Corporal Sam and Other Stories Part 3

He smelt them now, across the reek of San Sebastian, and they wafted him back to England--to boyhood, dreaming of war but innocent of its crimes--to long thoughts, long summer days spent among the unheeding sheep, his dog Rover beside him--an almost thoroughbred collie, and a good dog, too, though his end had been tragic. . . . But why on earth should his thoughts be running on Rover just now?

Yet, and although, as he went, England was nearer to him and more real than the smoking heaps between which he picked his way, he steered all the while towards the upper town, through the square, and up the hill overlooked by the convent and the rocky base of the citadel. He knew the exact position of the house, and he chose a narrow street--uninhabited now, and devastated by fire--that led directly to it.

The house was untouched by fire as yet, though another to the left of it blazed furiously. It clung, as it were a swallow's nest, to the face of the cliff. A garden wall ran under the front; and, parallel with the wall, a road pretty constantly swept by musketry fire from the convent. At the head of the street Corporal Sam stumbled against a rifleman who, sheltered from bullets at the angle of the crossing, stood calmly watching the conflagration.

'Hallo!' said the rifleman cheerfully; 'I wanted some more audience, and you're just in time.'

'There's a child in the house, eh?' panted Corporal Sam, who had come up the street at a run.

The rifleman nodded. 'Poor little devil! He'll soon be out of his pain, though.'

'Why, there's heaps of time! The fire won't take hold for another half-hour. What's the best way in? . . . You an' me can go shares, if that's what you're hangin' back for,' added Corporal Sam, seeing that the man eyed him without stirring.

'Hi! Bill!' the rifleman whistled to a comrade, who came slouching out of a doorway close by, with a clock in one hand, and in the other a lantern by help of which he had been examining the inside of this piece of plunder. 'Here's a boiled lobster in a old woman's cloak, wants to teach us the way into the house yonder.'

'Tell him to go home,' said Bill, still peering into the works of the clock. 'Tell him we've _been_ there.' He chuckled a moment, looked up, and addressed himself to Corporal Sam. 'What regiment?'

'The Royals.'

The two burst out laughing scornfully. 'Don't wonder you cover it up,' said the first rifleman.

Corporal Sam pulled off his _poncho_. 'I'd offer to fight the both of you,' he said, 'but 'tis time wasted with a couple of white-livers that don't dare fetch a poor child across a roadway. Let me go by; _you_'ll keep, anyway.'

'Now look here, sonny--' The first rifleman blocked his road.

'I don't bear no malice for a word spoken in anger: so stand quiet and take my advice. That house isn't goin' to take fire. 'Cos why?

'Cos as Bill says, we've _been_ there--there and in the next house, now burnin'--and we know. 'Cos before leavin'--the night before last it was--some of our boys set two barrels o' powder somewheres in the next house, on the ground floor, _with_ a slow match. That's why _we_ left; though, as it happened, the match missed fire. But the powder's there, and if you'll wait a few minutes now you'll not be disapp'inted.'

'You left the child behind!'

'Well, we left in a hurry, as I tell you, and somehow in the hurry n.o.body brought him along. I'm sorry for the poor little devil, too.'

The fellow swung about. 'See him there at the window, now! If you want him put out of his pain--'

He lifted his rifle. Corporal Sam made a clutch at his arm to drag it down, and in the scuffle both men swayed out upon the roadway.

And with that, or a moment later, he felt the rifleman slip down between his arms, and saw the blood gush from his mouth as he collapsed on the cobbles.

Corporal Sam heard the man Bill shout a furious oath, cast one puzzled look up the roadway towards the convent, saw the flashes jetting from its high wall, and raced across unscathed. A bullet sang past his ear as he found the gate and hurled himself into the garden. It was almost dark here, but dark only for a moment. . . .

For as he caught sight of a flight of steps leading to a narrow doorway, and ran for them--and even as he set foot on the lowest--of a sudden the earth heaved under him, seemed to catch him up in a sheet of flame, and flung him backwards--backwards and flat on his back, into a clump of laurels.

Slowly he picked himself up. The sky was dark now; but, marvellous to say, the house stood. The ma.s.s of it yet loomed over the laurels.

Yes, and a light showed under the door at the head of the steps.

He groped his way up and pushed the door open.

The light came through a rent in the opposite wall, and on the edge of this jagged hole some thin laths were just bursting into a blaze.

