I had not heard the field-gun firing for at least an hour, the rifle firing had died away almost as long ago, and it was quite plain that every one had followed Zorilla towards El Castellar.
I climbed round the barricade and walked rather nervously down towards where the field-gun had been, and stopped because the weirdest sounds were coming up from below.
CHAPTER VIII
Zorilla loses his Guns
Written by Sub-Lieutenant William Wilson, R.N.
As I stood there, rather nervous and uncertain what to do, listening to the queer noises which were coming up from the clearing, where Zorilla's army had camped the night before, I heard the sound of naked feet, and stepped back among the dark trees. There was just sufficient grey light for me to see the road, and, as I watched it, two natives, breathing very heavily, hurried past me. They were weighed down with all sort of things; one had a saddle over his head and a huge cavalry sword under his arm, and the other had covered himself from head to foot with a blue cavalry cloak.
I guessed now what those noises were, and felt certain that Gerald's people were busy in the clearing looting the camp. I don't quite know why I went down there, but I did, and it was a most extraordinary sight in the uncertain light. First I came to that field-gun which had fired at us, its wheels and small shields white with bullet-marks. An empty ammunition limber was standing behind it, and the naked bodies of two dead men lay close by, mixed up with some dead mules. I stepped across them, and came upon a lot of regulars sitting at each side of the road, quite a couple of hundred of them, with their hands tied behind their backs. Poor wretches, they looked as if they expected death at any moment.
Hundreds of natives were swarming round some wagons, hauling boxes out, forcing them open with their machetes and scattering the contents on the ground; and a dozen of them were fighting over a case of brandy, breaking the necks off the bottles, and cutting their faces and hands in their struggles to drink some of the stuff. Nobody was taking the slightest notice of two field-guns, with their limbers and mule teams, which were standing in the road a few yards further down. The little half-drunken brutes were simply looting as hard as they could, not even troubling to pick up the rifles which lay about in hundreds. I felt sure that Gerald had sent them to take the guns into San Fernando, and, jolly angry, strode down between the two rows of prisoners, who, seeing me, thought I was Gerald, and began singing out a whining 'Don Geraldio! Don Geraldio!' I saw by their uniforms that they belonged to the same regiment as those fellows who had collared me in Santa Cruz, and that didn't make me love them any more, but their mistaking me for Gerald gave me an idea.
Close by, an officer lay drunk as a fiddler, another had broken the neck of a champagne bottle, and was trying to swallow the stuff before it bubbled all away. I seized him by the neck, knocked the bottle out of his hand, and shook him.
He turned round, looked at me, and fell on his knees in absolute terror. I jerked him to his feet, singing out, 'San Fernando!' sweeping my arm round the camp, pointing to the guns, and then along the road towards the barricade.