade of it--ping! He caught up the axe and ran
his finger over it stupidly. Phut--another bullet spat into the soft
earth behind his shoulder. Then he understood. A fellow came tumbling
through the gap, pitched exactly where Nat had been sprawling a moment
before, rose to his knees, and then with a quiet bubbling sound lay
down again.
"Ugh! he would be killed--he must get out of this!" But there was no
cover unless he found it across the ditch and close under the high
stone curtain. They would be dropping stones, beams, fire barrels; but
at least he would be out of the reach of the bullets. He forgot the
chance--the certainty--of an enfilading fire from the two bastions.
His one desire was to get across and pick some place of shelter.
But by this time the men were pouring in behind and fast filling the
ditch. A fire-ball came crashing over the rampart, rolled down the
grass slope and lay sputtering, and in the infernal glare he saw all
his comrades' faces--every detail of their dress down to the moulded
pattern on their buttons. "Fourth! Fourth!" some one shouted, and then
voice and vision were caught up and drowned together in a hell of
musketry. He must win across or be carried he knew not where by the
brute pressure of the crowd. A cry broke from him and he ran, waving
his axe, plunged down the slope and across. On the further slope an
officer caught him up and scrambled beside him. "Whirro, Spuds! After
him, boys!" sang out Teddy Butson. But Spuds did not hear.
He and the officer were at the top of the turf--at the foot of the
curtain. "Ladders! Ladders!" He caught hold of the first as it was
pushed up and helped--now the centre of a small crowd--to plant it
against the wall. Then he fell back, mopping his forehead, and feeling
his torn cheek. What the devil were they groaning at? Short? The
ladder too short? He stared up foolishly. The wall was thirty feet
high perhaps and the ladder ten feet short of that or more. "Heads!"
A heavy beam crashed down, snapping the foot of the ladder like a
cabbage stump. Away to the left a group of men were planting another.
Half a dozen dropped while he watched them. Why in the world were they
dropping like that? He stared beyond and saw the reason. The French
marksmen in the bastion were sweeping the face of the curtain with
their cross fire--those cursed bullets again! And the ladder did not
reach, after all. O it was foolishness--flinging away men like this
for no earthly good! Why not throw up the business and go home? Why
didn't somebody stop those silly bugles sounding the Advance?
There they went again! It was enough to drive a man mad!
He turned and ran down the slope a short way. For the moment he held a
grip on himself, but it was slackening, and in another half-minute
he would have lost it and run in mere blind horror. But in the first
group he blundered upon were Dave and Teddy, and a score of the King's
Own, with a couple of ladders between them; and better still, they
were listening to Captain Hopkins, who waved an arm and pointed to an
embrasure to the left. Nat, pulling himself up and staring with the
rest, saw that no gun stood in this embrasure, only a gabion. In a
moment he was climbing the slope again; if a man must die, there's
comfort at least in company. He bore a hand in planting the two
ladders; a third was fetched--heaven knew whence or how--and planted
beside them, and up the men swarmed, three abreast, Dave leading on
the right-hand one, at the foot of which Nat hung back and swayed. He
heard Dave's long sigh, the sigh, the sob almost, of desire answered
at last. He watched him as he mounted. The ladders were still too
short, and the leader on each must climb on the second man's shoulders
to get hand-hold on the coping. In that moment he might be clubbed on
the head, defenceless. On the middle ladder a young officer of the
30th mounted by Dave's side. Nat turned his head away, and as he did
so a rush of men, galled by the fire from the bastion to the right,
came on him like a wave, and swept him up the first four rungs.
He was in for it now. Go back he could not, and he followed the tall
Royal ahead, whose heels scraped against his breast buttons, and once
or twice bruised him in the face; followed up, wondering what face of
death would meet him at the top, where men were yelling and jabbering
in three languages--French, English, and that tongue which belongs
equally to men and brutes at close quarters and killing.
Something came sliding down the ladder. The man in front of Nat ducked
his head; Nat ducked too; but the body slid sideways before it reached
them and dropped plumb--the inert lump which had been Dave McInnes.
His shako, spinning straight down the ladder, struck Nat on the
shoulder and leaped off it down into darkness.
He saw other men drop; he saw Teddy Butson parallel with him on the
far ladder, and mounting with him step for step--now earlier, now
later, but level with him most of the time. They would meet at the
embrasure; find together whatever waited for them there. Nat was
sobbing by this time--sweat and tears together running down the caked
blood on his cheek--but he did not know it.
He had almost reached the top when a sudden pressure above forced his
feet off the rung and his body over the ladder's side; and there he
dangled, hooked by his armpit. Someone grabbed his leg, and, pulling
him into place, thrust him up over the shoulders of the tall Royal in
front. He saw the leader on the middle ladder go down under a clubbed
blow which burst through his japanned shako-cover, and then a hand
came down to help him.
"Spuds, O Spuds!"
It was Teddy reaching down from the coping to help him, and he paid
for it with his life. The two wriggled into the embrasure together,
Nat's head and shoulders under Teddy's right arm. Nat did not see the
bayonet thrust given, but heard a low grunt, as he and his friend's
corpse toppled over the coping together and into Badajos.
He rose on his knees, caught a man by the leg, flung him, and as the
fellow clutched his musket, wrenched the bayonet from it and plunged
it into his body. While the Frenchman heaved, he pulled out the weapon
for another stab, dropped sprawling on his enemy's chest, and the
first wave of the storming party broke over him, beating the breath
out of him, and passed on.
