Стрелок Додд

'What about rations, sergeant?' he asked.

'Rations? Rations? Do you blues mean to say you want rations? I don't know why you have come to Santarem, then. You must hurry to the quartermaster's stores and see what there is. They served out the day's rations an hour ago.' 'What was it, sergeant?' asked Dubois.

'Maize,' said the sergeant of sappers. 'Unground maize. One pound per man. That is what they were issuing an hour ago. There may be some left, but I doubt it.' As it happened, the doubts of the sergeant of sappers were ill-founded. Every man in Sergeant Godinot's party received his pound of maize. It only remained for them to pound it as well as they could, and then boil it into porridge over a fire made of what wood they could steal. It constituted a poor day's food for men engaged in hard physical work.

Chapter XIII

LIFE among the outcasts in the rocky mountain by the river settled down extraordinarily quickly into routine. The Portuguese peasants had been accustomed all their lives to unremitting hard work, and gladly took up what labour there was to be done-it irked them to be idle. So that it was quite willingly that they did sentry-go along the brow of the hill, and slaved to enlarge the cave by the river so that there might be shelter in it for all. It was the women's task to look after the cattle on the hill and move them from point to point so that they might find herbage here and there-scanty herbage, but enough to keep them just alive. The constant fear of attack by the French kept everyone from quarrelling.

It was all very matter-of-fact and obvious. When shots from the brow of the hill told that an attack was developing there, everyone knew what he had to do. The little flock of sheep was driven down to the river's brink and carried one by one on the backs of men and women over the secret ford to the little beach outside the cave. The women drove the large cattle into hidden gullies and left them there, perforce, while they came down for shelter to the cave as well. The men took their muskets and went out on the hillside to skirmish with the enemy. There was ample time for everything to be done, because on the precipitous goat tracks through the rocks and the undergrowth the French soldiers moved so slowly that an interval hours long occurred between the firing of the first warning shots and the arrival of the French anywhere where they might be dangerous. The very first attack, made only a few days after the arrival of the French, was perhaps the most successful. It was only a short while after daybreak that a musket shot told of the danger, and Dodd had seized his rifle, and, with Bernardino at his side, had hurried to the broad flat rock on the summit which the peasants called 'the table' to see what was developing.

It was the usual sort of attack-four columns of men pushing up the hill by perilous goat tracks through the bush.

Dodd could catch glimpses of each in turn making the slow ascent whenever the conformation of the ground brought them into view. Each column consisted of a company; even at that distance he could see in the clear air that one column wore the bearskins of the grenadiers of the battalion and another the plumes of the voltigeurs-'light bobs' Dodd called them mentally; the remaining two companies of the battalion had been left behind, of course, to act as headquarters guard.

The progress of the attackers was inordinately slow. They had continually to halt to enable the rear to catch up with the head. The three sentries who had given the alarm were able to slip round by other paths and take long shots into the caterpillars of men crawling up the slope. Dodd and the other half-dozen men who gathered round him had ample time to choose their course of action and glide along the crest away to the flank and by heavy firing there bring one of the columns to a complete stop.

Yet it was a damaging day. The other columns had broken into smaller parties, which had ranged very thoroughly over the top of the mountain-as thoroughly, that is to say, as twelve small parties could range over an immense hilltop seamed and broken with gullies. One such party must have found the cattle, the four draught bullocks who had drawn the village plough in the days before the French came. And perhaps another such party had found Miguel. However it was, Miguel was missing. He might be dead, and his body might be lying somewhere out on the hillside. No one knew what had become of old Miguel, and the women in the cave that night wept for him-more bitterly, perhaps, than the men bewailed the loss of the draught oxen. They sought him next day over the hill without finding him, but later in the day one of the watchers on the brow of the hill came in with news of him.

He had seen Miguel brought out of the village and buried by the fields; he was sure it was Miguel, even at that distance. The French must have dragged him into the village and murdered him. There was more wailing among the women. Miguel had led a solitary life lately; his wife was dead and his sons had been conscripted into the army, but everyone in that village was related to everyone else; they had intermarried for generations, even (as was not unusual in those lost villages) within the prohibited degrees. Miguel was mourned by cousins and nieces and daughters-in-law.

The other information which the watchers on the hill brought, to the effect that the French had discovered the hidden stores of food in Miguel's silo, went almost u

Nevertheless, Miguel's death was not long unavenged.

There came a morning when Bernardino, flushed with excitement, came hurriedly to Dodd and the others and led them to 'the table,' where they gathered with infinite caution.

Bernardino pointed down the hill, and everyone followed his gesture. Far down the slope they could see half a dozen men crawling along a path. They were bent double, and moving with such ludicrous care that Bernardino could not help giggling as he pointed to them: it was so amusing to see them picking their way with so much caution and ignorant that they had been observed. It was Dodd who laid the ambush. He guessed the future route of the little party, and brought his men hurriedly across the slope to where they could await their arrival unseen. He had lain on his stomach with his rifle pushed out in front of him ready for action, and the others had imitated him. And, when at one point of their course the Frenchmen had shown up clearly and just within range, he had turned his head and had glowered at his men with such intensity that they had restrained their natural instincts and had not fired, but had waited instead for the better opportunity which Dodd had foreseen.

The volley at ten yards and the instant charge which Dodd had headed had been effective enough. There were three men dead and another one wounded, whose throat Pedro had cut the instant Dodd's back was turned, and the survivors had fled down the path as though the devil was behind them.

Dodd would have been glad if they had all been killed, but to kill seven men with a volley from seven muskets even at ten yards was much more than could be expected-a pity, all the same, for Dodd could guess at the moral effect it would have had on the battalion if a whole detachment had been cut off without trace. He had forbidden pursuit, calling back Bernardino who had begun to run down the path after the fugitives. There was no sense in ru