Under Wellington's Command: A Tale of the Peninsular War by G. A. Henty (best pdf ebook reader txt) 📗

but the ammunition was exhausted, and the fire ceased until more could be brought up.

That day, however, Marmont, with a force of 20,000 men, was seen advancing to the relief of the forts. The British army at once withdrew from the neighbourhood of the convent, and took up its position, in order of battle, on the heights of San Christoval.

On the 21st, three divisions of infantry and a brigade of cavalry joined Marmont, raising his force to 40,000 men. The French, the next night, sent a portion of their force across the Tormes and, when daylight broke, the German cavalry, which had been placed to guard the ford, was seen retiring before 12,000 French infantry, with twenty guns. Graham was also sent across the Tormes with his division, which was of about the same strength as the French force and, as the light division was also following, the French retired, recrossed the ford, and rejoined the main body of their army.

The next night the batteries again opened fire on San Vincenti and, on the 27th, the fort and convent were in a blaze. One of the other forts was breached, and both surrendered, just as the storming parties were advancing to the assault; and Marmont retreated the same night across the Douro, by the roads to Tordesillas and Toro.

As soon as it was possible to enter Salamanca, Terence rode down into the town, accompanied by Ryan. The forts had not yet surrendered, but their hands were so full that they had no time to devote to annoying small parties of British officers passing into the town. Terence had noted down the address that Nita had given him, and at once rode there; after having, with some difficulty, discovered the lane in which the house was situated. An old man came to the door. Terence dismounted.

"What can I do for you, senor?"

"I wanted to ask you if your niece, Nita, is still staying with you?"

The man looked greatly surprised at the question.

"She has done no harm, I hope?" he asked.

"Not at all, but I wish to speak to her. Is she married yet to Garcia, the muleteer?"

The old man looked still more surprised.

"No, senor. Garcia is away, he is no longer a muleteer."

"Well, you have not answered me if your niece is here."

"She is here, senor, but she is not in the house at this moment. She returned here from her father's, last autumn. The country was so disturbed that it was not right that young women should remain in the villages."

"Will you tell her that a British officer will call to see her, in half an hour, and beg her to remain in until I come?"

"I will tell her, senor."

Terence went at once to a silversmith's, and bought the handsomest set of silver jewelry, such as the peasants wore, that he had in his shop; including bracelets, necklaces, large filigree hairpin and earrings, and various other ornaments.

Chapter 20: Salamanca.

"She is a lucky girl, Terence," Ryan said, as they quitted the shop. "She will be the envy of all the peasant girls in the neighbourhood, when she goes to church in all that finery, to be married to her muleteer."

"It has only cost about twenty pounds, and I value my freedom at a very much higher price than that, Dick. If I had not escaped, I should not have been in that affair with Moras that got me my promotion and, at the present time, should be in some prison in France."

"You would not have got your majority, I grant, Terence; but wherever they shut you up, it is morally certain that you would have been out of it, long before this. I don't think anything less than being chained hand and foot, and kept in an underground dungeon, would suffice to hold you."

"I hope that I shall never have to try that experiment, Dicky," Terence laughed; "and now, I think you had better go into this hotel, and order lunch for us both. It is just as well not to attract attention, by two of us riding to that lane. We have not done with Marmont, yet, and it may be that the French will be masters of Salamanca again, before long, and it is just as well not to get the old man or the girl talked about. I will leave my horse here, too. See that both of them get a good feed; they have not had overmuch since we crossed the Aqueda."

As there were a good many British officers in the town, no special attention was given to Terence as he walked along through the street, which was gay with flags. When he reached the house in the lane, the old man was standing at the door.

"Nita is in now, senor. She has not told me why you wanted to see her. She said it was better that she should not do so, but she thought she knew who it was."

The girl clapped her hands, as he entered the room to which the old man pointed.

"Then it is you, Senor Colonello. I wondered, when we heard the English were coming, if you would be with them. Of course, I heard from Garcia that you had gone safely on board a ship at Cadiz. Then I wondered whether, if you did come here, you would remember me."

"Then that was very bad of you, Nita. You ought to have been quite sure that I should remember you. If I had not done so, I should have been an ungrateful rascal, and should have deserved to die in the next French prison I got into."

"How well you speak Spanish now, senor!"

"Yes; that was principally due to Garcia, but partly from having been in Spain for six weeks, last autumn. I was with Moras, and we gave the French a regular scare."

"Then it was you, senor! We heard that an English officer was in command of the troops who cut all the roads, and took numbers of French prisoners, and defeated 5000 of their troops and, as they said, nearly captured Valladolid and Burgos."

