A few hours' march brought them to the summits of the Pyrenees, and afar off was seen the ocean, which they had not beheld for so long. It was the way to their homes, and from a simultaneous feeling, which inspired every man, three hearty cheers awoke the echoes of the mountains; caps and bonnets were tossed into the air,—the bands struck up "Rule Britannia," and the pipers blew till their faces grew purple and black. The brigades halted for a few minutes, and a dead silence succeeded the first outbreak of their joy. Every man's breast seemed swelling with emotions, which he found it impossible to communicate; but he read in the faces of his comrades the same joy which quickened the pulses of his own heart. The sea,—the same deep-heaving sea which swept around the rocks and shores of their own country, now spread its broad bosom before them; and long and wistfully they gazed on the white sails of the solitary British cruisers, which here and there dotted the dark-blue waters of the Bay of Biscay. The green ridges of the Lower Pyrenees, the fertile plains and wooded vales of France, lay spread at their feet like a brightly-tinted map. Saint Jean de Luz, the famous and opulent Bayonne, and a thousand minor towns and villages were seen from those lofty summits, now trod by British soldiers for the first time. Behind them lay sunny España, through which they had toiled and fought their way, and where many a comrade had found his grave,—but no man looked to the rear. Every eye was turned to the north,—on France, which lay below them. But stern and bloody work was awaiting them, and many a one whose heart then bounded with thoughts of his native home, and with a thousand inexpressible hopes, wishes, and fond anticipations, was doomed to find his last resting-place on these very heights of Maya.
That night the troops bivouacked on the mountain side, a league in front of Elizondo. As it was generally his luck after any march which had been particularly long and tiresome, Ronald Stuart had command of an advanced picquet, forming one of the chain thrown out in the direction of Gazan's division, which had taken up a position lower down the mountains with the determination to dispute every inch of ground that led to la belle France,—a resolution which the Marquess of Wellington determined to put to the test next day. Stuart's orders were to visit his sentries every hour throughout the night, to keep them on the alert; a duty which proved very harassing after so long a march, as it was almost impossible to sleep in the short intervals between the rounds. However, fretting would not have bettered the affair, and rolling himself up in his cloak, he resolved to make himself as comfortable as he possibly could. A huge fire lighted by the soldiers lessened the cold, and counteracted the effects of a heavy wetting dew, which falls amid these mountains at almost every season.
After his ration of beef had been broiled on the embers, eaten without salt off the end of a ramrod, and washed down with a canteen-full of that rich cider, for the production of which the district around Elizondo is so famous, after listening to the merry bells of the town which were ringing in honour of the British, and after watching until he grew weary the varying effects of light and shade, as the red blaze of a dozen picquet-fires glared on the beetling crags, deep seams and gorges, or green sides of the hills, he found it almost impossible to resist the invasion of sleep. Even the miniature of his dark-haired Alice failed to enliven him, and he envied the privates of his party, who, having neither command nor responsibility, slept soundly by the fire, with their knapsacks beneath their heads and their arms piled beside them. On consulting his watch to see how the time went, he found that it was midnight, and that an hour had elapsed since his last visit. As it was necessary to be attended by some one, he awoke Evan,[*] and desiring him to take his arms, moved towards his sentinels, whom he had considerable trouble in discovering, as the night was intensely dark. All was right, every soldier was on the alert, and Ronald was returning with his follower through the winding and rocky path towards the fire, which served as a beacon to guide them to their post, and which they beheld glimmering through the gloom some hundred yards off, when a piercing cry rang through the still air, at a short distance from the place where they were.
[*] An officer's servant is always on duty with his master.
"Hey, sir!" exclaimed Evan, beginning to unbuckle his pouch; "what can that be, in sic a wild place as this?"
"A woman's voice, I think."
"It cam frae the hill on the left o' the road,—I'm sure o't. Hech! it was an unco' cry."
"Follow me," said his master, beginning quickly to ascend the hill.
"Hech, sir! dinna venture up the bank till we hear something mair," said Evan cautiously, following promptly nevertheless. "My certie! we kenna what folk may bide amang the holmes and howes hereabout. At hame I have heard tell o' sic cries ringing at this time, between the nicht and morning, and they were ay for ill, and never for gude. Sae be advised, sir, and wait awee."
"Evan!" said Stuart angrily, "are you afraid of men?"