Death to the French (aka Rifleman Dodd) Read online

  'I was right about my goats,' muttered Lebrun, pointing to the ground. 'Goats be damned!' said Fournier. 'That's sheep, man. Sheep! Stewed mutton for dinner!'

  There were sheep's footprints and sheep's dung all along the path, and the men pressed forward eagerly.

  There was more firing away to the left. Godinot strove to see what was happening there, but he could see nothing at all. Then a shot or two were heard to the right; clearly the battalion was extended over the hill, but still they could see nothing, neither friends nor enemies. Now the path through the bushes began to descend. It was no fortuitous dip, either: the descent was too prolonged and too steep for that. At one corner they had a glimpse of the wide, green Tagus below them, before a turn in the path hid it again from view. Then they went on down the descent until the river came in view again, closer this time. And in the end the path ceased abruptly at the water's edge, and Godinot and his men looked at each other.

  'The sheep seem to have found another way round, sergeant,' said Fournier.

  'We'll find them all the same,' said Godinot. 'Up this path, boys.' They turned their backs on the river and plunged up the hill again. Right ahead of them they heard more firing.

  Godinot halted his men and listened carefully. It seemed as if they must have penetrated the enemy's skirmishing line by some unguarded gap. They must be in the rear of the Portuguese. Then they heard a shot from close ahead. Godinot beckoned to Fournier and Bernhard and the three of them crept cautiously forward, leaving the others behind.

  They tried to move silently up the stony path and through the thorny undergrowth. They heard something moving ahead of them, and crouched silently by the path. Then someone came running down towards them. Godinot gathered his limbs under him and sprang, and he and the man upon whom he had leaped fell with a crash on the path.

  Fournier and Bernhard came up to them and helped secure the prisoner-an old Portuguese peasant, very old, very wrinkled. His face was like an old potato, brown and lumpy.

  And it was as expressionless as a potato too. He crouched while the Frenchmen stood round him, gazing before him without moving a feature. They dragged him back to where the rest of the section awaited them.

  'Get out and scout,' said Godinot. 'You, and you, and you.'

  Three of the men seized their muskets and plunged up and down the path to guard against surprise while Godinot turned to the prisoner, raking through his mind for the few words of Portuguese which he had picked up. He wanted to ask for food, for sheep, for cattle, for corn.

  'Alimento,' said Godinot, bending over the prisoner. 'Ovelha. Gado. Garo.' The prisoner said nothing; he merely sat on his haunches gazing out into infinity. Godinot repeated himself; still the prisoner said nothing. Godinot set his teeth and cocked his musket, and thrust the muzzle against the peasant's ear.

  'Alimento,' said Godinot.

  The prisoner drew a long shuddering breath, but otherwise he made no sound. 'Alimento,' said Godinot again, jogging the man's head with his musket barrel, but it was still unavailing.

  'Here,' said somebody. 'I'll do it, sergeant. Where are those sheep, curse you?' The man's bayonet was fixed; he stuck an inch of the point into the peasant's arm and twisted it. This time a groan escaped the prisoner's lips, but he said nothing articulate.

  'That's enough,' snapped Godinot, his gorge rising. 'We'll take him back with us. Bring him along.'

  Someone fastened the man's wrists behind him, and, dragging him with them, they climbed the path. So broken and overgrown was the hillside that they could see nothing of the rest of the battalion, and it was only with difficulty that they found their way over the hill back to the village, where the old man gazed broken-hearted at the ruin the invaders had caused.

  The sergeant-major, Adjutant Doguereau, was overjoyed at their appearance.

  'A prisoner, sergeant? Excellent! He will tell us where his food is hidden.'

  'He would tell me nothing,' said Godinot.

  Doguereau glared down at the old man, who had collapsed at Godinot's feet. Blood was still dripping from his sleeve where the bayonet had pricked him. 'Indeed?' said Doguereau. 'I expect he will tell me. Me and Sergeant Minguet.' Adjutant Doguereau had served in Egypt; he knew something about making prisoners talk. His swarthy face was twisted into a bitter smile.

