Читать книгу Death to the French - Cecil Louis Troughton Smith - Страница 5

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A dozen French soldiers were marching down a Portuguese by-road. They were a shabby enough group in appearance, for their blue uniforms had been badly dyed originally and now, after months of exposure to the weather, had changed colour in patches, greenish and whitish and reddish, here and there, and every coat was torn and darned in sundry places. Their shakos were dented and shapeless, and the cheap brass finery which adorned tunics and shakos was dull and dirty. Up to the knees their legs were white with dust, and their faces were grimed and bearded. Every man marched bent beneath a mountainous pack, round which was looped his greatcoat, and from which depended all sorts of curious bundles, varying with each individual save as regards one bundle, the most curious of them all. Each man carried one of these—eight hard flat cakes, irregularly square, strung on a cord, through holes in the middle, for all the world like monstrous Chinese coins. The likeness had been noted in the French army, and these cakes were always alluded to as ‘cash’. Each weighed one pound, and represented one day’s rations.

A French general considered he had done his duty by his men if he issued one pound of this flinty bread per head per day—anything else they needed he expected them to gain from the countryside. When the advance was resumed after the defeat at Busaco every man was given fourteen of these one-pound biscuits, and told to expect no further issue of rations until Lisbon was reached; from which it can be deduced that these men had been six days on the march from Busaco. Six days ahead of them lay the Lines of Torres Vedras, barring them eternally from Lisbon, but they did not know that. No one in the French army as yet knew of the existence of the Lines.

Sergeant Godinot was in command of the party, and the six men behind him were his particular friends, Boyel, Dubois, little Godron, and the others. Two hundred yards ahead marched the ‘advance guard’ of two men; two hundred yards behind came the ‘rear guard’, for although the detachment was marching in the midst of the French army precautions had to be taken against ambush, for in Portugal every man’s hand was against them. Even when Godinot called a halt, and the exhausted men lay down to rest at the side of the road in the shade, one man was detailed to patrol round them.

‘How much farther before we find this uncle of yours, sergeant?’ asked Boyel.

Godinot had an uncle who was a general in Soult’s army in the south; for eight hundred miles of marching the sergeant had been encouraging his section with descriptions of the golden times he and his friends would enjoy when they came under his command. Godinot shrugged his shoulders.

‘Patience,’ he said. ‘We’ll find him sooner or later, never fear. Have I not brought you safely so far?’

‘You can call it safe, I suppose,’ said little Godron. He was lying on his back with his legs in the air to relieve his aching feet. ‘Marching, for six months. One good meal a week when we’ve been lucky. A battle once a month and a siege every Sunday.’

‘There’s gratitude,’ said Godinot, grinning so that his white teeth flashed brilliantly in contrast with his sunburned face and black moustache. ‘Who was it found that jeweller’s shop when we took Astorga? Why, there are three gold watches ticking in your pack this very minute, you—you ungrateful viper. How you’ve kept them I don’t know. That little Spanish girl at Rodrigo took all my loot from me. But we’ll get some more before long. Just wait till we find my uncle. He’s the chap for me.’

‘Don’t believe old Godinot’s got an uncle,’ said someone. ‘He got us to join his regiment under false pretences.’

‘And where would you be if I hadn’t seen you at the depot and taken you under my wing?’ demanded Godinot. ‘Shivering in Poland or somewhere I expect, with no Daddy Godinot to wipe your nose for you. You blues don’t know when you are well off.’

A ‘blue’ in the French army is a recruit—because until he grew used to it, the recruit went blue in the face under the constriction of the uniform stock.

‘Why,’ went on Godinot, ‘perhaps—’

But Godinot’s speech was interrupted by a loud challenge from the patrolling sentry, followed immediately by a shot. All of the detachment scrambled to their feet and grasped their muskets, following Godinot in his rush to where the sentry, his musket smoking in his hand, stood peering through the olives.

‘A green Englishman,’ said the sentry, pointing. ‘That way.’

‘After him!’ said Godinot. Since the day of Busaco every one in the Eighth Corps knew what a green Englishman was.

The detachment began to struggle through the olive groves, crashing among the branches on the trail of the hurrying rifleman. Five minutes of hot pursuit brought them to the edge of the grove, where a high, bare hill mounted up in front of them. The dark-clad Englishman was toiling up the slope a hundred yards ahead. Godinot dropped on one knee, trying to calm his laboured breathing, and fired hastily, without result. The others as they came up pitched their muskets to their shoulders and pulled the trigger.

‘Enough of that!’ snapped Godinot. ‘Reload. Come on you others.’

He pressed on up the slope with half a dozen men beside him. But the Englishman had the longer legs or the stouter heart. At every stride he increased his distance from them.

‘Oh, let him go!’ said Godinot at length. ‘The dragoons on the left will catch him.’

The men pulled up, panting.

‘Come on back,’ said Godinot. ‘We’ll never reach the battalion to-night at this rate.’

They began to plod down the hill again, leaving the Englishman to continue his climb up it. The incident meant little enough to them; every day for a month they had been accustomed to exchanging shots with English outposts. Yet even as they began to dismiss the incident from their memory it was sharply recalled to them. A shot rang out behind them, and Boyel pitched forward on his face, and rolled a little way down the hill, blood pouring from his throat. Everyone shouted with rage. Little Godron dropped on his knees beside Boyel; the others, with one accord, turned to climb the hill once more in pursuit. A puff of smoke hung in the still air to show from whence the Englishman had taken aim. Yet as they set themselves to the climb the Englishman leaped once more to his feet and ran labouring up the hill, and five minutes more of pursuit told them how useless it was. They turned back again, to where Godron, with tears running down his cheeks, was kneeling with Boyel in his arms. An ounce of lead had torn a great hole in his neck and his tunic was already soaked with blood.

‘Give my regards to your uncle, Godinot, when you see him,’ said Boyel weakly. ‘I shall not have the pleasure.’

And blood ran from Boyel’s mouth and he died.

Godron was sobbing bitterly as Godinot knelt and made certain Boyel was dead.

‘He has died for the Emperor,’ said Godinot, rising.

‘The first of us,’ said Dubois bitterly. ‘Six of us joined you, sergeant. Now we are five. To-morrow—’

‘To-morrow it may be four,’ agreed Godinot harshly. He was as moved as were the others, but he was in a position of authority, and had not so much time for sentiment. ‘But we must join the battalion to-night, all the same.’

He was running his fingers deftly through the dead man’s pockets and equipment.

‘Money,’ he said. ‘Observe, eleven francs. You are witnesses. That is for the regimental funds. Cartridges. Here, divide these among you. Socks. Anybody want them? Well, they’ll fit me. Nothing else of importance.’

He took the dead man’s musket and walked across to a rock, where he smashed the stock and the lock with half a dozen blows.

‘Take his bread, some of you,’ he said. But the others hung back. ‘Take his bread, I say. Dubois, Godron, you others. One biscuit each. Never waste bread on a campaign. Now come along back to the road.’

‘But aren’t we going to bury him, sergeant?’ protested Dubois.

Godinot looked up at the sun to judge the time of day.

‘There is no time to spare,’ he said. ‘We must join the battalion to-night. Come along, all of you.’

They obeyed reluctantly, trooping down the hill and through the olive groves to the road. They formed up and resumed their march, but of the six friends who had joined under Godinot’s charge at the depot nine months before there were now only five, five men with heavy hearts and hanging heads. The sixth lay out on the bare hillside, where he would continue to lie all through the approaching winter, a noisome, festering mass until the carrion crows picked his bones clean to bleach in the sun and the rain.