Marmont's night attack on Guarda, though immediately and even
absurdly unsuccessful, did, in fact, convince Trant that the hill was
untenable, and he at once attempted to fall back upon Celorico across
the river Mondego, where lay Lord Wellington's magazines and very
considerable stores, for the moment quite unprotected.
Marmont had from four to six thousand horsemen and two brigades of
infantry. The horse could with the utmost ease have headed Trant off
and trotted into Celorico while the infantry fell on him, and but for
the grossest blundering the militia as a fighting force should have
been wiped out of existence. But blunders dogged Marmont throughout
this campaign. Trant and Wilson marched their men (with one day's
provisions only) out of Guarda and down the long slopes toward the
river. Good order was kept for three or four miles, and the head of
the column was actually crossing by a pretty deep ford when some forty
dragoons (which Trant had begged from Bacellar to help him in his
proposed _coup_ upon Sabugal, and which had arrived from Celorico but
the day before) came galloping down through the woods with a squadron
of French cavalry in pursuit, and charging in panic through the
rearguard flung everything into confusion. The day was a rainy one,
and the militia, finding their powder wet, ran for the ford like
sheep. The officers, however, kept their heads and got the men over,
though with the loss of two hundred prisoners. Even so, Marmont might
have crossed the river on their flank and galloped into Celorico
ahead of them. As it was, he halted and allowed the rabble to save
themselves in the town. While blaming his head I must do justice to
his heart and add that, finding what poor creatures he had to deal
with, he forbade his horsemen to cut down the fugitives, and not a
single man was killed.
Foreseeing that Trant must sooner or later retreat upon
Celorico--though ignorant, of course, of what was happening--I was
actually crossing the river at the time by a ford some four miles
above, not in the French staff officer's uniform which I had worn out
of Sabugal, but in an old jacket lent me by my friend the shepherd.
By the time I reached the town Wilson had swept in his rabble and
was planting his outposts, intending to resist and, if this became
impossible, to blow up the magazines before retiring. Trant and
Bacellar with the bulk of the militia were continuing the retreat
meanwhile towards Lamego.
I need only say here that Wilson's bold front served its purpose.
Once, when the French drove in his outposts, he gave the order to fire
the powder, and a part of the magazine was actually destroyed when
Marmont (who above all things hated ridicule, and was severely taxing
the respect of his beautiful army by these serio-comic excursions
after a raw militia) withdrew his troops and retired in an abominable
temper to Sabugal.
How do I know that Marmont's temper was abominable? By what follows.
On March 30th I had left my kinsman, Captain Alan McNeill, with his
servant José at Tammanies. They were to keep an eye on the French
movements while I rode south and reported to Lord Wellington at
Badajoz. It was now April 16th, and in the meanwhile a great deal had
happened; but of my kinsman's movements I had heard nothing. At first
I felt sure he must be somewhere in the neighbourhood of Marmont's
headquarters; but even in Sabugal itself no hint of him could I hear,
and at length I concluded that having satisfied himself of the main
lines of Marmont's campaign he had gone off to meet and receive fresh
instructions from Wellington, now posting north to save the endangered
magazines.
On the evening of the 16th General Wilson sent for me.
"Here is a nasty piece of news," said he. "Your namesake is a
prisoner."
"Where?"
"In Sabugal; but it seems he was brought there from the main camp
above Penamacor. Trant tells me that you are not only namesakes but
kinsmen. Would you care to question the messenger?"
The messenger was brought in--a peasant from the Penamacor district.
Out of his rambling tale one or two certainties emerged. McNeill--the
celebrated McNeill--was a prisoner; he had been taken on the 14th
somewhere in the pass above Penamacor, and conveyed to Sabugal to
await the French marshal's return. His servant was dead--killed in
trying to escape, or to help his master's escape. So much I sifted
out of the mass of inaccuracies. For, as usual, the two McNeills had
managed to get mixed up in the story, a good half of which spread
itself into a highly coloured version of my own escape from Sabugal on
the evening of the 13th; how I had been arrested by a French officer
in a back shop in the heart of the town; how, as he overhauled my
incriminating papers, I had leapt on him with a knife and stabbed him
to the heart, while my servant did the same with his orderly; how,
having possessed ourselves of their clothes and horses, we had ridden
boldly through the gate and southward to join Lord Wellington; and a
great deal more equally veracious. As I listened I began to understand
how legends grow and demigods are made.
