Two minutes afterwards I was again posting in the dark along the
highway; to explain which sudden movement of retreat I must trouble
the reader with a reminiscence of my services.
I lay one night with the out-pickets in Castile. We were in close
touch with the enemy; the usual orders had been issued against
smoking, fires, and talk, and both armies lay as quiet as mice,
when I saw the English sentinel opposite making a signal by holding
up his musket. I repeated it, and we both crept together in the
dry bed of a stream, which made the demarcation of the armies. It
was wine he wanted, of which we had a good provision, and the
English had quite run out. He gave me the money, and I, as was the
custom, left him my firelock in pledge, and set off for the
canteen. When I returned with a skin of wine, behold, it had
pleased some uneasy devil of an English officer to withdraw the
outposts! Here was a situation with a vengeance, and I looked for
nothing but ridicule in the present and punishment in the future.
Doubtless our officers winked pretty hard at this interchange of
courtesies, but doubtless it would be impossible to wink at so
gross a fault, or rather so pitiable a misadventure as mine; and
you are to conceive me wandering in the plains of Castile,
benighted, charged with a wine-skin for which I had no use, and
with no knowledge whatever of the whereabouts of my musket, beyond
that it was somewhere in my Lord Wellington's army.
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