!Tention Part 4

"Why, it's a night attack," thought Pen excitedly, and unconsciously he began to breathe hard as he listened intently, while he fully grasped the fact that there were men of the French brigade dotted about in all directions.

"And there was I thinking that we were quite alone!" he said to himself.

Then by degrees his short experience of a few months of the British occupation on the borders of Portugal and Spain taught him that he had been listening to a night alarm, for from out of the darkness came the low buzz of voices, another bugle was sounded, distant orders rang out, and then by degrees the low murmur of voices died away, and once more all was still.

"I was in hopes," thought Gray, "that our fellows were making a night attack, giving the enemy a surprise. Why, there must be hundreds within reach. That puts an end to my going hunting about for help as soon as the day breaks, unless I mean us to be taken prisoners. Why, if I moved from here I should be seen.--Asleep, Punch?" he said softly.

There was no reply, and the speaker shuddered as he stretched out his hand to feel for his companion's forehead; but at the first touch there was an impatient movement, and a feeling of relief shot through the lad's breast, for imagination had been busy, and was ready to suggest that something horrible might have happened in the night.

"Oh, I do wish I wasn't such a coward," he muttered. "He's all right, only a bit feverish. What shall I do? Try and go to sleep till morning? What's the good of talking? I am sure I couldn't, even if I did try."

Then the weary hours slowly crept along, the watcher trying hard to settle in his own mind which was the east, but failing dismally, for the windings of the valley had been such that he could only guess at the direction where the dawn might appear.

There were no more of the dismal bowlings of the wolves, though, the scattered firing having effectually driven them away; but there were moments when it seemed to the young watcher that the night was being indefinitely prolonged, and he sighed again and again as he strained his eyes to pierce the darkness, and went on trying to form some plan as to his next movement.

"I wonder how long we could lie in hiding here," he said to himself, "without food. Poor Punch in his state wouldn't miss his ration; but by-and-by, if the French don't find us, this bitter cold will have pa.s.sed away, and we shall be lying here in the scorching suns.h.i.+ne--for it can be hot in these stuffy valleys--and the poor boy will be raving for water--yes, water. Who was that chap who was tortured by having it close to him and not being able to reach it? Tantalus, of course! I am forgetting all my cla.s.sics. Well, soldiers don't want c.o.c.k-and-bull stories out of Lempriere. I wonder, though, whether I could crawl down among the bushes to the edge of the torrent and fill our water-bottles, and get back up here again without being seen. But perhaps, when the day comes, and if they don't see us, the French will move off, and then I need only wait patiently and try and find some cottage.--Yes, what is it?"

He raised himself upon his arm again, for Punch had begun to mutter; but there was no reply.

"Talking in his sleep," said Pen with a sigh. "Good for him that he can sleep! Oh, surely it must be near morning now!"

The lad sprang to his knees and placed one hand over his eyes as he strained himself round, for all at once he caught sight of a tiny speck as of glowing fire right overhead, and he stared in amazement.

"Why, that can't be daylight!" he thought. "It would appear, of course, low down in the east, just a faint streak of dawn. That must be some dull star peering through the clouds. Why, there are two of them," he said in a whisper; "no, three. Why, it is day coming!" And he uttered a faint cry of joy as he crouched low again and gazed, so to speak, with all his might at the wondrous scene of beauty formed by the myriad specks of orange light which began to spread overhead, and grow and grow till the mighty dome that seemed supported in a vast curve by the mountains on either side of the valley became one blaze of light.

"Punch," whispered Pen excitedly, "it's morning! Look, look! How stupid!" he muttered. "Why should I wake him to pain and misery? Yes, it is morning, sure enough," he muttered again, for a bugle rang out apparently close at hand, and was answered from first one direction and then another, the echoes taking up the notes softly and repeating them again and again till it seemed to the listener as if he must be lying with quite an army close at hand awakening to the day.

The light rapidly increased, and Pen began to look in various directions for danger, wondering the while whether some patch of forest would offer itself as an asylum somewhere close at hand; but he only uttered a sigh of relief as he grasped the fact that, while high above them the golden light was gleaming down from the sun-flecked clouds, the gorges were still full of purple gloom, and clouds of thick mist were slowly gathering in the valley-bottom and were being wafted along by the breath of morn and following the course of the river.

