About an hour’s march brought us to the river side, in a little clump of alder willows, where, moored to a stake, lay a fishing boat with two short oars in her. Lying down beneath the shade, for the afternoon was hot and sultry, some of us smoked, some chatted, and a few dozed away the hours that somehow seemed unusually slow in passing.
There was a certain dogged sullenness about my companions, which proceeded from their belief, that we and all who remained at Strasbourg, were merely left to occupy the enemy’s attention, while greater operations were to be carried on elsewhere.
“You see what it is to be a condemned corps,” muttered one; “it’s little matter what befalls the old ninth, even should they be cut to pieces.”
“They didn’t think so at Enghein,” said another, “when we rode down the Austrian cuirassiers.”
“Plain enough,” cried a third, “we are to have skirmishers’ duty here, without skirmishers’ fortune in having a force to fall back upon.”
“Eh! Maurice, is not this very like what you predicted for us?” broke in a fourth ironically.
“I’m of the same mind still,” rejoined I, coolly, “the general is not thinking of a retreat; he has no intention of deserting a well-garrisoned, well-provisioned fortress. Let the attack on Manheim have what success it may, Strasbourg will be held still. I overheard Colonel Guyon remark, that the waters of the Rhine have fallen three feet since the drought set in, and Regnier replied, ‘that we must lose no time, for there will come rain and floods ere long.’ Now what could that mean, but the intention to cross over yonder?”
“Cross the Rhine in face of the fort of Kehl!” broke in the corporal.
“The French army have done bolder things before now!” was my reply, and whatever the opinion of my comrades, the flattery ranged them on my side. Perhaps the corporal felt it beneath his dignity to discuss tactics with an inferior, or perhaps he felt unable to refute the specious pretensions I advanced; in any case he turned away, and either slept, or affected sleep, while I strenuously labored to convince my companions that my surmise was correct.
I repeated all my former arguments about the decrease in the Rhine, showing that the river was scarcely two-thirds of its habitual breadth, that the nights were now dark, and well suited for a surprise, that the columns which issued from the town took their departure with a pomp and parade far more likely to attract the enemy’s attention than escape his notice, and were, therefore, the more likely to be destined for some secret expedition, of which all this display was but the blind. These, and similar facts, I grouped together with a certain ingenuity, which, if it failed to convince, at least silenced my opponents. And now the brief twilight, if so short a struggle between day and darkness deserved the name, passed off, and night suddenly closed around us—a night black and starless, for a heavy mass of lowering cloud seemed to unite with the dense vapor that arose from the river, and the low-lying grounds alongside of it. The air was hot and sultry, too, like the precursor of a thunder-storm, and the rush of the stream as it washed among the willows sounded preternaturally loud in the stillness.