but they were resolute and determined, and the officer who
led them on, fighting hand to hand with a soldier of the Forty-second,
cheered them as they retired. His gallant bearing, and his coat covered
with decorations, bespoke him one of note, and well it might; he who
thus perilled his life to maintain the courage of his soldiers at the
commencement of a retreat, was none other than Ney himself, _le plus brave
des braves_. The British pressed hotly on, and the light troops crossed the
river almost at the same time with the French. Ney, however, fell back upon
Condeixa, where his main body was posted, and all farther pursuit was for
the present abandoned.

At Casa Noval and at Foz d'Aronce, the allies were successful; but the
French still continued to retire, burning the towns and villages in their
rear, and devastating the country along the whole line of march by every
expedient of cruelty the heart of man has ever conceived. In the words of
one whose descriptions, however fraught with the most wonderful power of
painting, are equally marked by truth, "Every horror that could make war
hideous attended this dreadful march. Distress, conflagration, death in
all modes,--from wounds, from fatigue, from water, from the flames, from
starvation,--vengeance, unlimited vengeance, was on every side." The
country was a desert!

Such was the exhaustion of the allies, who suffered even greater privations
than the enemy, that they halted upon the 16th, unable to proceed farther;
and the river Ceira, swollen and unfordable, flowed between the rival
armies.

The repose of even one day was a most grateful interruption to the
harassing career we had pursued for some time past; and it seemed that my
comrades felt, like myself, that such an opportunity was by no means to
be neglected; but while I am devoting so much space and trespassing on my
reader's patience thus far with narrative of flood and field, let me steal
a chapter for what will sometimes seem a scarcely less congenial topic, and
bring back the recollection of a glorious night in the Peninsula.

CHAPTER XXI.

PATRICK'S DAY IN THE PENINSULA.

The _reveil_ had not yet sounded, when I felt my shoulder shaken gently as
I lay wrapped up in my cloak beneath a prickly pear-tree.

"Lieutenant O'Malley, sir; a letter, sir; a bit of a note, your honor,"
said a voice that bespoke the bearer and myself were countrymen. I opened
it, and with difficulty, by the uncertain li