Having been supplied with new boots from the stores in Coimbra, we pushed on eastward through torrents of rain which converted every valley bottom into a quag, so that our march was scarcely less toilsome than before, and the men grumbled worse than they had when dragging the guns over the frozen hill-roads. They had been forced to leave their wagons behind at Coimbra, and marched like infantry soldiers, each man carrying a haversack with four days' provisions, as well as an extra pair of boots. But what seemed to vex and deject them most was a rumour that Quartermaster-General Murray had been sent down from the front on leave of absence for England. They argued positively that, with Murray absent, the Commander-in-Chief could not be intending any action of importance: they doubted that he had twenty siege-guns at his call even if he stripped Almeida and left that fortress defenceless. Moreover, who would open a siege in such a country, in the depth of such a winter as this?
Nevertheless we had no sooner passed the bridge of the Coa than we discovered our mistake; the roads below Almeida being choked with a continuous train of mule transports, tumbrils, light carts, and wagons heaped with fascines, gabions, long balks of timber, sheaves of spades and siege implements—all crawling southwards. Our artillerymen were now halted to await and take charge of three brass guns said to be on their way down from Pinhel under an escort of Portuguese militia; and, taking leave of them, I was handed over to a company of the 23rd Regiment—hurrying in from one of the outlying hamlets near Celorico—with whom I reached on the 7th of January the squalid village of Boden, in and around which the 52nd lay in face of the doomed fortress across the river.
"Here then is war at last," thought I that night, as I curled myself to sleep in a loft where Sergeant Henderson considerately found a corner for me under some pathetically empty fowl-roosts. Sergeant Henderson in his captain's absence had claimed me from a distracted adjutant who wanted to know where the devil I had come from, and why, and if I would kindly make myself scarce and leave him in peace—a display of temper pardonable in a man who had just come in wet to his middle from fording the river amid cannoning blocks of ice.
Here was war at last, and I was not long in making acquaintance with it. I awoke to find, by the light of the lantern swung from the roost overhead, the dozen men in the loft awake and pulling on their boots. They had lain in their sodden clothes all night: but of their boots, I found, they were as careful as dandies, and to grease them would hoard up a lump of fat even while their stomachs craved for it. Sergeant Henderson motioned me to pull on mine. From my precious bugle I had never parted, even to unsling it, since leaving Figueira. And so I stood ready.
We bundled on our great-coats, climbed down the ladder, and filed out into the street. It was dark yet, though I could not guess the hour; and bitter cold, with an east wind which seemed to set the very stars shivering. The men stamped their feet on the frozen road as we hurried to the alarm-post, and there I walked into a crowd of dark figures which closed around me at once. For a moment I supposed the whole army to be massed there in the darkness, and wondered foolishly if we were to assault Ciudad Rodrigo at once. A terrible murmur filled the night—the more terrible because, while the few words spoken near me were idle and jocular, it ran down the jostling crowd into endless darkness, gathering menace as it went.
But the sergeant, gripping my shoulder, ordered me gruffly to keep close beside him, and promised to find me my place. The jostling grew regular, almost methodical, and by and by an officer came down the road carrying a lantern, and spoke with Henderson for a moment. At a word from him the men began to number off. Far up the road, other lanterns were moving and voices calling. Then after a long pause, on the reason of which the company speculated in whispers, the troops ahead began to move and the order came down to us—"Order arms—Fix bayonets—Shoulder arms!"—a pause—"By the right, quick march!"
An hour later, still in darkness, we halted beside the Agueda while company after company marched down into the water. A body of cavalry had been drawn across the upper edge of the ford, four deep—the horses' bodies forming a barrier against the swirling blocks of ice; and under this shelter we crossed, the water rising to my small ribs and touching my heart with a shiver that I recall as I write. But the sergeant's hand was on my collar and steadied me over.
"How much farther?" I made bold to whisper to him as we groped our way up the bank.
"Three miles, maybe: that's as the crow flies. But you mustn't talk."
And not another word did I say. We plodded on—not straight for the fortress, the distant lights of which seemed to be waiting for us, but athwart and, for a mile and more, almost away from it. By and by the road began to climb; and, a little later, we had left it and were crossing the shoulder of a grassy hill behind which the lights of Ciudad Rodrigo disappeared from view.