Strange walked along, looking at each in turn. “I thought I told you,” he said to Sergeant Nash, “that I particularly did not want any one interfering with the corpses.”

Sergeant Nash looked indignant. “I am sure, sir,” he said, “that none of our lads has touched them. But my lord,” he said, appealing to Lord Wellington, “there was scarcely a corpse on the battlefield that those Spanish irregulars had not done something to …” He expatiated on the various national failings of the Spanish and concluded that if a man so much as went to sleep where the Spanish could find him he would be sorry for it when he woke up.

Lord Wellington waved impatiently at the man to make him be quiet. “I do not see that they are very much mutilated,” he said to Strange. “Does it matter if they are?”

Strange muttered blackly that he supposed it did not except that he had to look at them.

Indeed, most of the wounds that the Neapolitans bore appeared to have been the ones that killed them, but all of them had been stripped naked and several had had their fingers cut off – the better to remove their rings. One had been a handsome young man, but his beauty was very much marred now that someone had plucked out his teeth (to make false teeth) and cut off most of his black hair (to make wigs).

Strange told a man to fetch a sharp knife and a clean bandage. When the knife was brought he took off his coat and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt. Then he began muttering to himself in Latin. He next made a long, deep cut in his arm, and when he had got a good strong spurt of blood, he let it splash over the heads of the corpses, taking care to anoint the eyes, tongue and nostrils of each. After a moment the first corpse roused itself. There was a horrible rasping sound as its dried-out lungs filled with air and its limbs shook in a way that was very dreadful to behold. Then one by one the corpses revived and began to speak in a guttural language which contained a much higher proportion of screams than any language known to the onlookers.

Even Wellington looked a little pale. Only Strange continued apparently without emotion.

“Dear God!” cried Fitzroy Somerset, “What language is that?”

“I believe it is one of the dialects of Hell,” said Strange.

“Is it indeed?” said Somerset. “Well, that is remarkable.”

“They have learnt it very quickly,” said Lord Wellington, “They have only been dead three days.” He approved of people doing things promptly and in a businesslike fashion. “But do you speak this language?” he asked Strange.

“No, my lord.”

“Then how are we to talk to them?”