Corporal Sam pulled off his poncho. 'I'd offer to fight the both of you,' he said, 'but 'tis time wasted with a couple of white-livers that don't dare fetch a poor child across a roadway. Let me go by; you'll keep, anyway.'
'Now look here, sonny—' The first rifleman blocked his road. 'I don't bear no malice for a word spoken in anger: so stand quiet and take my advice. That house isn't goin' to take fire. 'Cos why? 'Cos as Bill says, we've been there—there and in the next house, now burnin'—and we know. 'Cos before leavin'—the night before last it was—some of our boys set two barrels o' powder somewheres in the next house, on the ground floor, with a slow match. That's why we left; though, as it happened, the match missed fire. But the powder's there, and if you'll wait a few minutes now you'll not be disapp'inted.'
'You left the child behind!'
'Well, we left in a hurry, as I tell you, and somehow in the hurry nobody brought him along. I'm sorry for the poor little devil, too.' The fellow swung about. 'See him there at the window, now! If you want him put out of his pain—'
He lifted his rifle. Corporal Sam made a clutch at his arm to drag it down, and in the scuffle both men swayed out upon the roadway. And with that, or a moment later, he felt the rifleman slip down between his arms, and saw the blood gush from his mouth as he collapsed on the cobbles.
Corporal Sam heard the man Bill shout a furious oath, cast one puzzled look up the roadway towards the convent, saw the flashes jetting from its high wall, and raced across unscathed. A bullet sang past his ear as he found the gate and hurled himself into the garden. It was almost dark here, but dark only for a moment. … For as he caught sight of a flight of steps leading to a narrow doorway, and ran for them—and even as he set foot on the lowest—of a sudden the earth heaved under him, seemed to catch him up in a sheet of flame, and flung him backwards—backwards and flat on his back, into a clump of laurels.
Slowly he picked himself up. The sky was dark now; but, marvellous
to say, the house stood. The mass of it yet loomed over the laurels.
Yes, and a light showed under the door at the head of the steps.
He groped his way up and pushed the door open.
The light came through a rent in the opposite wall, and on the edge of this jagged hole some thin laths were just bursting into a blaze. He rushed across the room to beat out the flame, and this was easily done; but, as he did it, he caught sight of a woman's body, stretched along the floor by the fireplace, and of a child cowering in the corner, watching him.
'Come and help, little one,' said Corporal Sam, still beating at the laths.
The child understood no English, and moreover was too small to help. But it seemed that the corporal's voice emboldened him, for he drew near and stood watching.
'Who did this, little one?' asked Corporal Sam, nodding towards the corpse, as he rubbed the charred dust from his hands.
For a while the child stared at him, not comprehending; but by-and-by pointed beneath the table and then back at its mother.
The corporal walked to the table, stooped, and drew from under it a rifle and a pouch half-filled with cartridges.
'Tell him we've been there.' He seemed to hear the rifleman Bill's voice repeating the words, close at hand. He recognised the badge on the pouch.
He was shaking where he stood; and this, perhaps, was why the child stared at him so oddly. But, looking into the wondering young eyes, he read only the question, 'What are you going to do?'
He hated these riflemen. Nay, looking around the room, how he hated all the foul forces that had made this room what it was! … And yet, on the edge of resolve, he knew that he must die for what he meant to do … that the thing was unpardonable, that in the end he must be shot down, and rightly, as a dog.
He remembered his dog Rover, how the poor brute had been tempted to sheep-killing at night, on the sly; and the look in his eyes when, detected at length, he had crawled forward to his master to be shot. No other sentence was possible, and Rover had known it.
Had he no better excuse? Perhaps not. … He only knew that he could not help it; that this thing had been done, and by the consent of many … and that as a man he must kill for it, though as a soldier he deserved only to be killed.
With the child's eyes still resting on him in wonder, he set the rifle on its butt and rammed down a cartridge; and so, dropping on hands and knees, crept to the window.
CHAPTER VII.
Early next morning Sergeant Wilkes picked his way across the ruins of the great breach and into the town, keeping well to windward of the fatigue parties already kindling fires and collecting the dead bodies that remained unburied.
Within and along the sea-wall San Sebastian was a heap of burnt-out ruins. Amid the stones and rubble encumbering the streets, lay broken muskets, wrenched doors, shattered sticks of furniture—mirrors, hangings, women's apparel, children's clothes—loot dropped by the pillagers as valueless, wreckage of the flood. He passed a very few inhabitants, and these said nothing to him; indeed, did not appear to see him, but sat by the ruins of their houses with faces set in a stupid horror. Even the crash of a falling house near by would scarcely persuade them to stir, and hundreds during the last three days had been overwhelmed thus and buried.
The sergeant had grown callous to these sights. He walked on, heeding scarcely more than he was heeded, came to the great square, and climbed a street leading northwards, a little to the left of the great convent. The street was a narrow one, for half its length lined on both sides with fire-gutted houses; but the upper half, though deserted, appeared to be almost intact. At the very head, and close under the citadel walls, it took a sharp twist to the right, and another twist, almost equally sharp, to the left before it ended in a broader thoroughfare, crossing it at right angles and running parallel with the ramparts.
At the second twist the sergeant came to a halt; for at his feet, stretched across the causeway, lay a dead body.
He drew back with a start, and looked about him. Corporal Sam had been missing since nine o'clock last night, and he felt sure that Corporal Sam must be here or hereabouts. But no living soul was in sight.
The body at his feet was that of a rifleman; one of the volunteers whose presence had been so unwelcome to General Leith and the whole Fifth Division. The dead fist clutched its rifle; and the sergeant stooping to disengage this, felt that the body was warm.
'Come back, you silly fool!'
He turned quickly. Another rifleman had thrust his head out of a doorway close by. The sergeant, snatching up the weapon, sprang and joined him in the passage where he sheltered.
'I—I was looking for a friend hereabouts.'
'Fat lot of friend you'll find at the head of this street!' snarled the rifleman, and jerked his thumb towards the corpse. 'That makes the third already this morning. These Johnnies ain't no sense of honour left—firing on outposts as you may call it.'
'Where are they firing from?'
'No
