"Where do we get landed, Monsieur le Lieutenant?" he asked politely.
"Ah, you speak our tongue! That is good," came the more pleasant answer. "But where you land I cannot say; you will be sent with troops to the north of Spain, and so to a prison."
It was not very cheering news, but Tom made the best of it.
"I don't put my nose into a French prison if I can help it!" he declared, in that particular tone of voice to which Jack had grown accustomed when they were chums at school.
"And he won't!" declared the latter. "I know Tom well—a pig-headed, stubborn beggar from his cradle. Tom'll give 'em the slip, and we with him. One thing seems all right in the meanwhile—there's grub and drink in plenty. I never could stand starvation; I'd rather go to prison."
But whatever thoughts they may have had as regards escaping were set aside when they landed. Putting in at an obscure port, Tom and his friends found a squadron of horsemen waiting to receive them, for the ship had flown signals. The three friends, together with the two men belonging to Jack's regiment, were given horses, while a trooper took their reins, two other men riding close to each one of them. And then they set off across a barren country, which, however fair it may have been in other days, was burned black, stripped of all eatables, while those villages which had not been swallowed by the flames were wrecked and useless.
"You will be careful not to attempt an escape," said the officer in command of the squadron, speaking to Tom, the only one of the prisoners who could understand him. "I have given orders for the troopers to shoot at the first attempt. We ride now to join our main army, and through a country inhabited by people who would flay us alive if they could catch us. Let that alone warn you not to attempt escape. The Portuguese peasants are more dangerous than my soldiers."
He shouted to the head of the column, set his own horse in motion, and led the way at a pace that threatened to be trying. It was obvious, in fact, that he was anxious to reach the summit of the hills near at hand, and not to be found in the open when night fell. As for Tom and his friends, the outlook seemed hopeless; an attempt at escape meant a bullet from their guard. And, even were they successful, they were in a country where bands of peasants scoured the valleys murdering all who were too weak to oppose them. It looked indeed as if a French prison would shortly shelter them, and as if there Jack's military career would come to a halt before it had actually begun, while Tom's ambitions in that direction would be cut in twain and end only in bitter disappointment.