It was flattering; but without attempting to show how I managed to
disengage the facts, I will here quote the plain account of them, sent
to me long afterwards by Captain Alan himself:--
_Captain Alan McNeill's Statement_.
"You wish, for use in your _Memoirs_, an account of my capture in the
month of April, 1811, and the death of my faithful servant, José. I
imagine this does not include an account of all our movements from the
time you left us at Tammames (though this, too, I shall be happy to
send if desired), and so I come at once to the 14th, the actual date
of the capture.
"The preceding night we had spent in the woods below the great French
camp, and perhaps a mile above the mouth of the pass opening on
Penamacor. All through the previous day there had been considerable
stir in the camp, and I believed a general movement to be impending. I
supposed Marmont himself to be either with the main army or behind
in his headquarters at Sabugal, and within easy distance. It never
occurred to me--nor could it have occurred to any reasonable
man--to guess, upon no evidence, that a marshal of France had gone
gallivanting with six thousand horse and two brigades of infantry in
chase of a handful of undrilled militia.
"My impression was that his move, if he made one, would be a resolute
descent through Penamacor and upon Castello Branco. As a matter of
fact, although Victor Alten had abandoned that place to be held
by Lecor and his two thousand five hundred militiamen, the French
(constant to their policy of frittering away opportunities) merely
sent down two detachments of cavalry to menace it, and I believe that
my capture was the only success which befel them.
"Early on the 14th, and about an hour before these troops (dragoons
for the most part) began to descend the pass, I had posted myself with
José on one of the lower ridges and (as I imagined) well under cover
of the dwarf oaks which grew thickly there. They did indeed screen
us admirably from the squadrons I was watching, and they passed
unsuspecting within fifty yards of us. Believing them to be but an
advance guard, and that we should soon hear the tramp of the main
army, I kept my shelter for another ten minutes, and was prepared to
keep it for another hour, when José--whose eyes missed nothing--caught
me by the arm and pointed high up the hillside behind us.
"'Scouts!' he whispered. 'They have seen us, sir!'
"I glanced up and saw a pair of horsemen about two gunshots away
galloping down the uneven ridge towards us, with about a dozen in a
cluster close behind. We leapt into saddle at once, made off through
the oaks for perhaps a couple of hundred yards, and then wheeling
sharply struck back across the hillside towards Sabugal. We were still
in good cover, but the enemy had posted his men more thickly than
we had guessed, and by-and-by I crossed a small clearing and rode
straight into the arms of a dragoon. Providentially I came on him with
a suddenness which flurried his aim, and though he fired his pistol at
me point-blank he wounded neither me nor my horse. But hearing shouts
behind him in answer to the shot, we wheeled almost right-about and
set off straight down the hill.
"This new direction did not help us, however; for almost at once a
bugle was sounded above, obviously as a warning to the dragoons at the
foot of the pass, who halted and spread themselves along the lower
slopes to cut us off. Our one chance now lay in abandoning our horses
and crawling deep into the covert of the low oaks where cavalry would
have much ado to follow. This we promptly did, and for twenty minutes
we managed to elude them, so that my hopes began to grow. But
unhappily a knot of officers on the ridge above had watched this
manoeuvre through their telescopes, and now detached small parties of
infantry down either side of the pass to beat the covers. Our hiding
place quickly became too hot, and as we broke cover and dashed across
another small clearing we were spied again by those on the ridge, who
shouted to the soldiers and directed the chase by waving their caps.
For another ten minutes we baffled them, and then crawling on hands
and knees from a thicket where we could hear our enemies not a dozen
yards away beating the bushes with the flat of their swords, we came
face to face with a second party advancing straight upon us. I stood
up straight and was on the point of making a last desperate run for it
when I saw José sink on his face exhausted.
"'Do not shoot!' I called to the officer. 'We have hurt no man,
monsieur.'--For it is, as you know, a fact that in our business I
strongly disapprove of bloodshed, and in all our expeditions together
José had never done physical injury to a living creature.
