e-camp, he shuddered and placed the weapon under
the leathern cushion, declaring that it made him sick to look at it.

Well, we had been rolling and creaking on our way whilst this talk had
been going forward, and as we reached the base of the mountains we could
hear the rumbling of cannon far away upon the right. This came from
Massena, who was, as I knew, besieging Ciudad Rodrigo. There was nothing
I should have wished better than to have gone straight to him, for if,
as some said, he had Jewish blood in his veins, he was the best Jew that
I have heard of since Joshua's time. If you were in sight of his beaky
nose and bold, black eyes, you were not likely to miss much of what was
going on. Still, a siege is always a poor sort of a pick-and-shovel
business, and there were better prospects with my hussars in front of
the English. Every mile that passed, my heart grew lighter and lighter,
until I found myself shouting and singing like a young ensign fresh from
St Cyr, just to think of seeing all my fine horses and my gallant
fellows once more.

As we penetrated the mountains the road grew rougher and the pass more
savage. At first we had met a few muleteers, but now the whole country
seemed deserted, which is not to be wondered at when you think that the
French, the English, and the guerillas had each in turn had command over
it. So bleak and wild was it, one great brown wrinkled cliff succeeding
another, and the pass growing narrower and narrower, that I ceased to
look out, but sat in silence, thinking of this and that, of women whom I
had loved and of horses which I had handled. I was suddenly brought back
from my dreams, however, by observing the difficulties of my companion,
who was trying with a sort of brad-awl, which he had drawn out, to bore
a hole through the leathern strap which held up his water-flask. As he
worked with twitching fingers the strap escaped his grasp, and the
wooden bottle fell at my feet. I stooped to pick it up, and as I did so
the priest silently leaped upon my shoulders and drove his brad-awl into
my eye!

My friends, I am, as you know, a man steeled to face every danger. When
one has served from the affair of Zurich to that last fatal day of
Waterloo, and has had the special medal, which I keep at home in a
leathern pouch, one can afford to confess when one is frightened. It may
console some of you, when your own nerves play you tricks, to remember
that you have heard even me, Brigadier G