To his great relief too, as the minutes glided by, he found that great patches of the rolling smoke-like mist rose higher and higher till a soft, dank cloud enveloped them where they lay, and through it he could hear faintly uttered orders and the tramp of men apparently gathering and pa.s.sing along the shelf-like mule-path.

"And I was longing for the sun to rise!" thought Pen.--"Ah, there's an officer;" for somewhere just overhead there was the sharp click of an iron-shod hoof among the rocks. "He must have seen us if it hadn't been for this mist," thought the lad. "Now if it will only last for half an hour we may be safe."

The mist did last for quite that s.p.a.ce of time--in fact, until Pen Gray was realising that the east lay right away to his right--for a golden shaft of light suddenly shot horizontally from a gap in the mountains, turning the heavy mists it pierced into ma.s.ses of opalescent hues; and, there before him, he suddenly caught sight of a cameo-like figure which stood out from where he knew that the shelf-like mule-path must run.

The great bar of golden light enveloped both rider and horse, and flashed from the officer's raised sword and the horse's trappings.

Then the rolling cloud of mist swept on and blotted him from sight, and Pen crouched closer and closer to his sleeping comrade, and lay with bated breath listening to the tramp, tramp of the pa.s.sing men not a hundred feet above his head, and praying now that the wreaths of mist might screen them, as they did till what seemed to him to be a strong brigade had gone on in the direction taken by his friends.

But he did not begin to breathe freely till the tramping of hoofs told to his experienced ears that a strong baggage-train of mules was on its way. Then came the tramp of men again.

"Rear-guard," he thought; and then his heart sank once more, for the tramping men swept by in the midst of a dense grey cloud, which looked like smoke as it rolled right onward, and as if by magic the sun burst out and filled the valley with a blaze of light.

"They must see us now," groaned Pen; and he closed his eyes in his despair.

CHAPTER FOUR.

"WATER, OR I SHALL DIE!"

Pen's heart beat heavily as he lay listening to the tramping of feet upon the rocky shelf, and at last the sounds seemed so close that he drew himself together ready to spring to his feet and do what he could to protect his injured comrade. For in his strange position the idea was strong upon him that their first recognition by the enemy might be made with the presentation of a bayonet's point.

But his antic.i.p.ations proved to be only the work of an excited brain; and, as he lay perfectly still once more, the heavy tramp, tramp, a good deal wanting in the regularity of the British troops, died out, and he relieved the oppression that bore down upon his breast with a deep sigh.

Nothing was visible as the sounds died out; and, waiting till he felt that he was safe, he changed his position slightly so as to try and make out whether the rear-guard of the enemy had quite disappeared.

In an instant he had shrunk down again amongst the bushes, for there, about a hundred yards away, at the point of an angle where the mule-path struck off suddenly to the left, and at a spot that had undoubtedly been chosen for its command of the road backward, he became aware of the presence of an outpost of seven or eight men.

This was startling, for it put a check upon any attempt at movement upon his own part.

Pen lay thinking for a few moments, during which he made sure that his comrade was still plunged in a deep, stupor-like sleep. Then, after a little investigation, he settled how he could move slightly without drawing the attention of the vedette; and, taking advantage thereof, crawled cautiously about a couple of yards with the greatest care.

Then, looking back as he slowly raised his head, which he covered with a few leafy twigs, he was by no means surprised to see at the edge of the mule-path about a quarter of a mile away another vedette. This shut off any attempt at retreat in that direction, and he was about to move again when he was startled by a flash of light reflected from a musket-barrel whose bearer was one acting as the leader of a third vedette moving up the side of the valley across the river, and which soon came to a halt at about the same height above the stream as that which he occupied himself.

The lad could not control a movement of impatience as the little knot of infantry settled themselves exactly opposite to his own hiding-place, and in a position from which the French soldiers must be able to control one slope of the valley for a mile in each direction.

"It's maddening!" thought Pen. "I sha'n't be able to stir, and I dare say they'll have more vedettes stationed about. It means giving up, and nothing else."

Very slowly and cautiously he wrenched himself round, and then rolled over twice so as to bring himself alongside of his sleeping comrade; and then, as he resumed his reconnoitring, where he was just able to command the farther side of the valley away to his right and in a direction where he hoped to find the land clear, he started again.

