Meanwhile a voice was calling every moment from the passageway for someone named Winespill to bring the gunpowder barrels and to do it quickly. A soldier of very small stature and with a slight hunchback entered the room. He had a vivid purple birthmark on his face and appeared to be wearing part of the uniform of every regiment in the British Army. This, presumably, was Winespill. Winespill was unhappy. He could not find the gunpowder. He hunted in cupboards, under staircases and on balconies. He called back every now and then “One moment!” – until the moment came when he thought to look behind Strange, behind the curtain and under the arch. Immediately he shouted out that he had found the casks of gunpowder now and he would have seen them earlier only Someone – here he gave Strange a very black look – was standing in front of them.

The hours passed slowly. Strange was back at his station by the window and almost falling asleep, when he realized from certain sounds of bustle and disruption that Someone of Importance had just entered the house. The next moment three men swept into the room and Strange found himself at last in the presence of Lord Wellington.

How to describe Lord Wellington? How can such a thing be necessary or even possible? His face is everywhere one looks – a cheap print upon the wall of the coaching inn – a much more elaborate one, embellished with flags and drums, at the top of the Assembly-room staircase. Nowadays no young lady of average romantic feeling will reach the age of seventeen without purchasing at least one picture of him. She will think a long, aquiline nose infinitely preferable to a short, stubby one and consider it the worst misfortune of her life that he is married already. To make up for it she fully intends to name her first-born son, Arthur. Nor is she alone in her devotion. Her younger brothers and sisters are every bit as fanatical. The handsomest toy soldier in an English nursery is always called Wellington and has more adventures than the rest of the toy box put together. Every schoolboy impersonates Wellington at least once a week, and so do his younger sisters. Wellington embodies every English virtue. He is Englishness carried to perfection. If the French carry Napoleon in their bellies (which apparently they do), then we carry Wellington in our hearts.2

Just at present Lord Wellington was none too pleased about something.

“My orders were perfectly clear, I think!” he said to the other two officers. “The Portuguese were to destroy all the corn that they could not carry away, so that it should not fall into the hands of the French. But I have just spent half the day watching the French soldiers going into the caves at Cartaxo and bringing out sacks again.”

“It was very hard for the Portuguese farmers to destroy their corn. They feared to be hungry,” explained one of the officers.