Attached to each day's journey was a rough sketch map showing the crossroads, rivers, bridges, and other particulars. The general took the bulky report, sat down and read a page here and there, and glanced at the maps. He looked up approvingly.
"Very good, indeed, Colonel O'Connor. If all officers would take advantage of their opportunities, as you have done, the drudgery my staff have to do would be very much lightened, and they would not be constantly working in the dark."
He handed the report to the adjutant general.
"This may be of great utility when an advance begins," he said. "You had better have two or three copies of it made. It will be useful to the quartermaster's department, as well as to yourself; and of great assistance to the officers in command of any detached parties that may be despatched to gather in supplies, or to keep in check an enemy advancing on our flank. Some day, when I can find time, I will read the whole report myself.
"It will be well to have a dozen copies made of the first five or six pages, and the maps, for the perusal of any officer sent out with a detachment on scouting duty, as a model of the sort of report that an officer should send in of his work, when on such duty."
The party at dinner was a small one, consisting only of some five or six officers of the headquarter staff, and two generals of divisions. After dinner, Lord Wellington asked Terence how he escaped from Salamanca, and the latter briefly related the particulars of his evasion.
"This is the second time you have escaped from a French prison," Lord Wellington said, when he had finished. "The last time, if I remember rightly, you escaped from Bayonne in a boat."
"But you did not get to England in that boat, surely, Colonel O'Connor?" one of the generals laughed.
"No, sir; we were driven off shore by a gale, and picked up by a French privateer. We escaped from her as she was lying in port at Brest, made our way to the mouth of the river Sienne, about nine miles north of Granville; and then, stealing another boat, started for Jersey. We were chased by a French privateer but, before she came up to us, a Jersey privateer arrived and engaged her. While the fight was going on we got on board the Jersey boat, which finally captured the Frenchman, and took her into port."
"And from there, I suppose, you found your way to England, and enjoyed a short rest from your labours?"