"But I was too late. The young officer fired, and though the ball
entered my poor servant's skull and killed him on the instant, a
hulking fellow beside him had the savagery to complete what was
finished with a savage bayonet-thrust through the back.
"I stood still, fully expecting to be used no more humanely, but the
officer lowered his pistol and curtly told me I was his prisoner. By
this time the fellows had come up from beating the thicket behind and
surrounded me. I therefore surrendered, and was marched up the hill
to the camp with poor José's body at my heels borne by a couple of
soldiers.
"In all the hurry and heat of this chase I had found time to wonder
how our pursuers happened to be so well posted. For a good fortnight
and more--in fact, since my escape across the ford at Huerta--I could
remember nothing that we had done to give the French the slightest
inkling that we were watching them or, indeed, were anywhere near. And
yet the affair suggested no casual piece of scouting, but a deliberate
plan to entrap somebody of whose neighbourhood they were aware.
"Nor was this perplexity at all unravelled by the general officer to
whose tent they at once conveyed me--a little round white-headed man,
Ducrôt by name. He addressed me at once as Captain McNeill, and seemed
vastly elated at my capture.
"'So we have you at last!' he said, regarding me with a jocular smile
and a head cocked on one side, pretty much after the fashion of a
thrush eyeing a worm. 'But, excuse me, after so much finesse it was a
blunder--hein?'
"Now _finesse_ is not a word which I should have claimed at any time
for my methods,[A] and I cast about in my memory for the exploit to
which he could be alluding.
[Footnote A: NOTE BY MANUEL MCNEILL.--Here the captain, in his hurry
to pay me a compliment, does himself some injustice. _Finesse_, to be
sure, was not generally characteristic of his methods, but he used it
at times with amazing dexterity, as, for instance, the latter part
of this very adventure will prove, if I can ever prevail on him to
narrate it. On the whole I should say that he disapproved of _finesse_
much as he disapproved of swearing, but had a natural aptitude for
both.]
"'It is the mistake of clever men,' continued General Ducrôt sagely,
'to undervalue their opponents; but surely after yesterday the
commonest prudence might have warned you to put the greatest possible
distance between yourself and Sabugal.'
"'Sabugal?' I echoed.
"'Oh, my dear sir, _we_ know. It was amusing--eh!--the barber's shop?
I assure you I laughed. It was time for you to be taken; for really,
you know, you could never have bettered it, and it is not for an
artist to wind up by repeating inferior successes.'
"For a moment I thought the man daft. What on earth (I asked myself)
was this nonsense about Sabugal and a barber's shop? I had not been
near Sabugal; as for the barber's shop it sounded to me like a piece
out of the childish rigmarole about cutting a cabbage leaf to make
an apple pie. Some fleeting suspicion I may have had that here was
another affair in which you and I had again managed to get confused;
but if so the suspicion occurred only to be dismissed. A fortnight
before you had left me on your way south to Badajoz, and you will
own that to connect you with something which apparently had happened
yesterday in a barber's shop in Sabugal was to overstrain guessing.
Having nothing to say, I held my tongue; and General Ducrôt put on a
more magisterial air. He resented this British phlegm in a prisoner
with whom he had been graciously jocose and fell back on his national
belief that we islanders, though occasionally funny, are so by force
of eccentricity rather than by humour.
"'I do not propose to deal with you myself,' he announced. 'At
one time and another, sir, you have done our cause an infinity of
mischief, and I prefer that the Duke of Ragusa should decide your
fate. I shall send you therefore to Sabugal to await his return.'
"This gave me my first intimation that Marmont was neither in Sabugal
nor with his main army. That same afternoon they marched me off to the
town and set me under guard in a house next door to his headquarters.
"Marmont returned from Celorico (if my memory serves me) on the
afternoon of the 17th. I was taken before him at once. He treated
me with the greatest apparent kindness, hoped I had suffered no
ill-usage, and wound up by inviting me to dinner. A couple of hours
later I was escorted to headquarters, where, on entering the room
where he received his guests, I found him in conversation with a young
staff officer who wore his arm in a sling.
"The marshal turned to me at once, and very gaily. 'I understand,'
said he with a smile, 'that I have no need to introduce you to Captain
de Brissac.'
