"Is the caballero himself the allied army?" he said in his best Castilian.
"Donnerwetter noch einmal!" growled the horseman, adding in bad Spanish: "Give the word, and quickly."
"You have the advantage of me, my good friend," responded Jack in English, "so you had better take me to your captain."
Jack had now recognized the man by his uniform as a trooper in the 3rd Light Dragoons of the King's German Legion. The dragoon grunted in surprise on hearing English, and, wheeling his horse beside Jack's mule, he laid one hand on his rein, and with the other held his carbine close to the new-comer's head, and so escorted him to the inn where the cavalry patrol was quartered.
The officer there seated at ease, a burly moustachioed Hessian, looked up as the trooper clanked into the room, holding Jack by the sleeve.
"A stranger, Herr Rittmeister," he said in German, "who cannot or will not give the countersign."
"Not such a terrible stranger, Captain Werder," said Jack in English, recognizing the German as the officer through whom he had obtained his horse in Salamanca. A few words sufficed to explain his presence in such guise, and half an hour afterwards, mounted on a spare horse luckily at hand, he set off on the last eighteen miles that lay between him and his destination.
It was seven o'clock when he reached Salamanca, and, tired as he was, bespattered with mud from head to foot, he proceeded at once to the general's quarters. There he learnt that Sir John was attending a reception given by the Marchesa de Almaran, one of the grandes dames of the city. Leaving the horse at a neighbouring inn, Jack made his way to the Marchesa's palace, hoping that the commander-in-chief's explicit instructions would excuse any want of ceremony there might be in his action. He pulled the broad brim of his hat well over his eyes, and turned up the high collar of his coat, passed the English guard of honour outside the palace, and, entering at the open door, asked for the major-domo.
"General Sir Moore is within?" he said to that functionary when he appeared.
"He is."