The suddenness of the surprise—and the rapidity with which the affair had terminated in the destruction or capture of the French detachment, seemed magical.—No attempt had been made to carry the orders of Colonel La Coste into execution, and my danger was confined to the ordinary chances of receiving a flying bullet by mistake.—From the moment a shot was heard, my captors lost all heart, and appeared to consider their situation desperate: generally mercy was extended—and in a time inconceivably short, the prisoners were secured, and stripped of every thing that was deemed worthy of notice by the guerillas.
From the neat and uniform appointments of the French soldiers, the eye turned in surprise on the strange and motley appearance the guerilla band presented. Every individual was dressed and armed after his especial fancy. All were differently equipped; and had not sad realities presented themselves, the whole might have been imagined a military masquerade. The costumes of several countries were united in a single dress. The flaring scarlet and light blue jacket of an Estremaduran hussar—the shaco of a French chasseur—pistols and saddle of English manufacture—the long straight sword of the cuirassier—the brown Spanish sash, and leathern cartouch-box, with an Arragonese or Catalan escopeta, were not unfrequent equipments of the same brigand, as the French invariably entitled them. *
* Leith Hay.
Although none of the captives escaped plunder, and many were cruelly insulted in the operation, it was singular that all the partidas treated me with respect, and left me unscathed in person or effects. Presently a buzz around me attracted my attention. A man was forcing a passage through the crowd, and the guerillas civilly made way for him. He was dressed and armed in the same wild and incongruous style which marked the costume of these irregular partisans; and he looked as much the brigand as if he had served a regular apprenticeship to the profession. Great, therefore, was my astonishment when I heard him pronounce my name; but greater still, when he seized both my hands in his, and half said, half sobbed—“Hector, avourneeine!—Have I found my foster-brother once more?” It was, indeed, the lost Mark Antony; and, as far as one could judge by appearances, the fosterer had neither received damage in the late affray, nor in his morning swim over the Sedana.
“Holy Mary!” he exclaimed. “Is this yourself, Master Hector? Well, I never expected to see you alive; though that black gentleman, with the long name, strove all he could to give me comfort. May the Lord reward him for the same!—and upon my soul, for a perfect stranger, he showed the greatest affection for us both After we were safe out of fire, and taking breath for a minute in the cork-wood, I asked him, fair and easy, what he thought had become of ye? ‘’Gad,’ says he, ‘I think its a toss-up between shooting and hanging. The chances are, that your master was finished in the affray; but if he escaped that, he is sure to be throttled in the morning. Don’t be cast down,’ says he, ‘if they string up our absent friend, I’ll hang twelve Frenchmen in his place, and you shall keep the reckonin’.’ It was very civil on the gentleman’s part, but, ‘faith, I was better pleased, an hour afterwards, when a goatherd brought us intelligence that you were safe and sound, and the other poor devils dead as a door-nail. But here he comes—a mighty pleasant sort of friend, but sorra worse enemy one would meet in a month of Sundays. Indeed, I have no reason to complain of him; a better comrade I never travelled with—I have lived like a fighting-cock since we came together; and as my clothes were made ribbons of in the skrimmage, here I am rigged out anew from top to toe.”
As he spoke, the partida leader approached, wrung my hand ardently with his, and warmly congratulated me on my safe deliverance from French bondage, and in having escaped any material injury in our outbreak from the posada, and the more recent attack. Confiding the duty of removing the prisoners, horses, and plunder to Villa Toro, he requested me to walk with him to the head of the pass. As we proceeded along the scene of action—if such an affair might so be termed, where the loss was entirely on one side, and no resistance had been offered—I was struck with the strange alteration the appearance of the road had undergone. Ten minutes since it had been strewn with dead chasseurs and sharpshooters, dressed in their showy uniforms, and fully and effectively equipped. Not a soldier could be discovered now; but in their places numerous corpses might be seen stripped of every covering, and in a state of nudity, that almost rendered identity impossible. One body, however, I distinctly recognised:—the white hair, and stern expression of countenance, even after death, could not be mistaken:—the dead soldier was the old Republican—Colonel La Coste.
CHAPTER XXXI. THE TRIAL.
“Proceed to judgment; by my sou!, I swear.