"I looked from him to the young officer in some bewilderment, and saw
in a moment that Captain de Brissac was certainly not less bewildered
than I.
"'But Monsieur le Maréchal--but this is not the man!'
"'Not the man?'
"'Most decidedly not. The man of whom I spoke was dark and not above
middle height. He spoke Portuguese like a native, and belonged to a
class altogether different. It would be impossible for this gentleman
to disguise himself so.'
"For a moment Marmont seemed no less puzzled than we. Then he broke
out laughing again.
"'Ah! of course; that will have been Captain McNeill's servant--the
poor fellow who was killed,' he added more gravely. 'I am told, sir,
that this servant shared and furthered most of your adventures?'
"'He did indeed, M. le Maréchal,' said I; 'but excuse me if I am at a
loss--'
"The Duke interrupted me by laughing again and laying a hand on my
shoulder as an orderly announced dinner. 'Rest easy, my friend, we
know of all your little tricks.' And at table he amused himself and
more and more befogged me by a precise account of my haunts and
movements. How I had kept a barber's shop in Sabugal under his very
nose; what disguises I used (and you know that I never used a disguise
in my life); how my servant had assisted M. de Brissac in a duel and
afterwards escaped in his uniform--with much more, and all of it news
to me. My astonished face merely excited his laughter; he set it down
to my eccentricity. But after dinner, when M. de Brissac had taken his
departure, Marmont crossed his handsome legs and came to business.
"'Sir,' said he, 'I am going to pay you a compliment. We have suffered
heavily through your cleverness; and although Lord Wellington may
choose to call you a scouting officer, you must be aware (and will
forgive me for reminding you) that I might well be excused for calling
you by an uglier name.'
"You may be sure I did not like this. You may also remember how at
Huerta on the occasion of our first meeting the question of _disguise_
came up between us, and how I assured you that to me, with my Scottish
face and accent, a disguise would be worse than useless. Well, that
was true enough so far as it went; but I fear that in my anxiety not
to offend your feelings I spoke less than the whole truth, for I have
always held that in our business as soon as a man resorts to disguise
his work ceases to be legitimate scouting. It may be no less
justifiable and even more useful, but it is no longer scouting. I
admit the distinction to be a nice one;[A] and I have sometimes asked
myself, when covering my uniform with my dark riding cloak, 'What,
after all, is a disguise?' Nevertheless, I had always observed it,
and standing before Marmont now in His Majesty's scarlet, which (as I
might have told him) I had never discarded either to further a plan
or to avoid a danger, I put some constraint on myself to listen in
silence on the merest off-chance that my silence might help an affair
with which the marshal assumed my perfect acquaintance, while I could
only surmise that somehow you were mixed up in it, and therefore
presumably it aimed at some advantage to our arms. I did keep silence,
however, though without so much as a bow to signify that I assented.
[Footnote A: NOTE BY MANUEL MCNEILL.--I should think so indeed! To me
the moral difference, say, between hiding in a truss of hay and hiding
under a wig is not worth discussing outside a seminary.]
"'But you are a gentleman,' Marmont continued, 'and I propose to treat
you as one. You will be sent in safe custody to France, and beyond
this I propose to take no revenge on you--but upon one condition.'
"I waited.
"'The condition is you give me your parole that on your journey
through Spain to France you not only make no effort to escape, but
will not consent to be rescued should the attempt be made by any of
the _partidas_ in hope of reward.'
"I considered this for a moment. 'That is not a small thing to
require, since Wellington may be reasonably expected to offer a round
price for my recapture.'
"The marshal laughed not too pleasantly. 'Truly,' said he, 'I have
heard that Scotsmen are hard bargainers. But considering that I could
have you shot out of hand for a spy, I believed I was offering you
generous terms.'
"Well, that was unfortunately true; so after a few seconds' pause I
answered, 'Monsieur le Duc, by imposing these terms on me you at any
rate pay me a handsome compliment. I accept it and give you my word.'
"Upon this parole, then, on the 19th I began my journey towards France
and captivity, escorted only by M. Gérard, a young lieutenant of
dragoons, and one trooper. The rest you know."
(_Conclusion of Captain McNeill's Statement_.)
