In ten minutes all were asleep on the floor, wrapped in their greatcoats, the officer of the day taking his place next the door so that he could be roused easily. Every hour one or other of the two non-commissioned officers in charge of the guard in the passage opened the door a few inches and said softly, "I am relieving the sentries, sir;" and each time the officer murmured assent.
Sullivan was called at the appointed time, got up, and stretched himself, grumbling:
"I don't believe that I have been asleep ten minutes."
On going out into the passage, however, where a light was burning, his watch told him that it was indeed time to be moving. He woke the others, and with the men went down to the cellars. Here the scene of confusion was great; drunken men lay thickly about the floor, others sat, cup in hand, talking, or singing snatches of song, Spanish or English. Hastily picking out enough unbroken casks for the purpose, he set the men to carry them up to the street, and they were then rolled along to the factory. Just as they reached the door the bugle-call sounded; the men were soon on their feet, refreshed by a good night's sleep. The casks were broached, and the wine served out.
"It is awful, Colonel," Sullivan said. "There will be hundreds of men left behind. There must have been over that number in the cellar I went into, and there are a dozen others in the town. I never saw such a disgusting scene."
Scarcely had they finished when the assemble sounded, and the regiment at once fell-in outside the factory, every man with knapsack and haversack bulging out with tobacco. They then joined the rest of the troops in the main street. General Moore had made a vain attempt to rouse the besotted men. A few of those least overcome joined the rear-guard, but the greater number were too drunk to listen to orders, or even to the warning that the French would be into the town as soon as the troops marched out.
CHAPTER X
CORUNNA
As the confusion in the streets increased from the pouring out from the houses and cellars of the camp-followers--women and children, together with men less drunk than their comrades, but still unable to walk steadily--who filled the air with shouts and drunken execrations, Colonel Corcoran rode along the line.
"Just look at that, boys," he said. "Isn't it better for you to be standing here like dacent men, ready to do your duty, than to be rolling about in a state like those drunken blackguards, for the sake of half an hour's pleasure? Sure it is enough to make every mother's son of you swear off liquor till ye get home again. When the French get inside the town there is not one of the drunken bastes that won't be either killed or marched away a thousand miles to a French prison, and all for half an hour's drink."