So the gossip was kept up until a volley of twenty or so arquebuses, as the fleet grounded in tolerable line, turned their thoughts too busily in another channel to leave time for such tattling; and the old campaigners of the later Moorish wars were out and formed in “battle” before Capt. Bourgignon poured in his reserve fire, and fell upon the invaders with the audacity of a hawk half as large as your hand pouncing upon a turkey a fourth as big as your body; only that the enemy was not in any respect like a turkey—more like a condor, I should say, in point of ferocity and collected action. He marched up from the submerged beach to the sands above high-water, with no more concern for the struggling handful in front than you or I would for the whiff of sleet blown in our faces on a windy day in the streets. To be sure, the smooth tablet left by the last tide, was written over with a heavy stylus, and dabbled with such ink as conquerors and others who leave their mark on the times in which they lived, employ; moreover, there were numerous unsightly blotches dropped about, which retained enough vitality sometimes to scream in a manner calculated to shock our fire-eating civilians into a wholesome distaste to civil collision and slaying. Of course, such things are necessities, like lightning and volcanic eruptions, despite the efforts of Mr. Burritt to show the contrary. The exception appears strongest when one of us loses a brother or a husband, with a bullet in the heart or head, as Amelia did George at Brussels, or more than one acquaintance of mine, now wearing premature widow’s-weeds, in the late Mexican war.
On the whole, there is something vastly fascinating in military display and glory; and I confess, when I call to mind the bray of trumpets, glint of steel harness, and gallant show of surcoats, paraded that July morning along the St. Catherine beach, I am tempted to drag my obliging reader into the thick of the fight, and recapitulate, with cannibal appetite, the shouts, groans, and extorted cries of agony, by which you could have told with shut eyes how the work advanced, and where this or that poor devil was left sprawling on the driftweed, with a saucer full of blood in a sea-shell, perhaps, just under his left side; to say nothing of those who enacted the parts, as near as their heavy armor and different locomotive organization allowed, of fowls recently beheaded—a sight full of interest to even those darlings of mamma who are brought up to feed sparrows with crumbs, but slay mice and centipedes without restriction. All I intend relating of this skirmish is, that Capt. Bourgignon was killed, as were most of his officers, and as to the fifteen men remaining out of the fifty, not one was without a wound. They could not have acquitted themselves better had De Chaste himself been present, which he was not, but on the opposite side of a high promontory lying next La Praya, making what haste he might to come up with the combatants, whose whereabouts he knew by the cannonading.
Three days before this the viceroy had sent word to the commander that the Spanish fleet could plainly be seen from the Peak; and riding along the coast, De Chaste heard the sentinels posted on the mountains ringing bells and firing their arquebuses, in token of the approach of the enemy, who were not long in arriving within gun-shot of the shore, and keeping the islanders in constant alarm, as before hinted, by cannon shots and the hovering of a cluster of galleys about every available landing. The French general had his hands full in following these last, encouraging his little garrisons, and endeavoring to find bread for his troops, whose dinners the Count de Torrevedros never troubled himself about. Indeed, that viceregal nobleman had enough to do to consider how best to ingratiate himself with the Marquis of Santa-Cruz, and for the present keep out of harm’s way. It was not only the count, however, who cared little for the landing of the Spaniards and ruin of the French, provided their persons and property remained secure—a tolerably universal wish being that their allies had gone to the bottom before reaching Tercera and dragging them into a siege, when all they wanted was safety and submission.
“Senhor Commandante,” said the Portuguese captain at La Praya, while the pair rode out, as usual, with a company or two at their heels, “you can now see for yourself, yonder, how little the number of the enemy has been magnified.”
“So much the better,” answered the commander, like the Wolf in Little Red Ridinghood; “we will have more to make prisoners.”
“O—h!” cried the Portuguese, the idea being new to him.
“Confound the man’s bragging,” he muttered to himself; “he talks as if they were children or savages he has to do with.”
Whereupon De Chaste added, with something like a smile on his hard face:
“You see at least, senhor captain, they are not afraid of us, if we are of them, for they pull within reach of our batteries; and here comes a ball to measure the distance between us.”
“St. Hubert! Are we to stand here to be shot without chance of drawing sword?” cried Captain Gaza, brushing the sand thrown over him from his holyday doublet. “It is madness, sir commander, madness; and I cannot expose my brave men to such needless danger.”