As I have said, the bare news of my kinsman's capture and of poor
José's death reached me at Celorico on the 16th, late in the evening.
Knowing that Lord Wellington was by this time well on his way
northward, and believing that for more than one reason the captain's
fate would concern him deeply--feeling, moreover, some compunction at
the toils I had all innocently helped to wind about an honest man--I
at once sought and obtained leave from General Wilson to ride
southward to meet the Commander-in-Chief with the tidings, and if
necessary solicit his help in a rescue. The captain (on this point the
messenger was precise) had been taken to Sabugal to await Marmont's
return. I did not know that Marmont was actually at that moment on his
way thither, but I thought him at least likely to be returning very
soon. To be sure he might decide to shoot Captain Alan out of hand. My
recent performances gave him a colourable excuse, unless the prisoner
could disassociate himself from these and prove an _alibi_, which
under the circumstances and without the help of José's evidence he
could scarcely hope to do. I built, however, some faith on Marmont's
known humanity, of which in his pursuit of the militia he had just
given striking proof. The longer I weighed the chances the more
certain I became that Marmont would treat him as an ordinary prisoner
of war and send him up to France under escort.
Why, then (the reader may ask), did I lose time in seeking Lord
Wellington instead of making my way at once to the north and doing my
best to incite the _partidas_ to attempt a rescue somewhere on the
road north of Burgos, or even between Valladolid and Burgos? My answer
is that such an affair would certainly turn on the question of money.
The French held the road right away to the Pyrenees, not so strongly
perhaps as to forbid hope, but strongly enough to make an attempt upon
it risky in the extreme. The bands of Mendizabal, Mina, and Merino
were kept busy by Generals Bonnet and Abbé; for a big convoy they
might be counted on to exert themselves, but for a single prisoner
they as certainly had no time to spare without the incitement of such
a reward as only the Commander-in-Chief could offer.
Accordingly I made my way south to Castello Branco and reached it on
the 18th, to find Lord Wellington arrived there and making ready to
push on as soon as overtaken by the bulk of his troops. I had always
supposed him to cherish a peculiar liking for my kinsman, but was
fairly astonished by the emotion he showed.
"Rescued? Of course he must be rescued!" He broke off to use (I must
confess) some very strong words upon Trant's design against Marmont
and the tomfoolery, as he called it, which had taken me into Sabugal,
and left a cloud of suspicion hanging over "the best scouting officer
in my service; the only man of the lot, sir, who knows his business."
Lord Wellington could, when he lost his temper, be singularly unjust.
I strove to point out that my "tomfoolery" in Sabugal had as a matter
of fact put a stop to the very scheme of General Trant's which he
condemned. He cut me short by asking if I proposed to argue with him.
"Ride back, sir. Choose the particular blackguard who can effect your
purpose, and inform him that on the day he rescues Captain McNeill I
am his debtor for twelve thousand francs."
The speech was ungracious enough, but the price more than I had dared
to hope for. Feeling pretty sure that in his lordship's temper a word
of thanks would merely invite him to consign my several members to
perdition, I bowed and left him. Twenty minutes later I was on the
road and galloping north again.
Before starting from Celorico I had sent the peasant who brought news
of Captain Alan's plight back to Sabugal with instructions to discover
what more he could, and bring his report to Bellomonte on my northward
road not later than the 20th. On the afternoon of the 19th when I rode
into that place I could hear no news of him. But late in the evening
he arrived with word that "the great McNeill" had been sent off under
escort towards Salamanca. Of the strength of that escort he could tell
me nothing, and had very wisely not stayed to inquire; he had picked
up the news from camp gossip and brought it at once, rightly judging
that time was more valuable to me just now than detailed information.
His news was doubly cheering; it assured me that my kinsman still
lived, and also that by riding to secure Lord Wellington's help I had
not missed my opportunity. Yet there was need to hurry, for I had not
only to fetch a long circuit by difficult paths before striking the
road to the Pyrenees,--I had to find the _partidas_, persuade them,
and get them on to the road ahead of their quarry.
