“Yes, yes,” I said, impatient, for Urquhart drew back abstracted, checking his tale to survey the effect of his last touch upon my eyebrows.
He smiled.
“Why,” said he, “I hardly thought it would interest you,” and then went on deliberately.
“I need not tell you,” he said, “how quick was our conquering of the French, once we had got through the walls. My drum was not done echoing back from Sierra de Francisca (as I think the name was), when the place was ours. And then—and then—there came the sack! Our men went mad. These were days when rapine and outrage were to be expected from all victorious troops; there might be some excuse for hatred of the Spaniard on the part of our men, whose comrades, wounded, had been left to starve at Talavera—but surely not for this. They gorged with wine, they swarmed in lawless squads through every street and alley; swept through every dwelling, robbing and burning; the night in a while was white with fires, and the town was horrible with shrieks and random musket-shots and drunken songs.
“Some time in the small hours of the morning, trying to find my own regiment, I came with my drum to the head of what was doubtless the most dreadful street that night in Europe. It was a lane rather than a street, unusually narrow, with dwellings on either side so high that it had some semblance to a mountain pass. At that hour, if you will credit me, it seemed the very gullet of the Pit: the far end of it in flames, the middle of it held by pillagers who fought each other for the plunder from the houses, while from it came the most astounding noises—oaths in English and Portuguese, threats, entreaties, and commands, the shrieks of women, the crackling of burning timber, occasionally the firing of weapons, and through it all, constant, sad beyond expression, a deep low murmur, intensely melancholy, made up of the wail of the sacked city.
“As I stood listening some one called out, ‘Drummer!’
“I turned, to find there had just come up a general officer and his staff, with a picket of ten men. The General himself stepped forward at my salute and put his hand on my drum, that shone brightly in the light of the conflagrations.
“‘What the deuce do you mean, sir,’ said he with heat, ‘by coming into action with my brother’s drum? You know very well it is not for these occasions.’
“‘The ordinary drums of the regiment were lost on Monday last, sir,’ I said, ‘when we were fording the Agueda through the broken ice.’ And then, with a happy thought, I added, ‘Kildalton’s drums are none the worse for taking part in the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo. This was the first drum through the walls.’
“He looked shrewdly at me and gave a little smile. ‘H’m,’ he muttered, ‘perhaps not, perhaps not, after all. My brother would have been pleased, if he had been alive, to know his drums were here this night. Where is the other one?’