As they entered a narrow valley between two of the highest mountains the Assistant Commissary said, “This is the beginning of the Lines. You see that fort there high up on one side of the pass?” He pointed to the right. The “fort” appeared to have started out life as a windmill, but had recently received all sorts of additions in the way of bastions, battlements and gun embrasures. “And the other fort on the other side of the pass?” added the Assistant Commissary. He pointed to the left. “And then on the next rocky outcrop another little fort? And then – though you can’t see it, since today is dull and cloudy – there is another beyond that. And so on and so on. A whole line of forts from the Tagus to the sea! But that is not all! There are two more lines to the north of us. Three lines in all!”

“It is certainly impressive. And did the Portuguese do this?”

“No, sir. Lord Wellington did it. The French mayn’t pass here. Why, sir! a beetle mayn’t pass unless that beetle has a paper with Lord Wellington’s writing on it! And that, sir, is why the French Army sits at Santarem and can get no further, while you and I sleep safe in our beds at Lisbon!”

Very soon they left the road and took a steep and winding lane that led up the hillside to the tiny village of Pero Negro. Strange was struck by the difference between war, as he had imagined it, and war, as it actually was. He had pictured Lord Wellington sitting in some grand building in Lisbon, issuing orders. Instead he found him in a place so small that it barely would have qualified as a village in England.

The Army’s Headquarters proved to be an entirely unremarkable house in a plain cobbled yard. Strange was informed that Lord Wellington had gone out to inspect the Lines. No one knew when he would return – probably not until dinner. No one had any objection to Strange’s waiting – providing he did not get in their way.

But from the first moment of his entering the house Strange found himself subject to that peculiarly uncomfortable Natural Law which states that whenever a person arrives at a place where he is not known, then wherever he stands he is sure to be in the way. He could not sit because the room he had been placed in contained no chairs – presumably in case the French should somehow penetrate the house and hide behind them – so he took up a position in front of a window. But then two officers came in and one of them wished to demonstrate some important military characteristic of the Portuguese landscape, for which purpose it was necessary to look out of the window. They glared at Strange who moved to stand in front of a half-curtained arch.