  'Bring him along to the prison and then tell Sergeant Minguet to report to me there.'

  Sergeant Godinot never knew what Adjutant Doguereau and Sergeant Minguet did to the old man in the cottage room which had been set aside as a prison; nor did anyone else, because Doguereau turned out from it the two soldiers undergoing punishment there before he set to work. But the battalion heard the old man scream pitifully, like a child. And later in the day Doguereau called for Sergeant Godinot and a working party, and came out of the prison dragging the old man with him. The prisoner found difficulty in walking, but he led them out of the village to the fields, and there he indicated a pile of rubbish at one corner.

  'Dig here,' said Doguereau.

  The working party fell to and swept away the rubbish. Underneath was a board flooring, and when that was pulled up a treasure indeed was revealed. The funnel-shaped silo pit beneath was full of maize, heaps and heaps of it, and when they began to rake that away there were jars of olive oil underneath. 'Take all this to the regimental store,' said Doguereau, rubbing his hands. 'And what about the prisoner, mon adjutant?' asked Godinot. The poor old man was lying by the pit, his face wet with tears. 'Shall we let him go?'

  'No, not a bit of it. Take him back to the prison. I expect he will find more yet to tell us later on when I attend to him again.'

  But the old man never did reveal any other hidden stores, for he hanged himself in his cell that night.

  There was rejoicing in the battalion. Besides the ton of maize which had been found, and the gallons of oil, another section ranging the hillside had found four head of cattle hidden in a gully, although they had not found the person minding them. Altogether there were provisions for the whole five hundred men for nearly a week, and for that it was well worth having a man killed and two wounded in the ambushes on the hill.

  Chapter XII

  DURING the days that followed Adjutant Doguereau had working parties all over the village and the fields looking for further hidden supplies. They pulled every pile of rubbish and rock to pieces, they probed the floors of the cottages and the edges of the fields, they hunted everywhere, but unavailingly. When provisions were beginning to run short again Doguereau issued orders that another prisoner must be taken. Various small expeditions had been pushed across the mountain top, without success. The peasants who had taken shelter there had grown too cunning, apparently; and no one had ever yet succeeded in finding where their central place of concealment might be.

  'All that is no use,' said Adjutant Doguereau. 'If we want to catch a man we must employ other methods. I want parties of five or six men to go up to the hill at night, and hide there. When morning comes someone will fall into your hands, mark my words. Act intelligently.'

  So that midnight found Sergeant Godinot and a small party creeping up the hill, feeling their way up the path as silently as they might, and hiding in the undergrowth when they had penetrated far into the tangled summit. It rained heavily that night- it always seemed to be raining now- and a cold wind blew. They huddled together in the darkness for warmth, not daring to speak lest someone should overhear them. They were all friends together, these men, Sergeant Godinot and his particular intimates, Fournier and Dubois and Lebrun and Bernhard, and two more from his section, Catrin and Guimblot. When morning came it was, perhaps, inevitable that Godinot should be dissatisfied with the position he had taken up in the darkness. It was not a good ambush: it did not overlook the goat track properly and it did not offer sufficient concealment. What Godinot wanted was some position at an intersection of paths, giving a double chance of making a capture. He got his men together and moved up the path again, every man stooping to keep concealed, and cree
ping up the stony hill as quietly as they might. They ranged over the hill for some time, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. It was hard to find the perfect ambush. They began to feel that they had been sent out on a fool's errand, although they realized that twenty parties like theirs were out on the hill, and it would be a fortunate chance if in a day one single prisoner were caught. They were only young French soldiers; they had not the patience to lie in the cold rain waiting for their opportunity; they had to move about and seek it.

