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A moment of far greater danger came, all the same, a few minutes later, when someone came to the edge of the river some distance away and looked over at the water. The three of them lay frozen among the bushes-a searching glance from the new arrival might have disclosed them nevertheless. But he was not looking for men; he would have been extremely surprised to find an English soldier and a couple of Portuguese hidden under the very muzzles of his guns. He was looking for a place to water the horses, and the immediate neighbourhood, with a ten-foot drop to the surface of the river, was clearly not suitable. It was at a place three hundred yards away that the horses were eventually led to the water's edge- dangerous enough, but not too much so.
Dodd and Bernardino and the stunted man cowered among the bushes all day long, while the guns roared above them at intervals whenever their target was not obscured, while the horses were being watered quite close at hand, and the rockets still strung their arcs of smoke across the river. As far as Dodd could see, they produced not the least effect. For a rocket to start a fire while a numerous and vigilant fire-fighting party was on the watch would call for a far more propitious combination of circumstances than could ever be expected; and, anyway, no rocket could be expected to come to earth less than a hundred yards from the point aimed at. In fact, in Dodd's opinion, everyone concerned was simply wasting gunpowder.
Perhaps the British officer in command of the rocket battery and artillery beyond the river came to the same opinion as the day wore on, for the firing died away. The battery in the field above the trio ceased fire, presumably because the enemy had withdrawn from sight, and silence descended again, broken only by occasional bursts of laughter and conversation from the unseen artillery men, and by the unceasing gurgle of the eddies of the river below them. Later in the afternoon their good fortune displayed itself once more. They heard the clink and clatter of harness as the horses were put to the guns again, and they heard the whip cracking and shouts of the drivers as the beasts were stimulated to the wild effort necessary to heave the guns out of the earth into which they had sunk under the impulse of their firing. Then the guns jingled and clattered across the field, and they heard the noise of their progress rise to a roar when they reached the paved high road, and the roar gradually died away with the increasing distance.
The battery had departed, and Bernardino, with the impatience of his years and inexperience, began to stretch his cramped limbs as a matter of course; he intended to climb up and look over the edge of the cliff to see if any of the enemy remained above them, but Dodd seized his shoulder and forced him into passivity again. Whether the enemy had gone or not they would not be able to move from their present position until nightfall. To look over the edge was ru
They stayed for the rest of the day immobile among the bushes, wetted through at intervals by the rain. They would probably pay no immediate penalty for that; colds in the head are very infrequent among people living all their time out of doors. Yet they could boast no such immunity from pneumonia or rheumatic fever, and in after years, were they to live so long, they would be bent and crippled and agonized with rheumatism-say in thirty years' time. But men in the early twenties-least of all soldiers-do not often stop to think about possible illness in thirty years' time.
All Dodd's cogitation during the afternoon led him no nearer any definite decision. There was bridging material at Santarem which the English wanted burnt; that made it his duty to burn it if he could. That was clear enough; it was none of Dodd's business to bear in mind the fact that the motive for desiring the destruction of the bridge might be very slight indeed-no stronger than the result of the very ordinary decision that it ought to be a good move to destroy anything that the enemy considers it desirable to construct. If horse, foot and guns had been brought up to burn the bridge, then Dodd ought to try as well; the unanswerable question at the moment was how to do it. He could see Santarem clearly enough, and the towering warehouses on the quays. There were several thousand men there; at night (such must be the crowding in the town) there would be men asleep or on guard all round the stuff, and upon it and underneath it. Reluctantly he decided that it would be an impossible task-as far as he could judge at the moment-to penetrate into Santarem and set fire to the bridge. It might be done by a man not in uniform, but to discard his uniform would make him a spy, liable to the death of a spy, and Dodd, with the usual fantastic notions of military honour, refused to consider it, although he knew well enough that if the French were to catch him this far within their cantonments they would probably shoot him or hang him anyway. Yet, although the business seemed so impossible, Dodd did not entirely put away all thought of it. Some other way round the difficulty might present itself. Prolonged reco
In the twilight they allowed Bernardino to satisfy his earlier wish to climb up and look over the top of the little cliff; sure enough, the field beyond was deserted and the way to the main road was clear. When it was fully dark they started stiffly out upon the return journey, over the fields and along the ditches, past the village where, at this early hour in the evening, the fires blazed with their full volume, until not very much past midnight they reached the edge of the wood, and could warm themselves by a sharp walk to the but where the old man had died.
They were all desperately tired and hungry and short- tempered. Dodd was disappointed at the unsatisfactory result of his investigations, but he was not half so a
Chapter XVI
IN the wet morning the usual three military problems of offence and defence and supply presented themselves. They shared the last of their bread with the stunted man-there was no knowing how he had been maintaining himself before they met him; badly enough presumably-and tried to discuss the next move. Bernardino, in fact, was so disgruntled by recent events that he presumed to press plans upon Dodd. He wanted to go back to the village, taking the stunted man with them as a fresh recruit, and resume the harassing of the battalion there. To Bernardino it was obviously the thing to do. On the hill there was food and there were friends and an enemy to attack. Here in the wood there seemed nothing. When Dodd said 'See Santarem' and persisted in saying it he grew exasperated. He knew nothing of strategy; he could not grasp the possibly supreme importance of the bridging materials at Santarem.