About nightfall, just as the grenadiers of the Borderers struggled up the Monte del Cebrero through all the horrible débris that the columns in front had left behind, they passed several of the sick and artillery waggons, broken down or abandoned by the wayside. In these were many soldiers' wives and sick men dead and frozen!
In one was a woman in labour dying, with her infant, amid the icy drift; in another a woman already dead, with a wailing infant tugging at her white cold breast. The little one was taken by good old Sergeant-major Calder, who wrapped it in his great-coat, but it died of cold ere the summit of the mountain was attained.
From one of those covered sick-waggons that lay broken down and abandoned among the snow and sleet, there came the sound of a strange wailing song sung by a woman. This prompted Quentin to leave the ranks, which were somewhat irregular now, and peep in. There he found a soldier of the 25th lying dead, and his wife, with their child, sitting by his side, in misery. They formed a touching group!
She was evidently deranged by suffering, terror, and sorrow, and she was a pretty young woman, too. She heard not the wailing of the infant that nestled among the wet straw by her side, but sat with her husband's head in her lap, and her hollow eyes fixed on vacancy, as she toyed with his hair, and "crooned" a fragment of an old Scottish song to a plaintive air, somewhat like that of "My Love's in Germanie."
"They say my love is dead,
Gone to his gory bed,
They say my love is dead,
Ayont the sea.
In the stillness o' the night,
When the moon is shining bright,
My true-love's shroud sae white
Haunteth me,
Haunteth me!
My true love's shroud sae white
Haunteth me!"
"Good heavens, sir," said a soldier, "it is poor Allan Grange, the sergeant who was broken at Colchester, and his wife, too! She's clean demented, puir thing! Ailie, woman, come awa; the regiment is moving on."
Quentin too, tried his powers of persuasion, but without avail, and the stern order of Cosmo, to "Close up—close up, and move on—no loitering!" together with the distant boom of a French field-piece, the flash of which came redly through the drift and darkness, compelled them to leave her. If she lived she must soon after have fallen into the hands of the enemy. At all events, Ailie Grange was heard of no more.
In one of the many skirmishes with the enemy's light dragoons, a singular instance of gross treachery occurred at the little village of Palacios de la Valduerna. There a sergeant of our 7th Hussars, belonging to Captain Duckinfield's detachment, vanquished, in single combat, a French dragoon and took him prisoner. The Frenchman threw down his sword, drew off his leather gauntlet, and held out his hand in token of amity. Then the sergeant, with the characteristic generosity of a gallant Englishman, also put forth his right hand; but inserting his left into his holster, the Frenchman drew a pistol, blew his captor's wrist to pieces, and killed his horse under him.
Before the poor hussar could rise from under his fallen charger, the would-be assassin was bayoneted by some of Romana's Spanish soldiers, who in their rage and hatred, made up a fire and consumed his body to ashes; after this, in blind vengeance, they somewhat needlessly slew his horse.
At this part of the disastrous retreat nearly a hundred waggons that were coming on, laden with shoes and clothes for Romana's Spaniards, from England, but too late to be of any avail, fell into the hands of the enemy.