Corporal Sam | Page 8

light,
stood there for a moment with a white face. The cause of it--though it
would have been a sufficient one--was not the story to which the men
around the fire had been listening; for the teller, at sight of the corporal,
had broken off abruptly, knowing him to be a religious fellow after a
fashion, with a capacity for disapproval and a pair of fists to back it up.
So, while his comrades guffawed, he rather cleverly changed the
subject.
'Oh, and by the way, talkin' of the convent'--he meant the Convent of
Santa Teresa, a high building under the very slope of the citadel,
protected by its guns and still held by the enemy, after three days'
fighting--'do any of you know a small house to the left of it, with only a
strip of garden between? Sort of a mud-nest it is, like a swallow's, stuck
under overhang o' the cliff. No? Well, that's a pity, for I hear tell the
general has promised five pounds to the first man who breaks into that
house.'
'But why, at all?' inquired a man close on his right.
'I know the place,' put in another; 'a mean kind of building, with one
window lookin' down the street, and that on the second floor, as you
might say. It don't look to me the sort of house to hold five pounds'
worth, all told--let be that, to force it, a man must cross half the fire
from the convent, and in full view. Five pounds be damned! Five

pounds isn't so scarce in these times that a man need go there to fetch it
for his widow.'
The corporal was turning away. For three days San Sebastian had been
a hell, between the flames of which he had seen things that sickened his
soul. They sickened it yet, only in remembrance. Yes, and the sickness
had more than once come nigh to be physical. His throat worked at the
talk of loot, now that he knew what men did for it.
'The general ain't after the furnitcher,' answered the first speaker. 'It
consarns a child.'
'A child ain't no such rarity in San Sebastian that anybody need offer
five pounds for one.'
'What's this talk about a child?' asked Sergeant Wilkes, coming in from
his rounds, and dropping to a seat by the blaze. He caught sight of
Corporal Sam standing a little way back, and nodded.
'Well, it seems that, barring this child, every soul in the house has been
killed. The place is pretty certain death to approach, and the crittur, for
all that's known, has been left without food for two days and more. 'Tis
a boy, I'm told--a small thing, not above four at the most. Between
whiles it runs to the window and looks out. The sentries have seen it
more'n a dozen times; and one told me he'd a sight sooner look on a
ghost.'
'Then why don't the Frenchies help?' some one demanded. 'There's a
plenty of 'em close by, in the convent.'
'The convent don't count. There's a garden between it and the house,
and on the convent side a blank wall--no windows at all, only loopholes.
Besides which, there's a whole block of buildings in full blaze t'other
side of the house, and the smoke of it drives across so that 'tis only
between whiles you can see the child at all. The odds are, he'll be burnt
alive or smothered before he starves outright; and, I reckon, put one
against the other, 'twill be the mercifuller end.'

'Poor little beggar,' said the sergeant. 'But why don't the general send in
a white flag, and take him off?'
'A lot the governor would believe--and after what you and me have
seen these two days! A nice tenderhearted crew to tell him, "If you
please, we've come for a poor little three-year-old." Why, he'd as lief as
not believe we meant to eat him.'
Sergeant Wilkes glanced up across the camp-fire to the spot where
Corporal Sam had been standing. But Corporal Sam had disappeared.
CHAPTER VI.
Although the hour was close upon midnight, and no moon showed,
Corporal Sam needed no lantern to light him through San Sebastian; for
a great part of the upper town still burned fiercely, and from time to
time a shell, soaring aloft from the mortar batteries across the river,
burst over the citadel or against the rocks where the French yet clung,
and each explosion flung a glare across the heavens.
He had passed into the town unchallenged. The fatigue parties, hunting
by twos and threes among the ruins of the river-front for corpses to
burn or bury, doubtless supposed him to be about the same business. At
any rate, they paid him no attention.
Just within