"Why, they are everywhere!" said the lad half-aloud and with a faint groan of dismay; for there, higher up the opposite side, were a couple of sentries who seemed to be looking straight down upon him. "Why, they must have seen me!" he muttered; and for quite an hour now he lay without stirring, half in the expectation of seeing the low bushes in motion and a little party of the blue-coated enemy coming across to secure fresh prisoners.

But the time wore on, with the chill of the night dying out in the warm suns.h.i.+ne now beginning to search Pen's side of the valley with the bright shafts of light, which suggested to him the necessity for covering his well-kept rifle with the leafy twigs he was able to gather cautiously so as not to betray his presence.

He was in the act of doing this when, turning his head slightly, a flash of light began to play right into his eyes, and he stopped short once more to try and make out whether this had been seen by either of the enemy on duty, for he now awoke to the fact that poor Punch's bugle was lying quite exposed.

The fact was so startling that, instead of trying to reach its cord and draw the glistening instrument towards him, he lay perfectly still again, sweeping the sides of the valley as far as he could in search of danger, but searching in vain, till the thought occurred to him that he might achieve the object he had in view by cautiously taking out his knife and cutting twig after twig so that they might fall across the curving polished copper.

This he contrived to do, and then lay still once more, breathing freely in the full hope that if he gave up further attempt at movement he might escape detection.

"Besides," he said to himself, with a bitter smile playing upon his lips, "if they do make us out they may not trouble, for they will think we are dead."

He lay still then, waiting for Punch to awaken so that he could warn him to lie perfectly quiet.

The hours glided by, with the sun rising higher and setting the watcher thinking, in spite of his misery, weariness, and the pangs of hunger that attacked him, of what a wonderfully beautiful contrast there was between the night and the day. With nothing else that he could do, he recalled the horrors of the past hours, the alternating chills of cold and despair, and the howlings of the wolves; and he uttered more than one sigh of relief as his eyes swept the peaks away across the valley, which here and there sent forth flashes of light from a few scattered patches of melting snow, the beautiful violet shadows of the transverse gullies through which sparkling rivulets descended with many a fall to join the main stream, which dashed onward with the dull, musical roar which rose and fell, now quite loud, then almost dying completely away.

The valley formed a very paradise to the unfortunate fugitive, and he muttered bitterly:

"How beautiful it would have been under other circ.u.mstances, when such a wondrous scene of peace was not disfigured by war! So bitterly cold last night," thought the young private impatiently, for he was fighting now against two a.s.saults, both of which came upon him when he was trying hard to lie perfectly still and maintain his equanimity while the pangs of hunger and thirst were growing poignant. "It seems so easy," he muttered, "to lie still and keep silence, and here I am feeling that I must move and do something, and wanting so horribly to talk. It would be better if that poor boy would only awaken and speak to me. And there's that water, too," he continued, as the faint plas.h.i.+ng, rippling sound rose to his ears from below. "Oh, how I could drink! I wish the wind would rise, so that I couldn't hear that dull plas.h.i.+ng sound. How terribly hot the sun is; and it's getting worse!"

Then a horrible thought struck him, that Punch might suddenly wake up and begin to talk aloud, feverish and delirious from his sufferings; and then when Pen's troubles were at their very worst, and he could hardly contain himself and keep from creeping downwards to the water's edge, it seemed as if a cloud swept over him, and all was blank, for how long he could not tell, but his fingers closed sharply to clutch the twigs and gra.s.s amongst which he lay as he started into full consciousness.

"Why, I have been asleep!" he muttered. "I must have been;" and he stared wildly around. There was a great shadow there, and now the sun is beating down upon that little gully and lighting up the flas.h.i.+ng waters of the fall. "Why, I must have been sleeping for hours, and it must be quite midday."

His eyes now sought the positions of the different vedettes, and all was so brilliant and clear that he saw where the men had stood up their muskets against bush or tree, noted the flash from bayonets and the duller gleam from musket-barrels. In one case, too, the men were sheltering themselves beneath a tree, and this sent an additional pang of suffering through the lad, as he felt for the first time that the sun was playing with burning force upon his neck.

"It's of no use," he said. "Even if they see me, I must move."

But he made the movement with the mental excuse that it was to see how his wounded companion fared.

It only meant seizing hold of a clump of wiry heather twice over and drawing himself to where his face was close to the sleeper. Then he resigned himself again with a sigh to try and bear his position.