Under Wellington's Command: A Tale of the Peninsular War by G. A. Henty (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📕

"I thank you, Captain," Terence said, "and will not refuse your offer. We shall have to provide ourselves with new uniforms, and take a passage out to Portugal, which is where our regiments are, at present; so the money will be very useful."

"And I see you have not a watch, monsieur. You had better take one of these."

"Thanks! I parted with mine to a good woman, who helped me to escape from Bayonne; so I will accept that offer, also."

In two hours the schooner entered the port of Saint Helier; the lugger, under easy sail, following in her wake. They were greeted with enthusiastic cheers by the crowd that gathered on the quays, as soon as it was seen that the prize was the dreaded Annette--which had, for some months past, been a terror to the privateers and fishermen of the place--and that she should have been captured by the Cerf seemed marvellous, indeed.

A British officer was on the quay when they got alongside. He came on board at once.

"The governor has sent me to congratulate you, in his name, Captain Teniers," he said, "on having captured a vessel double your own size, which has for some time been the terror of these waters. He will be glad if you will give me some particulars of the action; and you will, when you can spare time afterwards, go up and give him a full report of it."

"I owe the capture entirely to these two gentlemen, who are officers in your army. They had escaped from a French prison, and were making for this port when I first saw them this morning, with the Annette in hot chase after them. It did not strike me that it was her, for it was only last night that the news came in that she had been seen, yesterday, sailing towards Granville; and I thought that she was the Lionne, which is a boat our own size. I came up before she had overhauled the boat and, directly the fight began, I could see the mistake I had made. But as she was a good deal faster than we were, it was of no use running. There was just a chance that I might cripple her, and get away."

He then related the incidents of the fight.

"Well, I congratulate you, gentlemen," the officer said, heartily. "You have indeed done a good turn to Captain Teniers. To whom have I the pleasure of speaking?"

"My name is O'Connor," replied Terence. "I have the honour to be on Sir Arthur Wellesley's staff; and have the rank of captain in our army, but am a colonel in the Portuguese service. This is Lieutenant Ryan, of His Majesty's Mayo Fusiliers."

The officer looked a little doubtful, while Terence was speaking. It was difficult to believe that the young fellow, of one or two and twenty, at the outside, could be a captain on Lord Wellington's staff--for Sir Arthur had been raised to the peerage, after the battle of Talavera--still less that he should be a colonel in the Portuguese service. However, he bowed gravely, and said:

"My name is Major Chalmers, of the 35th. I am adjutant to the governor. If it will not be inconvenient, I shall be glad if you will return with me, and report yourselves to him."

"We are quite ready," Terence said. "We have nothing to do in the way of packing up, for we have only the clothes we stand in; which were, indeed, the property of the captain of the lugger, who was killed in the action."

Telling Captain Teniers that they would be coming down again, when they had seen the governor, the two friends accompanied the officer. Very few words were said on the way, for the major entertained strong doubts whether Terence had not been hoaxing him, and whether the account he had given of himself was not altogether fictitious. On arriving at the governor's he left them for a few minutes in the anteroom; while he went in and gave the account he had received, from the captain, of the manner in which the lugger had been captured; and said that the two gentlemen who had played so important a part in the matter were, as they said, one of them an officer on the staff of Lord Wellington and a colonel in the Portuguese army, and the other a subaltern in the Mayo Fusiliers.

"Why do you say, as they said, major? Have you any doubt about it?"

"My only reason for doubting is that they are both young fellows of about twenty, which would accord well enough with the claim of one of them to be a lieutenant; but that the other should be a captain on Lord Wellington's staff, and a colonel in the Portuguese service, is quite incredible."

"It would seem so, certainly, major. However, it is evident that they have both behaved extraordinarily well in this fight with the Annette, and I cannot imagine that, whatever story a young fellow might tell to civilians, he would venture to assume a military title to which he had no claim, on arrival at a military station. Will you please ask them to come in? At any rate, their story will be worth hearing."

"Good day, gentlemen," he went on, as Terence and Ryan entered. "I have to congratulate you, very heartily, upon the very efficient manner in which you assisted in the capture of the French privateer that has, for some time, been doing great damage among the islands. She has been much more than a match for any of our privateers here and, although she has been chased several times by the cruisers, she has always managed to get away.

"And now, may I ask how you happened to be approaching the island, in a small boat, at the time that the encounter took place?"

"Certainly, sir. We were both prisoners at Bayonne. I myself had been captured by the French, when endeavouring to cross the frontier into Portugal with my regiment; while Lieutenant Ryan was wounded at Talavera, and was in the hospital there when the Spaniards left the town, and the French marched in."

"What is your regiment, Colonel O'Connor?"

"It is called the Minho regiment, sir, and consists of two battalions. We have had the honour of being mentioned in general orders more than once; and were so on the day after the first attack of Victor upon Donkin's brigade, stationed on the hill forming the left of the British position at Talavera."