  And the result was perhaps inevitable. There were others on the hill who knew the paths and the contours far better than they, and who could move more silently, and more swiftly. The Frenchmen had come to lay an ambush; instead they walked into one. Sergeant Godinot for the rest of his life felt a feeling of shame when he remembered it-the stupidity with which he had led his party to their death, the panic which overwhelmed him in the moment of danger. A high shelf of rock overlooked the path here, and it was from the shelf that death leaped out at them. There was a crashing, stunning volley and a billow of smoke, and through the smoke the enemy came leaping down at them. Men fell at Godinot's left hand, and at his right. Someone screamed. Two impressions remained printed on Godinot's memory- one of Guimblot coughing up floods of blood at his feet, another of the wild charge of the enemy with the green Englishman at their head, bayonets flashing and smoke eddying. Someone turned and ran, and Godinot ran too, down the path, and as he began to run panic gripped him and he ran faster and ever faster, stumbling over the stones, tearing his clothes on the thorns, running so madly that pursuit dropped behind and in the end he was able to slow down and try to recover his breath and his wits.

  Dubois was with him. He was wounded, as he said stupidly over and over again-a bullet had gone through his arm. Fournier came up a moment later brandishing his musket.

  'I fired at him again,' said Fournier, 'but I missed him clean. He is hard to hit, that one.'

  'Where are the others?' asked Godinot. He knew the answer to the question, but he asked it merely for something to say.

  'Dead,' said Fournier. 'They shot Bernhard through the heart. Guimblot ' 'I saw Guimblot,' said Godinot.

  They looked at each other. Godinot was ashamed of his panic. 'They're coming! They're coming again!' said Dubois, seizing Godinot's arm. A twig snapped somewhere in the undergrowth, and the noise started the panic in their minds again-perhaps it was Dubois' fault, for he was shaken by his wound and panic is infectious. They fled over the hill again, running madly along the paths, until Dubois fainted with loss of blood. They tied up his wound and dragged him down to the village. There was an unpleasant interview with his captain awaiting Sergeant Godinot when he had to explain the loss of more than half his party. There is no excuse for defeat in the military code, just as success excuses everything. But other parties had sustained loss and defeat, too, it appeared, when they came back in driblets from the mountain; there were several wounded to bear Dubois company in the hospital; there were several dead left among the rocks. And several men had seen the Englishman in green uniform, and several shots had been fired at him, all unavailingly.

  In the evening Fournier came to Sergeant Godinot.

  'I want some money, sergeant,' he said. 'Give me some.'

  Sergeant Godinot could see no use for money here in these uninhabited billets, and he said so.

  'Never mind that,' said Fournier. 'I want some money.'

  Godinot bowed to his whim and pulled out two or three copper coins-enough to buy a drink had there been drinks to be bought. Fournier thrust them aside. 'I want money,' he said.

  What he was really asking for, as Godinot came to realize, was silver-in French the same word. Godinot found him a Spanish pillar dollar, one of four which Godinot kept sewn in his shirt in case of need. Fournier weighed it in his hand. 'Give me another one, sergeant. Please give me another one,' he pleaded. Godinot did so with some reluctance, looking at him oddly. It was only later in the evening, when he saw Fournier sitting by the fire with an iron spoon and a bullet-mould that he realized part of what was in Fournier's mind. He was casting silver bullets to make sure of hitting the green Englishman at the next opportunity. The others round the fire were not given the chance by Fournier of seeing exactly what he was doing. They made jokes about shortage of ammunition and Fournier's diligence in replacing it, but they did not know it was silver he was using, and in consequence paid no special attention to his actions. After all, bullet-moulding was a pleasantly distracting hobby, and men who were really fussy about their marksmanship were often known to mould their own bullets in an endeavour to obtain more perfect spheres than the official issue. Yet Sergeant Godinot felt much more ill at ease when at next morning's parade Private Fournier was found to be missing. Everyone realized that it could not be a case of desertion- no one could desert to the Portuguese, and to have deserted to the English would have called for a journey through the cantonments of half the French army. Sergeant Godinot could only tell his captain what he knew of Fournier's motives, and express the opinion that he was out on the hill somewhere trying to shoot the green Englishman. And the captain could only shrug his shoulders and hope that Fournier would return alive.