He rushed across the room to beat out the flame, and this was easily done; but, as he did it, he caught sight of a woman's body, stretched along the floor by the fireplace, and of a child cowering in the corner, watching him.

'Come and help, little one,' said Corporal Sam, still beating at the laths.

The child understood no English, and moreover was too small to help.

But it seemed that the corporal's voice emboldened him, for he drew near and stood watching.

'Who did _this_, little one?' asked Corporal Sam, nodding towards the corpse, as he rubbed the charred dust from his hands.

For a while the child stared at him, not comprehending; but by-and-by pointed beneath the table and then back at its mother.

The corporal walked to the table, stooped, and drew from under it a rifle and a pouch half-filled with cartridges.

'Tell him we've _been_ there.' He seemed to hear the rifleman Bill's voice repeating the words, close at hand. He recognised the badge on the pouch.

He was shaking where he stood; and this, perhaps, was why the child stared at him so oddly. But, looking into the wondering young eyes, he read only the question, 'What are you going to do?'

He hated these riflemen. Nay, looking around the room, how he hated all the foul forces that had made this room what it was! . . .

And yet, on the edge of resolve, he knew that he must die for what he meant to do . . . that the thing was unpardonable, that in the end he must be shot down, and rightly, as a dog.

He remembered his dog Rover, how the poor brute had been tempted to sheep-killing at night, on the sly; and the look in his eyes when, detected at length, he had crawled forward to his master to be shot.

No other sentence was possible, and Rover had known it.

Had he no better excuse? Perhaps not. . . . He only knew that he could not help it; that this thing had been done, and by the consent of many . . . and that as a man he must kill for it, though as a soldier he deserved only to be killed.

With the child's eyes still resting on him in wonder, he set the rifle on its b.u.t.t and rammed down a cartridge; and so, dropping on hands and knees, crept to the window.

CHAPTER VII.

Early next morning Sergeant Wilkes picked his way across the ruins of the great breach and into the town, keeping well to windward of the fatigue parties already kindling fires and collecting the dead bodies that remained unburied.

Within and along the sea-wall San Sebastian was a heap of burnt-out ruins. Amid the stones and rubble enc.u.mbering the streets, lay broken muskets, wrenched doors, shattered sticks of furniture-- mirrors, hangings, women's apparel, children's clothes--loot dropped by the pillagers as valueless, wreckage of the flood. He pa.s.sed a very few inhabitants, and these said nothing to him; indeed, did not appear to see him, but sat by the ruins of their houses with faces set in a stupid horror. Even the crash of a falling house near by would scarcely persuade them to stir, and hundreds during the last three days had been overwhelmed thus and buried.

The sergeant had grown callous to these sights. He walked on, heeding scarcely more than he was heeded, came to the great square, and climbed a street leading northwards, a little to the left of the great convent. The street was a narrow one, for half its length lined on both sides with fire-gutted houses; but the upper half, though deserted, appeared to be almost intact. At the very head, and close under the citadel walls, it took a sharp twist to the right, and another twist, almost equally sharp, to the left before it ended in a broader thoroughfare, crossing it at right angles and running parallel with the ramparts.

At the second twist the sergeant came to a halt; for at his feet, stretched across the causeway, lay a dead body.

He drew back with a start, and looked about him. Corporal Sam had been missing since nine o'clock last night, and he felt sure that Corporal Sam must be here or hereabouts. But no living soul was in sight.

The body at his feet was that of a rifleman; one of the volunteers whose presence had been so unwelcome to General Leith and the whole Fifth Division. The dead fist clutched its rifle; and the sergeant stooping to disengage this, felt that the body was warm.

'Come back, you silly fool!'

He turned quickly. Another rifleman had thrust his head out of a doorway close by. The sergeant, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the weapon, sprang and joined him in the pa.s.sage where he sheltered.

'I--I was looking for a friend hereabouts.'

'Fat lot of friend you'll find at the head of _this_ street!' snarled the rifleman, and jerked his thumb towards the corpse. 'That makes the third already this morning. These Johnnies ain't no sense of honour left--firing on outposts as you may call it.'

'Where are they firing from?'

'No "they" about it. You saw that cottage--or didn't you?--right above there, under the wall; the place with one window in it?

There's a devil behind it somewheres; he fires from the back of the room, and what's more, he never misses his man. You have Nick's own luck--the pretty target you made, too; that is unless, like some that call themselves Englishmen and ought to know better, he's a special spite on the Rifles.'