On this route from the Bay of Maciera, Quentin had undergone all the misery of a soldier's life during the wet season in Portugal, where the towns were then in ruins and desolate, the country utterly destroyed, and where every one who was not in arms seemed to have fled towards the coast, for, like the breath of a destroying angel, the armies of France had passed over the entire length of the land from Algarve to Galicia, laying all desolate in that wicked spirit of waste which has been so peculiar to the French soldier in all ages.
Each day, in lieu of the old Scottish reveille welcoming the morning, Quentin had heard the sharp note of the warning bugle, or of the drummer beating hastily the générale, through the ruined streets of Santarem, of Abrantes or elsewhere; through the equally silent lines of tents when they encamped on the mountains, or the miserable bivouac when they halted in some wild place where whilom maize or Indian corn grew, summoning the drowsy and weary soldiers to their ranks for the monotonous march of another day.
From the bare boards, the hard-tiled floor, or perhaps the cold ground, whereon our volunteer had slept with his knapsack for a pillow, he had been roused by the voices of the sergeant-major, or Buckle the adjutant, shouting in the grey morning, "Fall in, 25th—stand to your arms—turn out the whole!" while the rain that swept in sheet-like torrents along the desolate streets, and the gale that tore in angry gusts among the ruined gables and shattered windows, formed no pleasant prelude to a day's march that was to be begun without other breakfast, perhaps, than a ration biscuit soaked in the half-stale fluid that filled his wooden canteen.
In camp, the tents were made to hold twelve soldiers each; but some of these were always on duty. All lay with their feet to the pole and their heads to the wall or curtain. Each man's pack was his pillow, and each slept, if he could, with a blanket half under and half over him. The rain always sputtered and filtered through in their faces, till the drenched canvas tightened, and the water was carried off by a little circular trench.
Quentin shared Askerne's tent with his two subalterns.
So the night would pass, till the cry of "Rouse!" rang along the lines, and the bugles sounded the assembly, when the blankets were rolled up and strapped to the knapsacks; the wet tents were struck and folded; the pegs and mallets replaced in their bags, and the troops prepared to march in the grey morning haze, weary, wet, stiff and sore, by reposing on the damp sod.
Quentin had always fancied a bivouac a species of military pic-nic, minus the ladies, pink cream, and champagne; but on the first night he lay in one, when the baggage guard was lagging in the rear and no tents were pitched, as he was drenched in a soaking blanket under the cold October wind that swept down the rocky sierra, he began to have serious doubts whether man was really a warm-blooded animal.
"Ugh!" grumbled Monkton on this night, "who, with brains in his head-piece, would become a soldier?"
"You remind me," said Askerne, as he shook the water for the twentieth time from his bear-skin cap, "of a story I have heard of Maitland, one of our early colonels who served on the staff of the Duke of Marlborough. It was at Blenheim, I think, when he was riding along the line accompanied by the colonel and another aide-de-camp, whose head was suddenly shattered by a cannon shot from the Bavarian artillery. Perceiving that Maitland looked long and fixedly at the fallen man, Marlborough said angrily—
"'Colonel Maitland, what the devil are you wondering at?'