I need not describe my journey at length. I rode by Guarda, Almeida,
Ledesma, keeping to the north of the main road, and travelling, not by
day only, but through the better part of each night. Beyond the ford
of Tordesillas, left for the while unguarded, I was in country where
at any moment I might stumble on the guerilla bands, or at least get
news of them. The chiefs most likely for my purpose were "the three
M's"--the curate Merino, Mina and Mendizabal. Of these, the curate was
about the biggest scoundrel in Spain. I learned on my way that having
lately taken about a hundred prisoners near Aranda, he had hanged the
lot, sixty to avenge three members of the local junta put to death by
the French, and the rest in proportion of ten for every soldier of his
lost in the action. From dealing with such a blackguard I prayed to be
spared. And by all accounts Mina ran him close for brutal ferocity. I
hoped, therefore, for Mendizabal, but at Sedano I heard that Bonnet,
after foiling an attack by him on a convoy above Burgos, had beaten
him into the Asturias, where his scattered bands were now shifting as
best they could among the hills. Merino was in no better case, and
my only hope rested on Mina, who after a series of really brilliant
operations, helped out by some lucky escapes, had on the 7th with
five thousand men planted himself in ambush behind Vittoria, cut up
a Polish regiment, and mastered the same enormous convoy which had
escaped the curate and Mendizabal at Burgos, releasing no less than
four hundred Spanish prisoners and enriching himself to the tune of
a million francs, not to speak of carriages, arms, stores, and a
quantity of church plate.
This was no cheerful hearing, since so much in his pocket must needs
lessen the attractiveness of my offer of twelve thousand francs. And,
indeed, when I found him in his camp above the road a little to the
east of Salvatierra his first answer was to bid me go to the devil.
Although for months he had only supported his troops on English money
conveyed through Sir Howard Douglas, this ignorant fellow snapped his
dirty fingers at the mention of Wellington and, flushed with a casual
triumph, had nothing but contempt for the allied troops who were
saving his country while he and his like wasted themselves on futile
raids. I can see him now as he sat smoking and dangling his legs on a
rock in the midst of his unwashed staff officers.
"For an Englishman," he scoffed, "I won't say but twelve thousand
francs is a high price to pay. Unfortunately, it is no price for my
troops to earn. Here am I expecting at any moment a convoy which is
due from the Valencia side, and Lord Wellington asks me to waste my
men and miss my chance for the sake of a single redcoat. He must be a
fool."
Said I, nettled, "For a Spaniard you have certainly acquired a rare
suit of manners. But may I suggest that their rarity will scarcely
prove worth the cost when your answer comes to Lord Wellington's
ears."
He glared at me for a moment, during which no doubt he weighed the
temptation of shooting me against the probable risk. Then his features
relaxed into a grin, and withdrawing the chewed cigarette from his
teeth he spat very deliberately on the ground. "The interview," he
announced, "is ended."
I took my way down the hillside in no gay mood. I had travelled far;
my nerves were raw with lack of sleep. I judged myself at least a day
ahead of any convoy with which the captain could be travelling, even
though it had moved with the minimum of delay. But where in the next
two days was I to find the help which Mina had refused? To be sure I
had caught up at Sedano a flying rumour that the curate Merino had
eluded Bonnet, broken out of the Asturias, and was again menacing the
road above Burgos. I had come across no sign of him on my way, yet
could hit on no more hopeful course than to hark back along the road
on the chance of striking the trail of a man who as likely as not was
a hundred miles away.
It was about nine in the morning when Mina gave me his answer, and at
three in the afternoon I was scanning the road towards Miranda de Ebro
from a hill about a mile beyond Arinez (the same hill, in fact, where
General Gazan's centre lay little more than a year afterwards on the
morning of the battle of Vittoria). I had been scanning the road
perhaps for ten minutes when my heart gave a jump and my hand, I
am not ashamed to confess, shook on the small telescope. To the
south-west, between me and Nanclares three horsemen were advancing at
a walk, and the rider in the middle wore a scarlet jacket.
It took me some seconds to get my telescope steady enough for a second
look, and with that I wheeled my horse, struck spur and posted back
towards Salvatierra as fast as the brute would carry me through the
afternoon heat.
I reached Mina's camp again at nightfall, and found the chief seated
exactly as I had left him, still smoking and still dangling his legs.
