“How do you know this?”
“It is my duty to know it, as an officer of light cavalry,” said Villena with dignity.
Hornblower looked at Villena and pondered. For three years now, he knew, Bonaparte’s armies had been marching up and down the length and breadth of Catalonia. They had beaten the Spaniards in innumerable battles, had captured their fortresses after desperate sieges, and yet were no nearer subjecting the country than when they had first treacherously invaded the province. The Catalans had not been able to overcome in the field even the motley hordes Bonaparte had used on this side of Spain — Italians, Germans, Swiss, Poles, all the sweepings of his army — but at the same time they had fought on nobly, raising fresh forces in every unoccupied scrap of territory, and wearing out their opponents by the incessant marches and countermarches they imposed on them. Yet that did not explain how a Spanish colonel of hussars found himself quite alone near the heart of the Barcelona district where the French were supposed to be in full control.
“How did you come to be there?” he demanded, sharply.
“In accordance with my duty, sir,” said Villena, with lofty dignity.
“I regret very much that I still do not understand, Don José. Where is your regiment?”
“Captain —”
“Where is it?”
“I do not know, sir.”
All the jauntiness was gone from the young hussar now. He looked at Hornblower with big pleading eyes as he was made to confess his shame.
“Where did you see it last?”
“At Tordera. We — we fought Pino there.”
“And you were beaten?”
“Yes. Yesterday. They were on the march back from Gerona and we came down from the mountains to cut them off. Their cuirassiers broke us, and we were scattered. My — my horse died at Arens de Mar there.”
The pitiful words enabled Hornblower to understand the whole story in a wave of intuition. Hornblower could visualise it all — the undisciplined hordes drawn up on some hillside, the mad charges which dashed them into fragments, and the helter-skelter flight. In every village for miles round there would be lurking fugitives today. Everyone had fled in panic. Villena had ridden his horse until it dropped, and being the best mounted, had come farther than anyone else — if his horse had not died he might have been riding now. The concentration of the French forces to put ten thousand men in the field had led to their evacuation of the smaller villages, so that Villena had been able to avoid capture, even though he was between the French field army and its base at Barcelona.
Now that he knew what had happened there was no advantage to be gained from dwelling on Villena’s misfortunes; indeed it was better to hearten him up, as he would be more useful that way.
“Defeat,” said Hornblower, “is a misfortune which every fighting man encounters sooner or later. Let us hope we shall gain our revenge for yesterday today.”
“There is more than yesterday to be revenged,” said Villena. He put his hand in the breast of his tunic and brought out a folded wad of paper; unfolded it was a printed poster, which he handed over to Hornblower who glanced at it and took in as much of the sense as a brief perusal of the Catalan in which it was printed permitted. It began, ‘We, Luciano Gaetano Pino, Knight of the Legion of Honour, Knight of the Order of the Iron Crown of Lombardy, General of Division, commanding the forces of His Imperial and Royal Majesty Napoleon, Emperor of the French and King of Italy in the district of Gerona hereby decree —’ There were numbered paragraphs after that, dealing with all the offences anyone could imagine against His Imperial and Royal Majesty. And each paragraph ended — Hornblower ran his eye down them — ‘will be shot’; ‘penalty of death’; ‘will be hanged’; ‘will be burned’ — it was a momentary relief to discover that this last referred to villages sheltering rebels.
“They have burned every village in the uplands,” said Villena.
“The road from Figueras to Gerona — ten leagues long, sir — is lined with gallows, and upon every gallows is a corpse.”
“Horrible!” said Hornblower, but he did not encourage the conversation. He fancied that if any Spaniard began to talk about the woes of Spain he would never stop. “And this Pino is marching back along the coast road, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Is there deep water close into the shore at any spot?”
The Spaniard raised his eyebrows in protest at that question, and Hornblower realised that it was hardly fair to ask a colonel of hussars about soundings.
“Are there batteries protecting the road from the sea?” he asked, instead.
“Oh yes,” said Villena. “Yes, I have heard so.”
“Where?”
“I do not know exactly, sir.”
Hornblower realised that Villena was probably incapable of giving exact topographical information about anywhere, which was what he would expect of a Spanish colonel of light cavalry.
“Well, we shall go and see,” he said.
Chapter XIV
Hornblower had shaken himself free from the company of Colonel Villena, who showed, now that he had told of his defeat, a hysterical loquacity and a pathetic unwillingness to allow him out of his sight. He had established him in a chair by the taffrail out of the way, and escaped below to the security of his cabin, to pore once more over the charts. There were batteries marked there — most of them apparently dated from the time, not so long ago, when Spain had been at war with England, and they had been erected to protect coasting vessels which crept along the shore from battery to battery. In consequence they were established at points where there was not merely deep water close in, but also a bit of shelter given by projecting points of land in which the fugitives could anchor. There had never been any thought in men’s minds then that marching columns might in the future be attacked from the sea, and exposed sections of the coast — like this twenty miles between Malgret and Arens de Mar — which offered no anchorage might surely be neglected. Since Cochrane was here a year ago in the Imperieuse no British ship had been spared to harass the French in this quarter.
The French since then had had too many troubles on their hands to have time to think of mere possibilities. The chances were that they had neglected to take precautions — and in any case they could not have enough heavy guns and trained gunners to guard the whole coast. The Sutherland was seeking a spot a mile and a half at least from any battery, where the water was deep enough close in for her to sweep the road with her guns. She had already hauled out of range of one battery, and that was marked on his chart and, moreover, was the only one marked along the stretch. It was most unlikely that the French had constructed others since the chart was last brought up to date. If Pino’s column had left Malgret at dawn the Sutherland must be nearly level with it now. Hornblower marked the spot which his instinct told him would be the most suitable, and ran up on deck to give the orders which would head the Sutherland in towards it.
Villena climbed hastily out of his chair at sight of him, and clinked loudly across the deck towards him, but Hornblower contrived to ignore him politely by acting as if his whole attention was taken up by giving instructions to Bush.
“I’ll have the guns loaded and run out, too, if you please, Mr Bush,” he concluded.
“Aye aye, sir,” said Bush.
Bush looked at him pleadingly. This last order, with its hint of immediate action, set the pinnacle on his curiosity. All he knew was that a Dago colonel had come on board. What they were here for, what Hornblower had in mind, he had no means of guessing. Hornblower always kept his projected plans to himself, because then if he should fail his subordinates would not be able to guess the extent of the failure. But Bush felt sometimes that his life was being shortened by his captain’s reticence. He was pleasantry surprised this time when Hornblower condescended to make explanations, and he was never to know that Hornblower’s unusual loquaciousness was the result of a desire to be saved from having to make polite conversation with Villena.