The Snare | Page 9

to obtain possession of it
not merely a part of it, but all of it - and carry it off, thereby
accomplishing two equally praiseworthy ends: to rescue a conventful of
monks from damnation, and to regale the much-enduring, half-starved
campaigners of the Agueda.
Thus reasoned Mr. Butler with admirable, if drunken, logic. And
reasoning thus he led the way over the bridge, and kept straight on
when he had crossed it, much to the dismay of Sergeant Flanagan, who,
perceiving the lieutenant's condition, conceived that he was missing his
way. This the sergeant ventured to point out, reminding his officer that
they had come by the road along the river.
"So we did," said Butler shortly. "Bu' we go back by way of Tavora."
They had no guide. The one who had conducted them to Regoa had
returned with O'Rourke, and although Souza had urged upon the
lieutenant at parting that he should take one of the men from the quinta,
Butler, with wit enough to see that this was not desirable under the
circumstances, had preferred to find his way alone.

His confused mind strove now to revisualise the map which he had
consulted in Souza's parlour. He discovered, naturally enough, that the
task was altogether beyond his powers. Meanwhile night was
descending. They were, however, upon the mule track, which went up
and round the shoulder of a hill, and by this they came at dark upon a
hamlet.
Sergeant Flanagan was a shrewd fellow and perhaps the most sober
man in the troop - for the wine had run very freely in Souza's kitchen,
too, and the men, whilst awaiting their commander's pleasure, had
taken the fullest advantage of an opportunity that was all too rare upon
that campaign. Now Sergeant Flanagan began to grow anxious. He
knew the Peninsula from the days of Sir John Moore, and he knew as
much of the ways of the peasantry of Portugal as any man. He knew of
the brutal ferocity of which that peasantry was capable. He had seen
evidence more than once of the unspeakable fate of French stragglers
from the retreating army of Marshal Soult. He knew of crucifixions,
mutilations and hideous abominations practised upon them in these
remote hill districts by the merciless men into whose hands they
happened to fall, and he knew that it was not upon French soldiers
alone - that these abominations had been practised. Some of those
fierce peasants had been unable to discriminate between invader and
deliverer; to them a foreigner was a foreigner and no more. Others, who
were capable of discriminating, were in the position of having come to
look upon French and English with almost equal execration.
It is true that whilst the Emperor's troops made war on the maxim that
an army must support itself upon the country it traverses, thereby
achieving a greater mobility, since it was thus permitted to travel
comparatively light, the British law was that all things requisitioned
must be paid for. Wellington maintained this law in spite of all
difficulties at all times with an unrelaxing rigidity, and punished with
the utmost vigour those who offended against it. Nevertheless breaches
were continual; men broke out here and there, often, be it said, under
stress of circumstances for which the Portuguese were themselves
responsible; plunder and outrage took place and provoked
indiscriminating rancour with consequences at times as terrible to

stragglers from the British army of deliverance as to those from the
French army of oppressors. Then, too, there was the Portuguese Militia
Act recently enforced by Wellington - acting through the Portuguese
Government - deeply resented by the peasantry upon whom it bore, and
rendering them disposed to avenge it upon such stray British soldiers as
might fall into their hands.
Knowing all this, Sergeant Flanagan did not at all relish this night
excursion into the hill fastnesses, where at any moment, as it seemed to
him, they might miss their way. After all, they were but twelve men all
told, and he accounted it a stupid thing to attempt to take a short cut
across the hills for the purpose of overtaking an encumbered troop that
must of necessity be moving at a very much slower pace. This was the
way not to overtake but to outdistance. Yet since it was not for him to
remonstrate with the lieutenant, he kept his peace and hoped anxiously
for the best.
At the mean wine-shop of that hamlet Mr. Butler inquired his way by
the simple expedient of shouting "Tavora?" with a strong interrogative
inflection. The vintner made it plain by gestures - accompanied by a
rattling musketry of incomprehensible speech that their way lay straight
ahead. And straight ahead they went, following that mule track for
some five or six miles