Читать книгу Corporal Sam and Other Stories - Arthur Quiller-Couch - Страница 8

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Corporal Sam Vicary, coming up to the edge of the camp-fire's light, stood there for a moment with a white face. The cause of it—though it would have been a sufficient one—was not the story to which the men around the fire had been listening; for the teller, at sight of the corporal, had broken off abruptly, knowing him to be a religious fellow after a fashion, with a capacity for disapproval and a pair of fists to back it up. So, while his comrades guffawed, he rather cleverly changed the subject.

'Oh, and by the way, talkin' of the convent'—he meant the Convent of Santa Teresa, a high building under the very slope of the citadel, protected by its guns and still held by the enemy, after three days' fighting—'do any of you know a small house to the left of it, with only a strip of garden between? Sort of a mud-nest it is, like a swallow's, stuck under overhang o' the cliff. No? Well, that's a pity, for I hear tell the general has promised five pounds to the first man who breaks into that house.'

'But why, at all?' inquired a man close on his right.

'I know the place,' put in another; 'a mean kind of building, with one window lookin' down the street, and that on the second floor, as you might say. It don't look to me the sort of house to hold five pounds' worth, all told—let be that, to force it, a man must cross half the fire from the convent, and in full view. Five pounds be damned! Five pounds isn't so scarce in these times that a man need go there to fetch it for his widow.'

The corporal was turning away. For three days San Sebastian had been a hell, between the flames of which he had seen things that sickened his soul. They sickened it yet, only in remembrance. Yes, and the sickness had more than once come nigh to be physical. His throat worked at the talk of loot, now that he knew what men did for it.

'The general ain't after the furnitcher,' answered the first speaker.

'It consarns a child.'

'A child ain't no such rarity in San Sebastian that anybody need offer five pounds for one.'

'What's this talk about a child?' asked Sergeant Wilkes, coming in from his rounds, and dropping to a seat by the blaze. He caught sight of Corporal Sam standing a little way back, and nodded.

'Well, it seems that, barring this child, every soul in the house has been killed. The place is pretty certain death to approach, and the crittur, for all that's known, has been left without food for two days and more. 'Tis a boy, I'm told—a small thing, not above four at the most. Between whiles it runs to the window and looks out. The sentries have seen it more'n a dozen times; and one told me he'd a sight sooner look on a ghost.'

'Then why don't the Frenchies help?' some one demanded. 'There's a plenty of 'em close by, in the convent.'

'The convent don't count. There's a garden between it and the house, and on the convent side a blank wall—no windows at all, only loopholes. Besides which, there's a whole block of buildings in full blaze t'other side of the house, and the smoke of it drives across so that 'tis only between whiles you can see the child at all. The odds are, he'll be burnt alive or smothered before he starves outright; and, I reckon, put one against the other, 'twill be the mercifuller end.'

'Poor little beggar,' said the sergeant. 'But why don't the general send in a white flag, and take him off?'

'A lot the governor would believe—and after what you and me have

seen these two days! A nice tenderhearted crew to tell him,

"If you please, we've come for a poor little three-year-old."

Why, he'd as lief as not believe we meant to eat him.'

Sergeant Wilkes glanced up across the camp-fire to the spot where

Corporal Sam had been standing. But Corporal Sam had disappeared.