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Dodd went back to where Bernardino, all slimed with the mule's blood, was holding great chunks of meat on a ramrod before the fire. Dodd ate gluttonously, and by the time he was satisfied Bernardino found that he had regained a supplementary appetite and was able to start again. Dodd let him eat as much as he could hold; he had a good many days of half rations to make up for and- so Dodd's plans dictated - a good many days of half rations yet tto come, against which he might as well make as much preparation as he could. Yet when he simply could hold no more, and the grateful warmth of the fire was tempting him to stretch himself beside it and make up for nights and nights of broken rest, Dodd kept him stirred into activity.
He had to keep on bringing in further supplies of fuel, and assist Dodd in the task of grilling more and more meat.
Bernardino's face, no less than Dodd's, was toasted a bright scarlet. The heat of the fire was such that they had to shield their hands from it as they turned the stickfuls of meat before the blaze. It was the most primitive cookery imaginable. Dodd insisted on the meat being very thoroughly roasted, until it was quite dry, in fact, and naturally it became charred at the edges, but that could not be helped. The meat was coarse and tough and fibrous and had a peculiar sweetish flavour, but to men who have been hungry enough to eat raw horse roast mule is a positive luxury.
Anyway, Dodd had never known what good food was, not once in all his life, nor had Bernardino. It was mere irony that the money and effort wasted in the war in which they were fighting was sufficient to keep every single man engaged in it in Lucullan luxury for all their days.
The pile of roast meat, steaks and succulent chunks from the ribs, grew larger and larger, despite the fact that every now and then both Dodd and Bernardino discovered that they could manage another bite or two of some particularly attractive fragment. Bernardino looked at the colossal pile of meat with wondering eyes; he could not see the reason for it at all. But it was impossible to ask questions. He just went on toasting meat and gathering fuel, all that livelong day. It was not until something over a hundredweight of meat had been cooked that Dodd appeared satisfied, and Bernardino could go to sleep, lying like a cat before the glowing embers of the fire. The warmth and his unwontedly full belly made him sleep for thirteen solid hours, right round until the next morning, in fact.
He woke to find Dodd and the stunted man making evident preparations for a further journey. They were loading themselves with the cooked meat, stuffing every available pouch and pocket with it, and so did Bernardino have to do when he got to his feet. It was a grievous burden which each carried when they started, some forty pounds of meat each. But Dodd was happy. That would mean rations for three weeks provided the meat kept good-or even if it did not, for the matter of that. Maggoty mule meat is better than none at all. Dodd, although he had never heard the expression 'a balanced diet,' and although the word 'calory' had not yet been invented, would gladly have exchanged half the meat for an equal weight of bread, but since such an exchange was quite impossible he wasted no regrets over it.
That careful cooking of the meat to an extreme point of dryness had for its object the preserving of the meat for the maximum possible time, and it was still cold, although spring was so close at hand.
It was a perilous journey upon which they were setting out, although perforce only Dodd could know its objective.
They came down the hill to the main road, and started to pursue the convoy. But here the river and road ran close together in an upstream direction, and the country beside the road was for some way more open and level, and there were troops in the little hamlets which dotted it. Their progress was terribly slow-it was a matter of crawling along ditches, and sneaking furtively from coppice to coppice, and lying concealed for long periods when any of the enemy were in sight.
Yet this was the only way of moving through this country. Stratagems and disguises would have been of no help at all, for such was the state of the war in Portugal that there was no chance of posing as peaceful civilians making a journey for private reasons. There were no peaceful civilians, and private reasons had ceased to exist. The French would hang or shoot- if they did not torture- anyone they caught who was not a Frenchman; they had been doing so for so many weeks in this area that few natives were left, and these were living like wild beasts- like Dodd and his two companions, in fact- in secret lairs. Nor was the notion of moving along the high road by night any more practicable. There were military posts and villages along it in such numbers as to necessitate incessant detours, and Dodd had far too much sense to contemplate prolonged mcvement by night across unknown country.
They were out of the stunted man's area by now, and Bernardino's muleteer's knowledge of the country could hardly be expected to extend to cover every ditch and thicket. All they could do was to struggle along in the fashion they were following, taking what precautions they could to ensure that on their detours away from the road they did not overshoot the mark and go past the bridging convoy, which with twenty-four hours' start was somewhere ahead of them, destined for a locality which Dodd was very anxious to ascertain. The chances were against their getting through alive. Dodd had known it when he started, but he had come so far along the road to thinking for himself that he judged it to be his duty to risk his life without orders on an objective chosen by himself rather than preserve it like the one talent, to be given back unprofitably to the regiment when the great day should come when he could rejoin. He guessed that his life was of small importance compared with the bridge the French were building, and so he imperilled it, not cheerfully, but not despondently either; equably is perhaps the best expression, for there was nothing of resignation about Dodd.
The fiendish difficulty of the journey displayed itself at once when they began it, creeping along ditches and furrows.
It was dreadfully fatiguing, and the continual tension was trying. Afterwards Dodd could not remember the order of events at all; he could not even remember how many days and nights they had spent on the journey before they were discovered and chased. Yet little things remained printed indelibly on his memory-details like the pattern of the leaves in the patch of undergrowth where they lay hidden half a morning awaiting an opportunity of crossing an exposed stretch of land, and the brown mineral stain of the water of one of the little streams where they were cowering when a picket caught sight of them. The long, heartbreaking pursuit which followed could not be remembered with the same clarity. It was like a nightmare, recalled as something horrible but blurred in its outline.
Dodd remembered the view halloo which greeted them, and the line of shouting Frenchmen which chased them. He remembered how his heart laboured, and how his legs grew weaker and weaker under him while the load on his back grew intolerably heavy. He remembered how a fresh patrol appeared in front of them heading them off, attracted by the yells of the pursuers, and he remembered always what an effort of will was necessary to change the direction of his flight and to urge his weary legs once more to another spurt while he seemed unable to draw another breath or take another step. He remembered Bernardino falling to the ground exhausted, and then the stunted man, and how he had to fight against the temptation to stop with them and end all this toilsome business in one last glorious fight.