The marches were short, as many of the prisoners were still weak and, indeed, among their guard were many convalescents who had recently been discharged from the hospital at Toledo, and who were going back to France. The little column was accompanied by four waggons, two of which were intended for the conveyance of any who should prove unable to march; and the others were filled with provisions for consumption by the way, together with a few tents, as many of the villages that would be their halting places were too small to afford accommodation for the 400 men, even if every house was taken up for the purpose. Although the first day's march was only twelve miles, the two empty waggons were quite full before they reached their halting place; and many of the guard had placed their guns and cartridge boxes on the other carts.
It was now the middle of August, and the heat in the valley of the Tagus was overpowering. The convoy, however, had marched at six in the morning; and halted at eight, in the shade of a large olive wood; and did not continue its march until five in the afternoon. The night was so warm that the English prisoners, and many of their guards, preferred lying down in the open and throwing the blanket (with which each had been furnished) over him to keep off the dew, to going into the stuffy cottages, where the fleas would give them little chance of rest.
On the third day they arrived at the village of Escurial. The next morning they began to mount the pass over the Sierra, and slept that night in an empty barracks, at Segovia. Here they left the main road leading through Valladolid and took one more to the east, stopping at small villages until they arrived at Aranda, on the Douro. Thence they marched due north, to Gamonal.
They were now on the main road to the frontier, passed through Miranda and Zadorra, and began to ascend the slopes of the Pyrenees. The marches had, for some days, been considerably longer than when they first started. The invalids had gained strength and, having no muskets to carry, were for the most part able to march eighteen or twenty miles without difficulty. Four had been left behind in hospital at Segovia, but with these exceptions all had greatly benefited by steady exercise, and an ample supply of food.
"I could do a good deal of travelling, in this way," one of the officers said, as they marched out from Miranda. "Just enough exercise to be pleasant; no trouble about baggage or route, or where one is to stop for the night; nothing to pay, and everything managed for you. What could one want for, more?"
"We could do with a little less dust," Dick Ryan said, with a laugh; "but we cannot expect everything."
"Unfortunately, there will be an end to our marching, and not a very pleasant one," Terence said. "At present, one scarcely recognizes that one is a prisoner. The French officers certainly do all in their power to make us forget it; and their soldiers, and ours, try their best to hold some sort of conversation together. I feel that I am making great progress in French, and it is especially jolly when we halt for the night, and get the bivouac fires burning, and chat and laugh with the French officers as though we were the best friends in the world."
The march was, indeed, conducted in a comfortable and easy fashion. At starting, the prisoners marched four abreast, and the French two abreast at each side; but before a mile had been passed the order was no longer strictly observed, and the men trudged along, smoking their pipes, laughing and talking, the French and English alternately breaking into a marching song. There was no fear of the prisoners trying to escape. They could, at night, have got away from their guards easily enough; but there was nowhere for them to go, if they had done so. The English, smarting from the cruelty and ill faith of the inhabitants of Talavera and the Spanish authorities, felt a burning hatred of the Spanish; while the Spaniards, on their side, deceived by the lying representations of their Juntas, had no love whatever for the English, though ready enough to receive money and arms from them.
On leaving Zadorra, the French officer in command said to Terence:
"Now, colonel, we shall have to be more careful during our marches, keeping a sharp lookout at night. The country here is infested by guerillas, whom all our efforts cannot eradicate. The mountains of Navarre and Biscay are full of them. Sometimes they are in bands of fifteen or twenty strong, sometimes they are in hundreds. Some of them are at ordinary times goatherds, shepherds, muleteers, and peasants; but a number of them are disbanded soldiers--the remains of armies we have defeated and broken up, and who prefer this wild life in the mountains to returning to their homes. Our convoys are constantly attacked, and have always to be accompanied by a strong guard."