Were it not that he now wore a cloak against the night air I might
have supposed him seated there all day without stirring, and the guard
who led me to him promised with a grin that I was dangerously near one
of those peculiar modes of death which his master passed his amiable
leisure in inventing.
At the sight of me Mina's eyebrows went up and he chuckled, "Indeed,"
said he, "it has been a dull day, and I have been regretting that I
let you off so easily this morning."
"This morning," I said, "I made you an offer of twelve thousand
francs. You replied that you considered it too little for the services
of your army. Perhaps it was; but you will admit it to be pretty fair
pay for the services of a couple of men."
"Hullo!" He eyed me sharply. "What has happened?"
"That," I answered, "is my secret. Lend me a couple of men, say, for
forty-eight hours. In return, on producing this paper, you receive
twelve thousand francs; that is, as soon as Lord Wellington has
assured himself on my report that you received the paper from me and
did as I requested."
"Two men? This begins to look like business."
"It _is_ business," said I curtly. "To your patriotism I should not
have troubled to appeal a second time."
He warned me to keep a civil tongue in my head; but I knew my man, and
within half-an-hour I rode out of his camp with two of his choicest
ruffians, one beside me and one ahead to guide me through the
darkness.
Now at Vittoria the road towards Irun and the frontier runs almost due
north for some distance and then bends about in a rough arc towards
the east. Another road runs almost due east from Vittoria to Pamplona.
The first road would certainly be taken by my kinsman and his escort:
Mina's camp lay above the second: but, a little way beyond, at
Alsasua, a third road of about five leagues joins the two, and by this
short cut I was certain of heading off our quarry.
There was no call to hurry. If, as I judged likely, the party meant to
sleep the night at Vittoria, I had almost twenty-four hours in hand.
So we rode warily, on the look-out for French vedettes, and reaching
Beasain a little before two in the morning took up a comfortable
position on the hillside above the junction of the roads.
At dawn we shifted into better shelter--a shepherd's hut, dilapidated
and roofless--and eked out a long day with tobacco and a greasy pack
of cards. A few bullock carts passed along the road below us, the
most of them bound westward, and perhaps half-a-dozen peasants on
mule-back. At about four in the afternoon a French patrol trotted by.
As the evening drew on I began to feel anxious.
A little before sunset I sent off one of my ruffians--Alonso
something-or-other (I forget his magnificent surname)--to scout
along the road. He had been gone half-an-hour when his fellow, Juan
Gallegos, flung down his cards in the dusk--the more readily perhaps
because he held a weak hand--and pricked up his ears.
"Horses!" he whispered, and after a pause nodded confidently. "Three
horses!"
We picked up our muskets and crept down towards the road. Halfway down
we met Alonso ascending with the news. Yes, there were three horsemen
on this side of Zumarraga and coming at a trot. One of them wore a red
coat.
"Be careful, then, how you pick them off. The man in red must not be
hurt; the money depends on that."
They nodded. Night was now falling fast, yet not so fast but that as
the horsemen came up I could distinguish Captain Alan. He was riding
on the left beside the young French officer, the orderly about six
yards behind. As they came abreast of us Juan let fly, and the
orderly's horse pitched forward at once and fell, flinging his man,
who struck the road and lay either stunned or dead. At the noise of
the report the other horses shied violently and separated, thus giving
us our chance without danger to the prisoner. Alonso and I fired
together, and rushed out upon the officer, who groaned in the act of
wheeling upon us. One of the bullets had shattered his sword arm.
Within the minute we had him prisoner, the captain not helping us at
all.
"What is this?" he demanded in Spanish, peering at me out of the dusk
and breaking off to quiet his frightened horse. "What is this, and who
are you?"
"Well, it looks like a rescue," said I; "and I am your kinsman, Manus
McNeill, and have been at some pains to effect it."
"You!" he peered at me. "I thank you," said he, "but you have done a
bad evening's work. I am on parole, as a man so clever as you might
have guessed by the size of my escort."
"We will talk of that later," I answered, and sent Juan and Alonso off
to examine the fallen trooper. "Meanwhile the man here has fainted.
Oblige me by helping him a little way up the hill, or by leading his
horse while I carry him. The road here is not healthy."
Captain Alan followed in silence while I bore my burden up to the hut.
