Corporal Sam

Corporal Sam

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Corporal Sam and Other Stories, by A.
T. Quiller-Couch
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Title: Corporal Sam and Other Stories Corporal Sam; The Copernican
Convoy; Red Velvet; The Jew on the Moor; My Christmas Burglary;
The Mayor's Dovecot: a Cautionary Tale; News From Troy!; Colonel
Baigent's Christmas; Doctor Unonius; Mutual Exchange, Limited
Author: A. T. Quiller-Couch

Release Date: July 3, 2005 [eBook #16194]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORPORAL
SAM AND OTHER STORIES***
E-text prepared by Lionel Sear

CORPORAL SAM AND OTHER STORIES
by
SIR ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH ('Q').

CONTENTS.
CORPORAL SAM.
THE COPERNICAN CONVOY.
RED VELVET.
THE JEW ON THE MOOR.
MY CHRISTMAS BURGLARY.
THE MAYOR'S DOVECOT: A CAUTIONARY TALE.
NEWS FROM TROY!
COLONEL BAIGENT'S CHRISTMAS.
DOCTOR UNONIUS.
MUTUAL EXCHANGE, LIMITED.

CORPORAL SAM.
CHAPTER I.
Sergeant David Wilkes, of the First (Royal) Regiment of Foot--third
battalion, B Company--came trudging with a small fatigue party down
the sandy slopes of Mount Olia, on the summit of which they had been
toiling all day, helping the artillerymen to drag an extra 24-pounder

into battery. They had brought it into position just half an hour ago, and
already it had opened fire along with another 24-pounder and two
howitzers mounted on the same rocky platform. The men as they
descended heard the projectiles fly over their heads, and paused,
distinguishing the scream of the shells from the dull hum of the
round-shot, to watch the effect of the marksmanship, which was
excellent.
Northwards, to their right, stretched the blue line of the Bay, where a
single ship-of-war tacked lazily and kept a two-miles' offing. The
smoke of the guns, drifting down on the land-breeze from the summit
of Mount Olia, now hid her white sails, now lifted and revealed them in
the late afternoon sunshine. But although blue held the upper
heavens--cloudless blue of July--the sunshine that reached the ship was
murky, almost copper-coloured; for it pierced through a cloud of denser
smoke that rolled continuously along the western horizon from the
burning houses of San Sebastian.
Sergeant Wilkes and his men, halting on the lower slope of the
mountain where it fell away in sand-dunes to the estuary of the Urumea,
had the whole flank of the fortress in view. Just now, at half-tide, it
rose straight out of the water on the farther bank-- a low,
narrow-necked isthmus that at its seaward end climbed to a
cone-shaped rock four hundred feet high, crowned by a small castle.
This was the citadel. The town, through which alone it could be taken
by force, lay under it, across the neck of the isthmus; and this again was
protected on the landward side by a high rampart or curtain,
strengthened by a tall bastion in its centre and covered by a regular
hornwork pushed out from its front. So much for the extremities,
seaward and landward. That flank of the place which it presented to the
sandhills across the Urumea was clearly more vulnerable, and yet not
easily vulnerable. Deep water and natural rock protected Mount
Orgullo, the citadel hill. The sea-wall, for almost half its length, formed
but a fausse braye for the hornwork towering formidably behind it.
Only where it covered the town, in the space between citadel and
hornwork, this wall became a simple rampart; stout indeed and solid
and twenty-seven feet high, with two flanking towers for enfilading fire,

besides a demi-bastion at the Mount Orgullo end, yet offering the weak
spot in the defences.
The British batteries had found and were hammering at it; not the guns
upon Mount Olia, which had been hauled thither to dominate those of
the citadel, but a dozen 24-pounders disposed, with a line of mortars
behind them, on the lower slope above the estuary, where an
out-cropping ridge of rock gave firm ground among the sand-dunes.
The undulating line of these dunes hid this, the true breaching battery,
from view of Sergeant Wilkes and his men, though they had halted
within a hundred yards of it, and for at least an hour the guns had been
given a rest. Only, at long intervals, one or other of the mortars threw a
bomb to clear the breach--already close upon a hundred feet
wide--driven between the two flanking towers. It was behind this
breach that the town blazed. The smoke, carried down the estuary by
the land-breeze, rolled heavily across the middle slopes of Mount
Orgullo. But above it the small castle stood up clearly, silhouetted
against the western