With the guerillas.
It was on a fine morning at the end of March that
a cortege of muleteers and mules left the little town
of Alonqua. It was now four months since the
Scudamores left the army, and in the intervening time
they had tramped through a large portion of Spain.
They had carried with them only a dozen or so little
despatches done up in tiny rolls of the length and
about the thickness of a bodkin, These were sewn inside
the lining of their coats, in the middle of the cloth
where it was doubled in at the seams, so that, even
were the clothes to be examined carefully and felt
all over, the chances of detection were slight indeed.
They had each, on starting, half a dozen pieces of
Spanish gold coin sewn between the thicknesses of leather
of the soles of each of their shoes, for they did
not start in the beggar clothes in which they had
first disguised themselves. Their clothes were,
indeed, worn and somewhat patched, but were of stout
material, and they wore shoes, but no stockings.
They had, indeed, the appearance of Spanish boys of
the peasant class. The weather in the north of
Spain is often very cold in winter, and the boys felt
that, with rags and bare feet, they should suffer
severely. All that they had to say and do had
been learned by heart. The names and addresses
of the agents of the British Government at every town
had been laboriously learned before starting, and,
as Peter said ruefully, it was worse than a dozen
Greek impositions.
At each place of any importance they would find the
person to whom they were instructed to apply, would
accost him with some password, and would be put up
by him while they remained there. When they had
gained the intelligence they required—of
the number of French troops in the place and its neighborhood,
a knowledge always obtained by going round, counting
the men on parade, or, in the case of small villages,
finding out easily enough from a peasant the number,
quartered there, they would write a report on the number
the intentions as far as they could learn them, the
amount of food in store, and the sentiments of the
population, would enclose the despatch in a goose-quill
and give it to their host, who was responsible for
forwarding it.
In a great number of cases, indeed, the man to whom
they were accredited was a muleteer. These men
hated the French with a hatred even more deep and
deadly than that of other Spaniards, for, in addition
to the national causes of hatred, their mules were
constantly being requisitioned or seized by the troops
and they themselves forced to accompany the army for
long distances at a nominal rate of pay for themselves
and their animals. Then, too, they were in close
connection with the guerillas, for whom they carried
goods up into the mountains from the towns, and when
the chance came would leave their animals in the mountains
and join in cutting off an enemy’s convoy.