Having tethered the horses outside, he entered and stood above me
while I lit a lantern and examined the young officer's wound.
"Nothing serious," I announced, "a fracture of the forearm and maybe a
splintered bone. I can fix this up in no time."
"You had better leave it to me and run," my kinsman answered. "This
M. Gérard is an amiable young man and a friend of mine, and I charge
myself to see him safe to Tolosa to-night. What are you doing?"
"Searching for his papers."
"I forbid it."
"_Alain mhic Neill_," said I, "you are not yet the head of our clan."
And I broke the seal of a letter addressed to the Governor of Bayonne.
"Ah! I thought as much," I added, having glanced over the missive. "It
seems, my dear kinsman, that my knowledge of the Duke of Ragusa goes
a bit deeper than yours. Listen to this: 'The prisoner I send you
herewith is one Captain McNeill, a spy and a dangerous one, who has
done infinite mischief to our arms. I have not executed him on the
spot out of respect to something resembling an uniform which he wears.
But I desire you to place him at once in irons and send him up to
Paris, where he will doubtless suffer as he deserves' ..."
Captain Alan took the paper from me and perused it slowly, biting his
upper lip the while. "This is very black treachery," said he.
"It acquits you at any rate."
"Of my parole?" He pondered for a moment; then, "I cannot see that it
does," he said. "If the Duke of Ragusa chooses to break an implied
bond with me it does not follow that I can break an explicit promise
to him."
"No? Well, I should have thought it did."
At once my kinsman put on that stiff pedantic tone which had irritated
me at Huerta. "I venture to think," said he, "that no McNeill would
say so unless he had been corrupted by traffic with the Scarlet
Woman."
"Scarlet grandmother!" I broke out. "You seem to forget that I have
ridden a hundred leagues to effect this rescue, for which, by the way,
Lord Wellington offers twelve thousand francs. I have promised them to
the biggest scoundrel in Spain; but because he happens to be even a
bigger scoundrel than the Duke of Ragusa must I break my bond with him
and let you go to be shot for the sake of your silly punctilio?"
I spoke with heat, and bent over the groaning officer. My kinsman
rubbed his chin. "What you say," he replied, "demands a somewhat
complicated answer, or rather a series of answers. In the first
place, I thank you sincerely for what you have done, and not the less
sincerely because I am going to nullify it. I shall, perhaps, not
cheat myself by believing that a clansman's spirit went some way to
help your zeal"--here I might well have blushed in truth, for it had
not helped my zeal a peseta. "I thank Lord Wellington, too, for the
extravagant price he has set upon my services, and I beg you to convey
my gratitude to him. As for being shot, I might answer that my parole
extends only to the Pyrenees; but I consider myself to have extended
it tacitly to my young friend here, who has treated me with all
possible consideration on the journey; and I shall go to Bayonne."
He spoke quietly and in the most matter-of-fact voice. But I have
often thought since of his words; and often when I call up the figure
of Marmont in exile at Venice, where, as he strode gloomily along the
Riva dei Schiavoni, the very street urchins pointed and cried after
him, "There goes the man who betrayed Napoleon!" I call up and
contrast with it the figure of this humble gentleman of Scotland in
the lonely hut declining simply and without parade to buy his life at
the expense of a scruple of conscience.
"But," he continued, "I fancy I may persuade M. Gérard at least to
delay the delivery of that letter, in which case I see my way at
least to a chance of escape. For the rest, these _partidas_ have been
promised twelve thousand francs for a service which they have duly
rendered. My patrimony is not a rich one, but I can promise that this
sum, whether I escape or not, shall be as duly paid. Hush!" he ended
as I sprang to my feet, and Juan and Alonso appeared in the doorway
supporting the trooper, who had only been stunned after all.
"We did not care to kill him," Juan explained blandly, "until we had
the señor's orders."
"You did rightly," I answered, and glanced at my kinsman. His jaw was
set. I pulled out a couple of gold pieces for each. "An advance on
your earnings," said I. "My orders are that you leave the trooper here
with me, ride back instantly to your chief, report that your work has
been well done and successfully, and the money for which he holds
an order shall be forwarded as soon as I return and report to Lord
Wellington in Beira."