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There could be no doubt, at any rate, concerning one little Frenchman whom two tall British grenadiers were guiding down the cliff towards the road. And against my will I had to drop my cigarette and laugh aloud: for the two guides were themselves unsteady, yet as desperately intent upon the job as though they handled a chest of treasure. Now they would prop him up and run him over a few yards of easy ground: anon, at a sharp descent, one would clamber down ahead and catch the burden his comrade lowered by the collar, with a subsidiary grip upon belt or pantaloons. But to the Frenchman all smooth and rugged came alike: his legs sprawled impartially: and once, having floundered on top of the leading Samaritan with a shock which rolled the pair to the very verge of a precipice, he recovered himself, and sat up in an attitude which, at half a mile’s distance, was eloquent of tipsy reproach. In short, when the procession had filed past the edge of my tent-flap, I crawled out to watch: and then it occurred to me as worth a lazy man’s while to cross the Zapardiel by the pontoon bridge below and head these comedians off upon the highroad. They promised to repay a closer view.

So I did; gained the road, and, seating myself beside it, hailed them as they came.

“My friend,” said I to the leading grenadier, “you are taking a deal of trouble with your prisoner.”

The grenadier stared at his comrade, and his comrade at him. As if by signal they mopped their brows with their coat-sleeves. The Frenchman sat down on the road without more ado.

“Prisoner?” mumbled the first grenadier.

“Ay,” said I. “Who is he? He doesn’t look like a general of brigade.”

“Devil take me if I know. Who will he be, Bill?”

Bill stared at the Frenchman blankly, and rooted him out of the dust with his toe. “I wonder, now! ‘Picked him up, somewheres–Get up, you little pig, and carry your liquor like a gentleman. It was Mike intojuced him.”

“I did not,” said Mike.

“Very well, then, ye did not. I must have come by him some other way.”

“It was yourself tripped over him in the cellar, up yandhar.” He broke off and eyed me, meditating a sudden thought. “It seems mighty queer, that–speaking of a cellar as ‘up yandhar.’ Now a cellar, by rights, should be in the ground, under your fut.”

“And so it is,” argued Bill; “slap in the bowels of it.”

“Ah, be quiet wid your bowels! As I was saying, sor, Bill tripped over the little fellow: and the next I knew he was crying to be tuk home to camp, and Bill swearing to do it if it cost him his stripes. And that is where I come into this fatigue job: for the man’s no friend of mine, and will not be looking it, I hope.”

“Did I so?” Bill exclaimed, regarding himself suddenly from outside, as it were, and not without admiration. “Did I promise that? Well, then”–he fixed a sternly disapproving stare on the Frenchman– “the Lord knows what possessed me; but to the bridgehead you go, if I fight the whole of Clausel’s division single-handed. Take his feet, Mike; I’m a man of my word. Hep!–ready is it? For’ard!”

For a minute or so, as they staggered down the road, I stared after them; and then upon an impulse mounted the track by which they had descended.

It was easy enough, or they had never come down alive; but the sun’s rays smote hotly off the face of the rock, and at one point I narrowly missed being brained by a stone dislodged by some drunkard above me. Already, however, the stream of tipplers had begun to set back towards the camp, and my main difficulty was to steer against it, avoiding disputes as to the rule of the road. I had no intention of climbing to the castle: my whim was–and herein again I set my training a test–to walk straight to the particular opening from which, across the Zapardiel, I had seen my comedians emerge.