Under Wellington's Command: A Tale of the Peninsular War

by G. A. Henty

The fisherman reported each day what was going on.

"The soldiers are giving it up," he said, at the end of the third day. "I saw Jacques today for the first time. He tells me there was a tremendous row when your escape was discovered. The warder, and every soldier who had been on duty that night, were arrested and questioned. The warder was the one first suspected, on the ground that you must have had assistance from without. He said that if you had, he knew nothing about it; and that, as you knew all the soldiers of the prison guard, and as he had heard many of them say it was very hard, after fighting as you did on their behalf, that you should be kept prisoner, any of them might have furnished you with tools for cutting the door and filing the bars. This was so clear that he was released at once. The soldiers were kept for two days under arrest. This morning the governor himself came down to the prison, and the men under arrest were drawn up. He spoke to them very sharply, to begin with.

"'One or more of you is assuredly concerned in this matter. A breach of trust of this kind is punishable with death.'

"Then he stopped, and looked fiercely up and down the line, and went on in a different tone:

"'At the same time, I admit that some allowance is to be made for the crime, and I can understand that as soldiers you felt sympathy with soldiers who, although prisoners at the time, did not hesitate to cast in their lot with you, and to fight side by side with you. Still, a soldier should never allow private sentiments to interfere with his duty. I myself should have been glad, when you arrived here and I heard of what had happened, to have been able to place these British officers and soldiers in a ship, and to have sent them back to their own country; but that would have been a breach of my duty, and I was forced to detain them here as prisoners. Of course, if I could find out which among you have been concerned in this affair, it would be my duty to punish them--for there must have been more than one--severely. However, although I have done my best to discover this, I am not sorry, men, that I have been unable to do so; for although these men may have failed in their duties as soldiers, they have shown themselves true-hearted fellows to run that risk--not, I am sure, from any thought of reward, but to help those who had helped them.

"'You can all return to your duty, and I hope that you will, in future, remember that duty is the first thing with a soldier, and that he should allow no other feeling to interfere with it.'

"Jacques and his comrades are all satisfied that, although the general felt it was his duty to reprimand them, he was at heart by no means sorry that you had got off.

"The gendarmes are still making inquiries, but of course they have learned nothing. Nobody was about on the wharves at that time of night, and I don't think that they will trouble themselves much longer about it. They will come to believe that you must, somehow, have managed to get through the line of fortifications, and that you will be caught trying to make your way across the country.

"In another three or four days it will be quite safe for you to go down the river. For the first two days every boat that went down was stopped and examined, and some of the vessels were searched by a gunboat, and the hatches taken off; but I hear that no boats have been stopped today, so I fancy you will soon be able to go down without fear."

Although at night Terence and Ryan were able to emerge from their place of concealment, and walk up and down the little yard for two or three hours, they were heartily glad when, a week after their confinement, Jules told them that he thought they might start at daybreak, the next morning.