The Laird's Luck and Other Fireside Tales Part 6

"d.i.c.k 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 h.e.l.l 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.

"Las.h.i.+ns 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 pa.s.sed 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 cras.h.i.+ng over the rampart, rolled down the gra.s.s 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 b.u.t.tons. "Fourth! Fourth!" some one shouted, and then voice and vision were caught up and drowned together in a h.e.l.l 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 sc.r.a.ped against his breast b.u.t.tons, 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 j.a.panned 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 pa.s.sed 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.