Стрелок Додд

Still Dodd had not contrived to coax a fresh bullet down his rifle barrel. He was cursing vilely at the weapon, for he saw clearly there would be no chance of a second shot. Then, when the dragoon was about to turn the corner, a ragged volley sounded from the other side of the gorge. The horse plunged and fell, pitching the dragoon over his head, and instantly a little group of men came leaping down the opposite hillside, splashed across the stream, and seized him just as he was sitting up, dazed. There appeared to be a brief consultation round the prisoner, and then the group, dragging him with them, mounted the side of the gorge almost to where Dodd lay watching.

They were Portuguese peasants, he could see-friends, that was to say. He walked along the crest to where they were gathered round the helpless dragoon. At sight of him they seized their weapons and rushed towards him. Some of them had pikes, two or three of them had muskets, one of them with a bayonet fixed, and apparently with every intention of using it.

'Inglez,' said Dodd hastily, as they came ru

They looked their unbelief until their leader pushed past them and inspected him.

'Sim, Inglez,' he decided, and turned to pour out a torrent of rapid explanation to his followers.

Then he turned back to Dodd and said something which Dodd could not understand. He repeated the phrase, and then, seeing that it meant nothing to Dodd, he reached forward and shook Dodd's rifle.

'Espingarda raiada,' he repeated impatiently.

'Rifle,' said Dodd.

'Rye-full,' said the other. 'Sim, sim, espingarda raiada.'

To his friends he repeated the word along with more explanation and a vivid bit of pantomime illustrating the rotation of a rifle bullet in flight. Clearly he was a Portuguese of more than average intelligence.

The party drifted back to where the wretched dragoon lay among the rocks, his hands behind his back and a cord round his ankles. His face lit up with hope when he caught sight of Dodd's uniform. The Portuguese leader kicked him in the face as he came up, and then, as he fell back among the stones, kicked him in the belly so that he moaned and doubled up in agony. That was enormously amusing; all the Portuguese hooted with joy as he writhed, and when he turned over on his stomach one of them stuck the point of his pike into the seat of his breeches so that he cried out again with pain and writhed over again on to his back, enabling them to kick him again where it hurt most, amid shrieks of laughter.

It was more than Dodd could stand. He pushed forward like the chivalrous hero of some boys' book of adventure, and cleared the brutes away from the prostrate man.

'Prisoner,' he said, and then, in the instinctive belief that they would understand him better if he shouted and if he spoke ungrammatically he continued in a louder tone, pointing to the captive. 'Prisoner. He prisoner. He not to be hurt.'

Looking round at the lowering expressions of the Portuguese, he realized that they still did not understand, and he tried to make use of what he knew of Spanish and Portuguese grammatical constructions.

'Prisonerado,' he said. 'Captivado. Nao damagado.'

The leader nodded. Clearly he had heard somewhere or other of some silly convention that prisoners were not to be tortured. He broke into rapid speech. Two of his men under his instructions hoisted the dragoon to his feet so that he stood swaying between them. And then, under his further instructions, before Dodd could interfere, three more of his men lowered their pikes and thrust them into his body. The Frenchman, mercifully, was not long dying then, while Dodd looked on horrified and the others gri

When he was dead they tore his bloodstained clothes from his corpse; one man put on the blue tunic with the red shoulder-knots, while another pulled on the white breeches. Stained as they were, they were better garments than those discarded in their favour. Then they made ready to move on. The leader tapped Dodd on the shoulder and by his gestures clearly indicated that they expected him to accompany them. 'Inglezes?' demanded Dodd, pointing.

The leader shook his head and pointed in nearly the opposite direction, and once more insisted in pantomime on his accompanying them. His verbal explanation included the word 'Franceses'; obviously he was trying to tell Dodd what he knew already, that the whole French army lay between him and the English. Dodd pointed to himself and then south-eastwards.

'Tejo,' he said. 'Alhandra. Lisboa.'

The leader nodded and shrugged. He had heard vaguely of the Tagus and of Lisbon, but the river was full fifty miles away and the city a hundred; he had no real belief in their existence. He sloped his musket and signed to Dodd to come with them. The southerly route they seemed determined upon was not far out of his way, so that he joined them in their march without misgiving.

Two months of guerrilla warfare had already taught the Portuguese some elements of military methods. At orders from the leader one man went out far to the right, another to the left, a third ahead. With flank guards and advance guard in this fashion there was small chance of their meeting the enemy unexpectedly. They trooped down the steep slope, and turned their faces up the path. The dead horse lay there, already stripped of everything worth carrying away. Farther back lay the dead Portuguese. Someone waved his hand towards the body and made some remark about Joao. Everybody laughed a little-laughed at the memory of the dead Joao who did not have the sense to take to the rocks when pursued by a horseman. That was all the epitaph Joao received.

Dodd never discovered, to his dying day, what had been going on just before his arrival on the scene of the skirmish- who had been fighting, and in what numbers. He could only guess that some reco

They knew their way about the country. They quitted the good track upon which the march had begun in favour of one much less obvious and practicable, and tramped along without hesitation, up hills and down them, over fords and through forests, the while the sun sank lower and lower. Then they turned into a path which led straight up into the highest hills. It wound round the edge of some precipices and went straight up the face of others, becoming indistinguishable from a dry watercourse in the process. Even the marching powers of a man of the Ninety Fifth were strained to the utmost. Dodd had fed badly for two days now, and he had marched much. His head began to swim and his heart to beat distressfully against his ribs as he toiled along behind the big Portuguese leader. He began to slip and fall at the difficult parts, borne down by the weight of his weapons and pack. When he fell the man behind trod on his feet while the man in front made no attempt to wait for him. Darkness fell, and still they struggled along the stony way, while Dodd felt as though he must soon sink under his fatigue.