Yet he managed to wriggle his body from under this rush of feet, and,
by-and-bye, to raise himself, still grasping the sidearm. Men of the
4th were pouring thick and fast through the embrasure, and turning to
the right in pursuit of the enemy now running along the curve of the
ramparts. A few only pressed straight forward to silence the musketry
jetting and crackling from the upper windows of two houses facing on
the fortifications.
Nat staggered down after them, but turned as soon as he gained the
roadway, and, passing to the right, plunged down a black side street.
An insane notion possessed him of taking the two houses in the rear,
and as he went he shouted to the 4th to follow him. No one paid him
the smallest attention, and presently he was alone in the darkness,
rolling like a drunkard, shaken by his sobs, but still shouting and
brandishing his sidearm. He clattered against a high blank wall.
Still he lurched forward over uneven cobbles. He had forgotten his
design upon the two houses, but a light shone at the end of this dark
lane, and he made for it, gained it, and found himself in a wider
street. And there the enchantment fell on him.
For the street was empty, utterly empty, yet brilliantly illuminated.
Not a soul could he see: yet in house after house as he passed lights
shone from every window, in the lower floors behind blinds or curtains
which hid the inmates. It was as if Badajos had arrayed itself for
a fête; and still, as he staggered forward a low buzz, a whisper of
voices surrounded him, and now and again at the sound of his footstep
on the cobbles a lattice would open gently and be as gently re-shut.
Hundreds of eyes were peering at him, the one British soldier in a
bewitched city; hundreds of unseen eyes, stealthy, expectant. And
always ahead of him, faint and distant, sounded the bugles and the
yells around the Trinidad and the breaches.
He stood alone in the great square. While he paused at the corner, his
eyes following the rows of mysterious lights from house to house, from
storey to storey, the regular tramp of feet fell on his ears and a
company of Foot marched down into the moonlight patch facing him and
grounded arms with a clatter. They were men of his own regiment, and
they formed up in the moonlight like a company of ghosts. One or
two shots were fired at them, low down, from the sills of a line
of doorways to his right; but no citizen showed himself and no one
appeared to be hit. And ever from the direction of the Trinidad came
the low roar of combat and the high notes of the bugles.
He was creeping along the side of the square towards an outlet at its
north-east corner, when the company got into motion again and came
towards him. Then he turned up a narrow lane to the left and fled. He
was sobbing no longer; the passion had died out of him, and he knew
himself to be mad. In the darkness the silent streets began to fill;
random shots whistled at every street corner; but he blundered on,
taking no account of them. Once he ran against a body of Picton's
men--half a score of the 74th Regiment let loose at length from the
captured Castle, and burning for loot. One man thrust the muzzle of
his musket against his breast before he was recognized. Then two or
three shook hands with him.
He was back in the square again and fighting--Heaven knew why--with an
officer of the Brunswickers over a birdcage. Whence the birdcage came
he had no clear idea, but there was a canary-bird inside, and he
wanted it. A random shot smashed his left hand as he gripped the cage,
and he dropped it as something with which he had no further concern.
As he turned away, hugging his hand, and cursing the marksman, a
second shot from another direction took the Brunswicker between the
shoulders.
At dawn he found himself on the ramparts by the Trinidad breach,
peering curiously among the slain. Across the top of the breach
stretched a heavy beam studded with sword blades, and all the bodies
on this side of it were French. Right beneath it lay one red-coat
whose skull had been battered out of shape as he attempted to wriggle
through. All the upper blades were stained, and on one fluttered a
strip of flannel shirt. Powder blackened every inch of the rampart
hereabouts, and as Nat passed over he saw the bodies piled in scores
on the glacis below--some hideously scorched---among beams, gabions,
burnt out fire-pots, and the wreckage of ladders. A horrible smell of
singed flesh rose on the morning air; and, beyond the stench and the
sullen smoke, birds sang in dewy fields, and the Guadiana flowed
between grey olives and green promise of harvest.
Below, a single British officer, wrapped in a dark cape, picked his
way among the corpses. Behind, intermittent shots and outcries told of
the sack in progress. Save for Nat and the dead, the Trinidad was a
desert. Yet he talked incessantly, and, stooping to pat the shoulder
of the red-coat beneath the _chevaux de frise_, spoke to Dave McInnes
and Teddy Butson to come and look. He never doubted they were beside
him. "Pretty mess they've made of this chap." He touched the man's
collar: "48th, a corporal! Ugh, let's get out of this!" In imagination
he linked arms with two men already stiffening, one at the foot and
the other on the summit of the San Vincent's bastion. "King's Own--all
friends in the King's Own!" he babbled as he retraced his way into the
town.
He had a firelock in his hands ... he was fumbling with it, very
clumsily, by reason of his shattered fingers. He had wandered down a
narrow street, and was groping at an iron-studded door. "Won't open,"
he told the ghosts beside him. "Must try the patent key." He put the
muzzle against the lock and fired, flung himself against the door, and
as it broke before him, stood swaying, staring across a whisp of
smoke into a mean room, where a priest knelt in one corner by a straw
pallet, and a girl rose from beside him and slowly confronted the
intruder. As she rose she caught at the edge of a deal table, and
across the smoke she too seemed to be swaying.