Briefly Desmarets questioned each of them about his service in Italy. All of them had fought there and had later been granted leave, on one ground or another, to transfer to the Army of the North. Roger had not joined Bonaparte in Italy until three months after the Armistice of Leoben was signed, and all but two of the men had left Italy before he arrived there. Of the remaining two, only one had visited the General-in-Chief's headquarters at Montebello. He firmly declared that he had never heard of a Colonel Breuc. All of them agreed that Bonaparte's aides-de-camp during the Italian campaign had been Marmont, Junot, Duroc, Lavalette and Sulkowsky.
General Desmarets shrugged his powerful shoulders. ' There we are, then. I thought from the beginning this would prove a farce.' He glanced at the nine veterans of the Italian campaign and said, '1 am sorry, Citizens, that you should have been brought here for no useful purpose. You may go.' As they filed out, he pointed to Roger and gave an order to the Sergeant of the Guard.
' Take this man away and have him shot.'
Seized once again with terror at the thought of the fate now rushing upon him, Roger broke into violent speech. He pleaded that other men who had served in Italy should be sought, explained that he had not joined General Bonaparte's staff until a few months before the General's return to Paris, and begged for a postponement of sentence until he could communicate with the General. But in vain. Desmarets ignored his outburst, the guards on either side of him seized his arms and hustled him away.
Back at the guardroom, the Sergeant told his Corporal to turn out the reserve guard and take over. Then he selected six of his men to act as a firing party. Just before they left the guardroom he took a spade from a corner, handed it to Roger and said:
' Here, take a grip o' that. An' don't you dare drop it in a fit of the funks or you'll get a kick up the backside.'
Roger stared aghast at the spade and stammered, 'What . . . what is this for? '
The Sergeant replied with a sneer, ' Where yer bin all yer life? Don't expect us ter get ourselves sweaty making an 'ole for an English spy to lie comfortable in, do yer? Before sentence is carried out the likes of you 'as ter dig 'is own grave.'
Roger Digs his Grave
Almost overcome with horror at the idea of digging his own grave, Roger gave a gulp; but he took the spade. The six soldiers closed round him, the Sergeant gave an order and the firing party set off.
As they marched through the cantonment, men lounging in the doorways of the huts and others cleaning arms or harness stared at Roger with curiosity. Apparently the fact that he was a civilian carrying a spade and obviously under arrest was enough to tell them that he was going to his death. Evidently, too, a rumour had already run round the camp that he was an English spy, for several of them shook their fists at him, with shouts of * A la mort, cochon!' and 'Sale Anglais\ He was well aware of the hatred with which the French regarded Britain; so their abuse meant nothing to him, and his whole mind was occupied in an attempt to think of an eleventh-hour ruse by which he might save himself, or at least postpone his execution.
His hot meal and three hours' sleep had restored him physically, but the shock of finding that none of the men from the Army of Italy had even heard of him, and the abrupt way in which General Desmarets had dealt with his case, had robbed him temporarily of his wits. It was half past three on a chilly but sunny afternoon, and all he could think of was how pleasant it would be to have a good horse between his knees and be cantering across the downs. At the same time he was terribly conscious, as they marched towards the sea, that with every step he took the moments of his life were running out. Yet, try as he would, he could not bring himself to concentrate.
After twenty minutes they came to within half a mile of the shore at a place where, between a break in the cliffs, there was a wide area of sand-dunes in which steep mounds alternated with depressions and shallow valleys. Some of the mounds had coarse grass growing in patches on them; but there was no other vegetation, except at some distance inland, for as far as the eye could see.
When they had laboriously made their way for some two hundred yards across this desolate waste they slithered down into a broader dip than any they had so far crossed. The Sergeant called a halt and grunted, 'This'll do.'
The men surrounding Roger fell out and moved a little way away from him. For a moment he was tempted to make a dash for it. But with slopes of loose sand rising twelve feet or more on every side he realized that it would be hopeless to do so. He would have been riddled with bullets before he could have reached even the top of the nearest crest. Such is the instinct in a healthy man to cling to life until the very last moment that, although he felt certain that within another quarter of an hour his body would in any case have six lumps of lead in it, he could not bring himself to make the bid against the virtual certainty that he would be killed before he took another dozen breaths.
The Sergeant picked one man to stand by Roger with his musket at the ready; the other five piled theirs in a pyramid, with the long thin bayonets pointing to the sky. They then sat down in a group on a nearby slope to take their ease and began a game of cards. Pointing to the flattish bottom of the hollow, the Sergeant said to Roger:
'Get to it. And don't waste time diggin' a trench more'n what's big enough to take yer body. Should be a metre deep, though; else the sand'll blow off and leave bits of yer stickin' out. We don't want ter tumble over any nasty stinkin' English corpses when we're next out 'ere doin' our trainin'.'
The mental picture that the old ghoul's words conjured up in Roger's mind, of his own body rotting and creeping with maggots, filled him with nausea. Yet there was nothing for it but to begin digging. Although he had found it impossible to concentrate while being marched to the dunes, he had kept looking about him in the wild hope that an officer carrying a reprieve would come galloping up from the cantonment, or that some unforeseen diversion would occur that might give him a chance to escape. But on all sides the landscape had remained empty. By the time they arrived at this hollow where he was about to dig his grave he knew that there could be no living creature within miles, except for the seagulls that wheeled overhead and the men who had been ordered to execute him.
The sand was soft and as soon as he began to dig the trench he found that a good part of each spadeful trickled back into it. That brought him the sudden thought that if he could prolong his gruesome task until darkness fell he would stand a worthwhile chance of attempting a breakaway. But it was not yet four o'clock, so there was a long time to go before it became even twilight. Moreover, in this wildly optimistic idea for delaying matters till sundown, he had counted without the Sergeant.
Seeing that he was allowing most of the sand he dug up to slide from his spade before he threw the remainder aside, the N.C.O. said with an oath, 'Think we want ter stay 'ere all night? Put some guts into it, you English bastard. Shovel quick and toss it as far as you can. That's the way to make a trench in this soft stuff.'
Roger responded by digging faster, but still at no great speed; so the Sergeant suddenly struck him smartly across the shoulders with a swagger cane he was carrying and cried, ' Lively, I said! Lively! If yer not sweating within two minutes I'll cut yer face ter ribbons wiv this cane o' mine.'
Again Roger had no option but to obey, and within a few minutes he was sweating profusely. But some of the sand continued to trickle back into the trench and before he had dug out more than a third of the amount that had to be shifted he was puffing like a grampus. Thrusting his spade upright in the sand for a moment, he took off his heavy coat and threw it down behind him.