"By Jove! to have to fall in when one should go to sleep—to nod and drowse and dream while tramping on and on, your nose coming every minute down on the tin canteen or the knapsack of the man in front of you! It is miserable work; but what with contract powder that won't explode, ammunition shoes warranted not to last, diseased bullocks shot while at fever heat and eaten half raw, we are little likely to beat the French, either in fighting or marching."
"Unless, like them, we learn to hang an occasional commissary or contractor," said old Middleton, as he sprang with agility on his horse; and the regiment formed open column of companies in the dark, for daybreak was yet an hour distant.
CHAPTER VII.
RETROGRESSION.
"Lucius, the horsemen are returned from viewing
The number, strength, and posture of our foes,
Who now encamp within a short hour's march.
On the high point of yonder western tower,
We ken them from afar, the setting sun
Plays on their shining arms and burnished helmets,
And covers all the field with gleams of fire."
Cato, Act v.
Ere noon next day, while the division was traversing the grassy plain amid which lies the ancient city of Merida, the sound of distant firing on their right flank announced the repulse, by the guerillas, of some of the cavalry of Laborde's corps, when making a reconnoissance. The light white puffs of the musketry that curled along the green hill-sides, came nearer and nearer, and it soon became known that the band of the formidable De Saldos el Estudiente, above two thousand strong, had joined the division of Sir John Hope; as the newspaper of Lord Rohallion had it, a measure fully arranged "by the skill and courage" of our young volunteer. But though the army continued its march for several days, no recognition of his service, in orders or otherwise, ever reached him from head-quarters, and happily for himself, he saw nothing of the dreaded Baltasar, who fortunately was left in the rear, with an open sabre cut.
Ribeaupierre's cavalry brigade abandoned Valencia de Alcantara without firing a shot, on its flank being turned, and fell back, no one knew exactly where or in what direction.
Hope's division halted at Merida, a place eminently calculated to excite the deepest interest in the thinking or historical visitor, by its ancient remains; its great bridge of more than eighty arches spanning the broad waters of the Guadiana; the ruins of its Roman castle, which Alfonso the Astrologer gifted to the knights of Santiago, and in the vaults of which Baltasar's guerillas had thrust some unfortunate French prisoners; its triumphal arch of Julius Cæsar, under which the division passed with drums beating and colours flying, and its crumbling amphitheatre:—Merida, of old the Rome of Spain, and the home of the aged and disabled soldiers of the 5th and 10th legions of Augustus Cæsar, whose great pyramid still towers there, amid the ruins of its contemporaries.
There was ample accommodation in the town for the officers of the division; but yet not enough to prevent a dispute about rank, or precedence, or something else, between a Captain Winton of the Borderers, and an officer of the German Legion. So they met about daybreak near the Baths of Diana. The former was attended by Askerne of the Grenadiers, and the latter by Major Burgwesel of his own corps, and at the second fire Winton shot his man dead, Cosmo coolly lending his pistols for this occasion, without comment or inquiry, either of which would have been ungentlemanly, according to the temper or spirit of the service then.
Prior to this event, on the evening the division halted, Quentin, about the hour of sunset, had wandered to the old Roman aqueduct which lies near the city, and he remained for a time lost in thought while surveying its mouldering arches, and the piles of columns, bases, flowered capitals, enriched friezes, Corinthian entablatures, and broken statues, lying amid the weeds and long grass, the remains of the once superb temples, ruined by the Goths and Moors; and perhaps he was thinking of his old dominie at Rohallion, and the worthy pedant's profound veneration for the ancient days of Rome, the mistress of all the then known world.