The cliff, standing out against the sun’s glare like ivory beneath the blue, and quivering with heat, was flecked here and there with small lilac shadows; and these shadows marked the entrances of the caves with which Rueda was honeycombed.  I had once or twice resolved to visit these caves; for I had heard much of their renown, and even (although this I disbelieved) that they contained wine enough to intoxicate all the troops in the Peninsula.  Wine in abundance they certainly contained, and all the afternoon men singly and in clusters had been swarming in and out of these entrances like flies about a honeypot.  For whatever might be happening on the Trabancos under Lord Wellington’s eye, here at Rueda, on the extreme right, discipline for the while had disappeared:  and presumably the like was true of Marmont’s extreme left holding the bridge of Tordesillas.  For from the bridge a short roadway leads to Rueda; and among the figures moving about the rock, diminished by distance though they were, I counted quite a respectable proportion of Frenchmen.  No one who loves his calling ever quite forgets it:  and though no one could well have appeared (or indeed felt) lazier, I was really giving my eye practice in discriminating, on this ant-hill, the drunk from the sober, and even the moderately drunk from the incapable.

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.