  He never did. Godinot awaited him anxiously for several days, but he never came back. Godinot never found out what happened to him. He was the fifth of that little group of friends to die- Boyel had been the first, and little Godron the second, and Lebrun and Bernhard had been killed in the ambush a day or two before, and now Fournier was gone and only Dubois was left, with a hole in his arm.

  So one day after an announcement by the colonel, Sergeant Godinot came to visit Dubois in the battalion hospital.

  'We are going to Santarem to-morrow,' said Godinot.

  'Who is?'

  'We are. You and I. We are going carpentering or rope- making or boat-building- they want men for all those.'

  'Who does?'

  'Headquarters. The colonel announced this morning that all men with a knowledge of carpentry or boat-building or rope-making or smith's work were to report to the adjutant. So I reported for you and me. I didn't have to tell him more than the truth. When I said that my father owned one-third of the Chantier Naval, and that you and I had spent half our lives in small boats in Nantes harbour, he put our names down at once. We are to report at Santarem to-morrow.' 'Santarem?' asked Dubois vaguely.

  'Santarem is twenty kilometres down the river,' said Godinot. 'Heaven bless us, man, don't you remember marching up through it?'

  But since the conscription had taken him from his home a year ago, at the age of seventeen and a half, Dubois had marched through too many places to remember half of them.

  'So that arm of yours must be better by to-morrow,' said Godinot. 'Half a bullet ought not to keep you sick longer than that.'

  The missile which had been extracted from Dubois' arm had been half a musket ball-apparently the Portuguese sawed their bullets in two in order to double their chances of hitting something.

  'It is better,' said Dubois. 'I was to report for light duty the day after to-morrow. Do you think they'll issue rations to us at Santarem?' 'They'll have to if we're doing other work,' said Godinot, and the two of them looked at each other. Food was already short again in the battalion-that day's ration had only consisted of a litre of maize porridge. 'It's headquarters at Santarem,' he continued. 'Those brutes in the Second Corps will have to send in some of the beef they get beyond the road.'

  Everyone in the battalion was firmly convinced that the Second Corps in its foraging area beyond the road was revelling in beef every day-an extraordinarily inaccurate estimate. Dubois smacked his lips.

  'Beef!' he said. 'With thick gravy!'

  He said the words with the same respectful awe he had once employed in speaking about the Emperor Napoleon.

  Adjutant Doguereau had weeded out a great many of the applicants for work at Santarem. Quite half the battalion had hurried to report to him after the regimental announcement, full of stories about their
knowledge of carpentry or rope-making. Everyone was anxious to escape from the battalion, from the dreariness of life in cramped billets, the shortage of food, the endless, ineffectual skirmishing with the outcasts on the hill.

  They had told the most fantastic lies about their experience with boats and their ability to do smith's work. But Adjutant Doguereau had seen through all the lies of these lads fresh from the plough and the cart's tail. There were only thirty men paraded under Sergeant Godinot and sent off to march down the road to Santarem.

  Santarem was a long, narrow town of tall, white houses squeezed in between the road and the river. When they marched into it there was no sign of civilian life-every inhabitant had fled weeks ago-but the long, high street was all a-bustle with groups of men working here and there.

  The red woollen shoulder-knots of the engineers were much in evidence. They saw white-haired old General Eble, whom everyone knew and liked, striding stiffly along the road followed by his staff. A sergeant of sappers took them in charge and led them to their billet-a big warehouse on the water's edge. 'Here, you blues,' said the sergeant of sappers, 'is where you will live for the next month or two. And where you will work. My God, how you will work!' 'But what is the work, sergeant?' asked Godinot.