The governor looked at his adjutant who, rising, went to a table on which were a pile of official gazettes. Picking out one, he handed it to the governor, who glanced through it.

"Here is the general order of the day," he said, "and assuredly Lord Wellington speaks, in the very highest terms, of the service that Colonel O'Connor and the Minho regiment, under his command, rendered. Certainly very high praise, indeed.

"You will understand, sir, that we are obliged to be cautious here; and it seemed so strange that so young an officer should have attained the rank of colonel, that I was curious to know how it could have occurred."

"I am by no means surprised that it should seem strange, to you, that I should hold the rank I claim. I was, like my friend Lieutenant Ryan, in the Mayo Fusiliers; when I had the good fortune to be mentioned, in despatches, in connection with an affair in which the transport that took us out to Portugal was engaged with two French privateers. In consequence of the mention, General Fane appointed me one of his aides-de-camp; and I acted in that capacity during the campaign that ended at Corunna. I was left on the field, insensible, on the night after that battle.

"When I came to myself, the army was embarking; so I made my way through Galicia into Portugal and, on reaching Lisbon, was appointed by Sir John Craddock to his staff; and was sent by him on a mission to the northern frontier of Portugal.

"On the way I took the command of a body of freshly-raised Portuguese levies, who were without an officer or leader of any kind. With the aid of a small escort with me, I formed them into a reliable regiment, and had the good fortune to do some service with them. I was therefore confirmed in my command, and was given Portuguese rank. Sir Arthur Wellesley, on succeeding Sir John Craddock in the supreme command, still kept my name on the headquarter staff, thereby adding greatly to my authority; and continued me in the independent command of my regiment.

"After Talavera we were despatched to aid the Spaniards in holding the pass of Banos but, before we arrived there, Soult had crossed the pass and, being cut off by his force from rejoining the army, I determined to cross the mountains into Portugal. In so doing we came upon a French division, on its march to Plasencia, and the company of my regiment with which I was were cut off, and taken prisoners."

"Forgive me for having doubted you, Colonel O'Connor. I should, of course, have remembered your name. In his report of his operations, before and subsequent to the battle of Talavera, Lord Wellington mentions, more than once, that his left during his advance was covered by the partisan corps of Wilson and O'Connor; and mentions, too, that it was by messengers from Colonel O'Connor that he first learned how formidable a force was in his rear, and was therefore able to cross the Tagus and escape from his perilous position. Of course, it never entered my mind that the officer who had rendered such valuable service was so young a man.

"There is only one mystery left. How was it, when you and Mr. Ryan escaped from Bayonne, that you are found in a boat in the Bay of Saint Malo?"

"It does seem rather a roundabout way of rejoining," Terence said, with a smile. "We escaped in a boat and made along the north coast of Spain but, when off Santander, were blown out to sea in a gale, and were picked up by a French privateer. We were supposed to be two Spanish fishermen and, as the privateer was short of boats, they took ours and enrolled us among their crew. They were on their way to Brest, and we took an opportunity to desert, and made our way on foot until we reached the mouth of the river Sienne; and made off in a boat, last night. This morning we saw the privateer in chase of us, and should certainly have been recaptured had not the Cerf come up and engaged her. While the fight was going on we had gone on board the schooner, unperceived by either party, and took what seemed to us the best way of aiding our friends; who were getting somewhat the worst of it, the crew of the lugger being very much stronger than the crew of the schooner."

"Well, I hope that you will both, at once, take up your quarters with me as long as you stay here; and I shall then have an opportunity of hearing of your adventures more in detail."

"Thank you very much, sir. We shall be very happy to accept your kind invitation; but I hope we shall not trespass upon your hospitality long, for we are anxious to be off, as soon as possible, so as to rejoin without loss of time. I am particularly so for, although it will be two or three months before there is any movement of the troops, I am afraid of finding someone else appointed to the command of my regiment; and I have been so long with it, now, that I should be sorry indeed to be put to any other work."

"That I can quite understand. Well, there is no regular communication from here, but there is not a week passes without some craft or other sailing from here to Weymouth."

"We would rather, if possible, be put on board some ship on her way to Portugal," Terence said. "If we landed in England, we should have to report ourselves, and might be sent to a depot, and be months before we got out there again. I spoke to the captain of the Cerf about it, this morning; and he was good enough to promise that, as soon as he had repaired damages, he would run out into the Bay, and put us on board the first ship he overhauled bound for the Peninsula."

"That would be an excellent plan, from your point of view," the governor said. "Teniers is one of the best sailors on the island, and has several times carried despatches for me to Weymouth. You could not be in better hands."

Four days later the schooner was ready to sail again.

"This will be my last voyage in her," the captain said. "I have had an offer for