"That was an exaggeration, Nita. Still, we managed to do them a good deal of damage, and kept the French in this part of the country pretty busy.

"And now, Nita, I have come to fulfil my promise," and he handed her the box in which the jeweller had packed up his purchases.

"These are for your wedding, Nita, and if it comes off while we are in this part of the country, I shall come and dance at it."

The girl uttered cries of delight, as she opened parcel after parcel.

"Oh, senor, it is too much, too much altogether!" she cried, as she laid them all out on the table before her.

"Not a bit of it," Terence said. "But for you, I should be in prison now. If they had been ten times as many, and ten times as costly, I should still have felt your debtor, all my life.

"And where is Garcia now?"

"He has gone to join Morillo," she said. "He always said that, as soon as the English came to our help, he should go out; so, six weeks ago, he sold all his mules and bought a gun, and went off."

"I am sorry not to have seen him," Terence said. "And now, Nita, when he returns you are to give him this little box. It contains a present to help you both to start housekeeping, in good style. You see that I have put your name and his both on it. No one can say what may happen in war. Remember that this is your joint property; and if, by ill fortune, he should not come back again, then it becomes yours."

"Oh, senor, you are altogether too good! Oh, I am a lucky girl! I am sure that no maid ever went to church before with such splendid ornaments. How envious all the girls will be of me!"

"And I expect the men will be equally envious of Garcia, Nita. Now, if you will take my advice, you will not show these things to anyone at present; but will hide them in the box, in some very safe place, until you are quite sure that the French will never come back again. If your neighbours saw them, some ill-natured person might tell the French that you had received them from an English officer, and then it might be supposed that you had been acting as a spy for us; so it is better that you should tell no one, not even your uncle--that is, if you have not already mentioned it to him."

"I have never told him," the girl said. "He is a good man and very kind; but he is very timid, and afraid of getting into trouble. If he asks me who you are and what you wanted, I shall tell him that you are an English officer who was in prison, in the convent; that you always bought your fruit of me, and said, if you ever came to Salamanca again, you would find me out."

"That will do very well. Now I will say goodbye, Nita. If we remain here after the French have retreated, I will come and see you again; for there will be so many English officers here that I would not be noticed. But there may be a battle any day; or Marmont may fall back, and we should follow him; so that I may not get an opportunity again."

"I hope you will come, I do hope you will come! I will bury all these things, this evening, in the ground in the kitchen, after my uncle has gone to bed."

"Well, goodbye, Nita. I must be off now, as I have a friend with me. When you see Garcia, you can tell him that you have given me a kiss. I am sure he won't mind."

"I should not care if he did," the girl said saucily, as she held up her face. "Goodbye, senor. I shall always think of you, and pray the Virgin to watch over you."

After Marmont fell back across the Douro there was a pause in the operations and, as the British army was quartered in and around Salamanca, the city soon swarmed with British soldiers; and presented a scene exactly similar to that which it had worn when occupied by Moore's army, nearly four years before.

"What fun it was, Terence," Ryan said, "when we frightened the place out of its very senses, by the report that the French were entering the town!"

"That is all very well, Dick; but I think that you and I were just as much frightened as the Spaniards were, when we saw how the thing had succeeded, and that all our troops were called out. There is no saying what they would have done to us, had they found out who started the report. The very least thing that would have happened would have been to be tried by court martial, and dismissed from the service; and I am by no means sure that worse than that would not have befallen us."

"Yes, it would have been an awful business, if we had been found out. Still, it was a game, wasn't it? What an awful funk they were in! It was the funniest thing I ever saw. Things have changed since then, Terence, and I am afraid we have quite done with jokes of that sort."

"I should hope so, Dick. I think that I can answer for myself, but I am by no means sure as to you."

"I like that," Ryan said indignantly. "You were always the leader in mischief. I believe you would be, now, if you had the chance."

"I don't know," Terence replied, a little more seriously than he had before spoken. "I have been through a wonderful number of adventures, since then; and I don't pretend that I have not enjoyed them in something of the same spirit in which we enjoyed the fun we used to have together; but you see, I have had an immense deal of responsibility. I have two thousand men under me and, though Bull and Macwitty are good men, so far as the carrying out of an order goes, they are still too much troopers, seldom make a suggestion, and never really discuss any plan I suggest; so that the responsibility of the lives of all these men really rests entirely upon my shoulders. It has been only when I have been separated from them, as when I was a prisoner, that I have been able to enjoy an adventure in the same sort of way that we used to do, together."

"I little thought then, Terence, that in three years and a half, for that is about what it is, I should be a captain and you a major--for I don't count your Portuguese rank one, way or the other."

"Of course, you have