‘No-yes-I don’t know!’ replied Stewart, ripping open Harry’s tight green jacket. ‘No, I can feel his heart beating! Harry! Come on, old fellow, wake up! Open your eyes, now!’ It was soon seen that such adjurations were of no avail. When they raised him, Harry’s head lolled alarmingly, and although Eeles, who boasted a rough knowledge of surgery, pronounced that no bones were broken, no amount of coaxing, of chafing of hands, of slapping of cheeks, produced any sign of returning consciousness. ‘It’s no use: we shall have to bleed him,’ said Stewart. ‘Try some brandy!’ urged Eeles, pulling a flask out of his pocket. The brandy ran out of the corners of Harry’s mouth. ‘Oh, Harry, why will you be such a careless devil?’ Eeles said distractedly. ‘It all comes of trying to head the hare! Damned unsportsmanlike! I told him not to!’
‘Never mind talking! You hold him, while I bleed him!’ said Stewart. Eeles made a knee for Harry’s slight, wiry frame, while Stewart pulled his jacket off. A whip-thong made a serviceable tourniquet about one limp arm, and Stewart had just opened a blunt-looking pocket-knife, and had made a slight incision with it in the flesh, when Harry’s head, which was resting on Eele’s shoulder, moved, and Eeles, eyeing Stewart’s preparations with some misgiving, cried: ‘Stop! Wait a minute, he’s coming round!’ A drop or two of blood welled up from the scratch on Harry’s arm; his eyes opened, blurred and dazed for a few instants, but regaining brightness and clarity in surprisingly little time. They blinked up into Stewart’s anxious face, travelled to the knife in his hand, and widened. The next instant, Harry had leapt to his feet, rather shaky still, but in full possession of his faculties. ‘Keep off, you villain!’ he exclaimed, swaying on his feet. ‘What the devil-?’ He became aware of the thong bound round his upper arm, and plucked at it, weakly laughing, ‘God save me from my friends! Why, you old murderer! Oh, look! If I’m not bleeding to death! Where’s Moro?’
In the agitation of the moment, his friends had forgotten both hare and hounds, but at this inquiry they looked round involuntarily, to find that the sagacious hound, Moro, had killed the hare without any assistance from his master. Relief made them scold, but Harry, dabbing at the scratch on his arm with his handkerchief, was quite unrepentant, and merely abused the clumsiness of his horse.
Paddy, having picked himself up, was quietly grazing a few yards away. While agreeing that he was the clumsiest brute alive, Stewart told Harry that he deserved to be dead. But Harry was making much of Moro, and paid no attention to him. It was evident that he had sustained no serious injury, for though dizzy at first, he soon declared himself to be well enough to mount, and ride back to camp.
‘What made you buy a stupid brute like this?’ demanded Stewart, leading Paddy up to him. ‘What’s wrong with Tiny? He’d not let you down like that!’
‘Strained a tendon,’ replied Harry, hoisting himself into the saddle. Stewart cast his eyes up to heaven. ‘Ridden him to death, I suppose!’ ‘Will you stop scolding?’ retaliated Harry. ‘There’s no harm done, I tell you! What’s the time? Oh, by God, I shall be late! Come on, Charlie!’
‘The luckiest devil in the whole army!’ said Stewart.
3
His fall seemed to have no ill-effect upon Harry; he was, in fact, not a penny the worse for it; and the hare which Moro had caught made an excellent soup. Stewart prophesied an aching head and bruised bones next day, but he was wrong. A little thing like a tumble from his horse could not hurt an old campaigner, boasted Harry, looking absurdly young as he said it.
The remark did not even make Stewart smile. Harry was a very old campaigner. At the age of nineteen, he had been at Monte Video; six months later he was with General Whitelocke on his ill-fated expedition to Buenos Ayres. He had been to Sweden with Sir John Moore; he had been at Corunna; at the Combat of the Coa, where he had got a ball lodged in his ankle-joint, and had had to be sent to Lisbon to recover from it. Not that he did recover from it at Lisbon. Oh dear, no! None of your Belemites was young Mr Smith, malingering in hospital while there was fighting going on somewhere in the interior. As soon as he could put his foot to the ground, nothing would do for him but to rejoin his regiment. He found it at Arruda.
‘You are a mad fool of a boy, coming here with a ball in your leg! Can you dance?’ demanded his Colonel.
‘No, I can hardly walk but with my toe turned out,’ had responded Harry coolly. ‘Well! Can you be my ADC?’
‘Yes, I can ride and eat,’ had said Harry, grinning to conceal the excruciating pain in his ankle.
And ridden he had, until he had gone back to Lisbon with his Colonel, and had had the ball cut out of his tendon.
As soon as he could walk, he had rejoined his regiment, in time to take part in the skirmish at Redinha. (‘Ah, now you can walk a little, you leave me!’ said Colonel Beckwith. ‘Go and be dammed to you; but I love you for it!’).
Since Redinha, he had been in upwards of half-a-dozen sharp skirmishes, and three major actions: Sabugal, Fuentes de Onoro, and the assault of Ciudad Rodrigo. He had emerged from all these affairs without a scratch. When half the army was down with the deadly Alemtejo fever, Brigade-Major Smith was enjoying some capital hunting on the Spanish border. Aguish? Devil a bit! He had never felt better in his life.
When his duties took him up to the trenches outside Badajos, he was often covered with mud from the bursting of shells in the soft ground, but no splinter, no charge of grape, lodged itself in his spare frame. Shot-proof and fever-proof, that was Harry Smith: a roaring boy, the broth of a boy! said Private O’Brien, admiring his Brigade-Major’s flow of bad language when the explosion of a shell knocked him off his feet. A damned good duty-officer, said Colonel Barnard; crazy as a coot! complained Harry’s exasperated friends.
Nothing was going to keep Harry from making one of the storming party that would presently assail the breaches in the walls of Badajos. By 6th April there were three of these: one in the bastion of Santa Maria; one in the bastion of La Trinidad, farther to the west; and the last in the curtain-wall between the two. The main attack was to be launched at these points, and the troops chosen to carry it out were the Light and 4th divisions. That was just as it should be, but there were some gloomy spirits who thought old Hookey was wasting his time with all this bombardment of the walls. George Simmons, rather a serious young man, said that the way General Phillipon’s men were repairing the breaches was going to make them more formidable than any unbroken bastion. The French evidently meant to defend the town pretty desperately, for the British Engineers reported on the morning of the 6th that every sort of obstacle was being piled behind the breaches. The guns would batter away at them while the daylight lasted, and that would prevent much work being done to repair the gaps; but when the hour for the assault was changed from half-past seven in the evening to ten o’clock, the Engineers looked a little grave. With the inevitable slackening of gun-fire, as darkness fell, the French would get to work again, and they could work to some purpose, those grenadiers. It looked like being a bloody business, however well planned it might be. It was not only well, but very extensively planned. Though the Light and the 4th divisions were expected to carry the town by storming the breaches, no less than five secondary attacks were to be made. The trench-guards were to try to rush the San Roque lunette; old Picton was to make an attempt to take the Castle by escalade (a very forlorn hope, this: not at all likely to succeed); Power’s brigade of Portuguese was going to threaten the bridge-head beyond the Guadiana, on the opposite side of the town to the damaged bastions; the Portuguese troops belonging to Leith’s 5th division were to make a false attack on the strong Pardeleras fort; and-a last-minute decision, this-the rest of Leith’s division was to brave the mines which had been laid outside the eastern walls of the town, and try to force the river-bastion of San Vincente.