The subaltern

by G. R. Gleig

Proceed we, then, in our own way. From the day of the shipwreck up to the 23d of the month, I have no recollection of any occurrence worthy to be recorded. Advantage was taken, it is true, of that period of rest to lay in a fresh stock of tea and other luxuries, with the means of accomplishing which an opportune disbursement of one month's pay supplied us. These we purchased in a market which certain speculating traders had established, and which followed the movements of the army from post to post. The grand depot of all was, however, Secoa, between which port and England communication was regularly kept up; and thither I and my comrades resorted for such more curious articles as habit or caprice prompted us to purchase. Moreover, by coursing, shooting, and riding,—sometimes to Biaritz, and the house of our pretty French women; sometimes to St Jean de Luz, where, by the way, races were regularly established; and occasionally to the cantonments of a friend in another division—we found our days steal insensibly, and therefore agreeably, away; nor was it without a feeling somewhat akin to discontent that we saw ourselves again setting forth to take our turn of outpost duty at the old station beside Fort Charlotte.

CHAPTER XVIII.

As the circumstances attending our present tour of duty had in them more to interest and excite than usual, I shall describe them at greater length.

The air was cold and bracing; it was a fine clear wintry day, when the corps to which I was attached, strengthened by the half of another battalion, began its march to the front. Instead of employing eighteen hundred men at the outposts, nine hundred were now esteemed capable of providing for the safety of the left column of the army; and such was accordingly the extent of the force which, under the command of a lieutenant-colonel, took the direction of the mayor's house. On arriving there we found matters in a somewhat different order from that in which we used to find them. The enemy, it appeared, had abandoned the ground which their pickets formerly occupied. Our advanced parties were, in consequence, pushed forward; and the stations of the extreme sentinels were now in front of that ground upon which so much fighting had taken place in the beginning of last month. The guards themselves, instead of being hutted in and about the chateau, were disposed among a range of cottages in the very centre of the field of battle; and the objects which were by this means kept constantly before their eyes were certainly not of the most cheering or encouraging description.

It was not my lot to take charge of a picket-guard on the immediate day of our advance. My business, on the contrary, was to superintend the erection of works, which appeared to me to be thrown up as much for the purpose of giving the soldiers employment, and keeping their blood in circulation, as to oppose an obstacle to the advance of Marshal Soult, from whom no serious attack was now apprehended. On the following morning, however, I led my party to the front; nor have I frequently spent twenty-four hours in a state of higher excitement than I experienced during the progress of the day and the night which succeeded this movement.

In the first place, the weather had changed greatly for the worse. The frost continued, indeed, as intense—perhaps it was more intense than ever; but the snow came down in huge flakes, which a cold north-east wind drove into our faces. The hut into which the main body of the guard was ushered presented the same ruinous appearance with almost every other house similarly situated; it furnished no shelter against the blast, and very little against the shower. Intelligence had, moreover, been conveyed to us by a deserter, that Soult, irritated at the surprisal of his post upon the Nive, was determined to retaliate whenever an opportunity might occur; and it was more than hinted, that one object of the late retrogression from our front was to draw us beyond our regular line, and so place us in an exposed situation. The utmost caution and circumspection were accordingly enjoined, as the only means of frustrating his designs; and of these the necessity naturally increased as daylight departed.

That I might not be taken by surprise, in case any attack was made upon me after dark, I devoted a good proportion of the day to a minute examination of the country in front and on each flank of my post. For this purpose I strolled over the fields, and found them strewed with the decaying bodies of what had once been soldiers. The enemy, it was evident, had not taken the trouble to bury even their own dead; for, of the carcasses around me, as many, indeed more, were arrayed in French than in British uniforms. No doubt they had furnished food for the wolves, kites, and wild dogs from the thickets—for the flesh of the most of them was torn, and the eyes of almost all were dug out; yet there was one body, the body of a French soldier, quite untouched; and how it chanced to be so, the reader may judge for himself, as soon as he has perused the following little story.

About the middle of the line covered by my chain of sentries was a small straggling village, containing a single street, about twenty cottages, and as many gardens. In the street of that village lay about half-a-dozen carcasses more than half devoured by birds and beasts of prey, and in several of the gardens were other little clusters similarly circumstanced. At the bottom of one of these gardens a Frenchman lay upon his face, perfectly entire, and close beside the body sat a dog. The poor brute, seeing us approach, began to howl piteously, at the same time resisting every effort, not on my part only, but on the part of another officer who accompanied me, to draw him from the spot. We succeeded, indeed, in coaxing him as far as the upper part of the garden—for, though large and lank, he was quite gentle; but he left us there, returned to his post beside the body, and, lifting up his nose into the air, howled again. There are few things in my life that I regret more than not having secured that dog; for it cannot I think be doubted that he was watching beside his dead master, and that he defended him from the teeth and talons which made a prey of all the rest. But I had at the time other thoughts in my mind, and circumstances prevented my paying a second visit to the place where I had found him.

Among other happy results, the more forward position in which the pickets were now placed, furnished me with an opportunity of obtaining a less imperfect view of the city and defences of Bayonne than any which I had yet obtained. I say less imperfect; for even from the tops of the houses no very accurate survey could be taken of a place situated upon a sandy flat, and still five or six miles distant. But I saw enough to confirm me in the idea which I had already formed, that the moment of attack upon these intrenchments, come when it might, could not fail to be a bloody one.

Daylight was by this time rapidly departing; and it became incumbent upon me to contract the chain of my vedettes, and to establish my party a little in the rear of the cottage where we had been hitherto stationed. By acting thus I contrived to render myself as secure as a detachment numerically so small can ever hope to be. There were two lakes, or rather large ponds, in the line of my position—one on the left of the main road, the other on the right; indeed, it was near the opposite extremity of the last-mentioned lake that we unexpectedly found ourselves exposed to a charge of cavalry during the late battle. Of these lakes I gladly took advantage. Planting my people in a large house about a hundred yards in rear, I formed my sentinels into a curved line, causing the extremities to rest each upon its own pond, and pushing forward the centre in the shape of a bow. "Now, then," thought I, "everything must depend upon the vigilance of the watchmen;" and, to render that as perfect as possible, I resolved to spend the whole night in passing from the one to the other. Nor did I break that resolution. I may safely say that I did not sit down for five minutes at a time from sunset on the 24th till sunrise on the 25th.