He listened to them quietly, and then said:
"Of course, if you all prefer a French prison to a few days' hard marching, you have good reason to grumble at being baulked in your wishes; that is all I have to say about it."
"What do you mean, Terence?" O'Grady asked, angrily. "Soult's force was not stronger than ours, at least so we heard; and if it had been it would make no difference, we would have thrashed them out of their boots in no time."
"I dare say we should, O'Grady, and what then?"
"Well, I don't know what then," O'Grady said, after a moment's silence; "that would have been the general's business."
"Quite so; and so is this. There you would have been with perhaps a couple of thousand wounded and as many French prisoners, and Napoleon with 60,000 men or so, and Ney with as many more, and Houssaye with his cavalry division, all in your rear cutting you off from the sea. What would have been your course then?"
A general silence fell upon the officers.
"Is that so?" the colonel asked at last.
"That is so," Terence said, gravely. "All these and other troops are marching night and day to intercept us. It is no question of fighting now. Victory over Soult, so far from being of any use, would only have burdened us with wounded and prisoners, and even a day's delay would be absolutely fatal. As it is, it is a question whether we shall have time to get back to the coast before they are all posted in our front. Every hour is of the greatest importance. You all know that we have talked over lots of times how dangerous our position is. General Fane told us, when the orders to retreat were issued, that he believed the peril to be even more imminent than we thought. We all know when we marched north from Salamanca, that, without a single Spaniard to back us, all that could be hoped for was to aid Saragossa and Seville and Cadiz to gather the levies in the south and prepare for defence, and that erelong we should have any number of enemies upon us. That is what has precisely happened, and now there is grumbling because the object has been attained, and that you are not allowed to fight a battle that, whether won or lost, would equally ruin us."
"Sure ye are right," O'Grady said, warmly, "and we are a set of omadhouns. You have sense in your head, Terence, and there is no gainsaying you. I was grumbling more than the rest of them, but I won't grumble any more. Still, I suppose that there is no harm in hoping we shall have just a bit of fighting before we get back to Portugal."