After a hearty breakfast, and a kind “Good-by!” from my brother officers, I set out. My road along the Tagus, for several miles of the way, was a narrow path scarped from the rocky ledge of the river, shaded by rich olive plantations that throw a friendly shade over us during the noonday heat.
We travelled along silently, sparing our cattle from time to time, but endeavoring ere nightfall to reach Torrijos, in which village we had heard several French soldiers were in hospital. Our information leading us to believe them very inadequately guarded, we hoped to make some prisoners, from whom the information we sought could in all likelihood be obtained. More than once during the day our road was crossed by parties similar to our own, sent forward to reconnoitre; and towards evening a party of the 23d Light Dragoons, returning towards Talavera, informed us that the French had retired from Torrijos, which was now occupied by an English detachment under my old friend O’Shaughnessy.
I need not say with what pleasure I heard this piece of news, and eagerly pressed forward, preferring the warm shelter and hospitable board the major was certain of possessing, to the cold blast and dripping grass of a bivouac. Night, however, fell fast; darkness, without an intervening twilight, set in, and we lost our way. A bleak table-land with here and there a stunted, leafless tree was all that we could discern by the pale light of a new moon. An apparently interminable heath uncrossed by path or foot-track was before us, and our jaded cattle seemed to feel the dreary uncertainty of the prospect as sensitively as ourselves,—stumbling and over-reaching at every step.
Cursing my ill-luck for such a misadventure, and once more picturing to my mind the bright blazing hearth and smoking supper I had hoped to partake of, I called a halt, and prepared to pass the night. My decision was hastened by finding myself suddenly in a little grove of pine-trees whose shelter was not to be despised; besides that, our bivouac fires were now sure of being supplied.
It was fortunate the night was fine, though dark. In a calm, still atmosphere, when not a leaf moved nor a branch stirred, we picketed our tired horses, and shaking out their forage, heaped up in the midst a blazing fire of the fir-tree. Our humble supper was produced, and even with the still lingering revery of the major and his happier destiny, I began to feel comfortable.
My troopers, who probably had not been flattering their imaginations with such gourmand reflections and views, sat happily around their cheerful blaze, chatting over the great battle they had so lately witnessed, and mingling their stories of some comrade’s prowess with sorrows for the dead and proud hopes for the future. In the midst, upon his knees beside the flame, was Mike, disputing, detailing, guessing, and occasionally inventing,—all his arguments only tending to one view of the late victory: “That it was the Lord’s mercy the most of the 48th was Irish, or we wouldn’t be sitting there now!”
Despite Mr. Free’s conversational gifts, however, his audience one by one dropped off in sleep, leaving him sole monarch of the watch-fire, and—what he thought more of—a small brass kettle nearly full of brandy-and-water. This latter, I perceived, he produced when all was tranquil, and seemed, as he cast a furtive glance around, to assure himself that he was the only company present.
Lying some yards off, I watched him for about an hour, as he sat rubbing his hands before the blaze, or lifting the little vessel to his lips; his droll features ever and anon seeming acted upon by some passing dream of former devilment, as he smiled and muttered some sentences in an under-voice. Sleep at length overpowered me; but my last waking thoughts were haunted with a singular ditty by which Mike accompanied himself as he kept burnishing the buttons of my jacket before the fire, now and then interrupting the melody by a recourse to the copper.
“Well, well; you’re clean enough now, and sure it’s little good brightening you up, when you’ll be as bad to-morrow. Like his father’s son, devil a lie in it! Nothing would serve him but his best blue jacket to fight in, as if the French was particular what they killed us in. Pleasant trade, upon my conscience! Well, never mind. That’s beautiful sperets, anyhow. Your health, Mickey Free; it’s yourself that stands to me.
“It’s little for glory I care;
Sure ambition is only a fable;
I’d as soon be myself as Lord Mayor,
With lashings of drink on the table.
I like to lie down in the sun
And drame, when my faytures is scorchin’
That when I’m too ould for more fun,
Why, I’ll marry a wife with a fortune.
“And in winter, with bacon and eggs,
And a place, at the turf-fire basking,
Sip my punch as I roasted my legs,
Oh, the devil a more I’d be asking!
For I haven’t a janius for work,—
It was never the gift of the Bradies,—
But I’d make a most illigant Turk,
For I’m fond of tobacco and ladies.”