Run Them Ashore Read Online Free PDF Page B

he had not cared for his orders. It was good to be busy, for he knew his own nature well enough to know that he needed to be kept busy. When he was not then he all too easily slipped back into old habits of drinking far more than was prudent. It was a fault that had seen him fight a duel last year from a mixture of wine-driven anger and frustration at the drabness of day-to-day life. Pringle liked the army, but liked even more the clear purpose of campaigning. Sometimes he feared that meant that he actually enjoyed war, but if so then there was probably little he could do to change, and if he kept busy there was scant time for such melancholy thoughts. War brought him friendships closer than any he had ever known and the all-encompassing, though essentially simple, problems of overcoming the enemy and remaining alive.
    Pringle wanted to be back with the battalion, now that the 106th were returning to the war, although no one seemed quite sure whether they were heading for Cadiz or Gibraltar. Either way it would be good to be back in the family of the regiment, surrounded by men he knew, and with most of the great decisions made for him. Plenty of people said the war was lost, with Marshal Massena’s great army poised to eject Lord Wellington from his toehold in Portugal. Pringle was not so sure, but, even if the war was lost, he reckoned it still had enough life in it to offer amusement for some time to come. He would prefer to make the most of it back with the regiment rather than stuckout here in the middle of nowhere with only the vaguest sense that he might be doing anything useful.
    ‘How much further?’ Hanley asked the guide.
    The man shrugged. ‘ Ya veremos .’
    Hanley was behind it all, of course. While the party of the 106th returning from detached duty had been waiting for a ship at Lisbon, Lieutenant Hanley was summoned. He returned to them a captain, and with the news that he had new orders, sending him off to the guerrilleros here in the south. Pringle, Williams and the two sergeants were to go with him for protection, to help manage the supplies he was to take, and so that they could help judge the military prowess of the bands they encountered. Billy was unsure whether Hanley had volunteered their services, or whether the man giving the orders had chosen them. Mr Ezekial Baynes was a civilian, a trader in wines and spirits, and one of the most important masters of spies working for the British in the whole Iberian peninsula. He was a portly, red-faced, bluff and jovial old fellow with a razor-sharp and ruthless mind. Even Hanley was sometimes shocked by the merchant’s willingness to play games with the lives of men, and admitted to trusting no more than Baynes’ commitment to the cause and his shrewd intelligence.
    Billy wondered whether he was fretting unnecessarily. Plenty of officers were sent out to meet with the partisans. Sinclair was one, but there were dozens of others in Granada and the neighbouring provinces – indeed, so many, and often sent by different commanders without consulting each other, that there was real danger that this would only foster the lack of coordination between the different bands. Hanley said that part of the aim of their mission was to see how best to unite the various leaders and their British and Spanish liaison officers so that a greater sense of purpose could be brought to the guerrilla , the ‘little war’ fought by the irregulars. That made good sense, and were it not for too many little things, he might have been content.
    It had been unlikely, to say the least, that they should have been brought on his brother’s ship. It had been good to seeEdward again, even if the circumstances were sad for it was the first time they had met since his brother’s wife had died giving birth to a son who lasted only a few days more than his poor mother. Meeting the French hussars so soon after they landed was a greater worry. Williams, Dobson and the landing party had done