That bugle was heard on the plains of Vittoria, and among the passes of the Pyrenees, where De Castro was wounded and conveyed to the town of Elizondo. There, while stretched on a pallet of straw, in the vestibule of a convent, which had been turned into a military hospital, he was attended and nursed by a lay sister, who turned out to be his sister Theresa, who had been carried off by the French, but had achieved her escape after their defeat and total rout at Vittoria. It would be difficult to describe the mingled joy and grief of such a meeting; but both were of brief duration. As soon as José was reported fit for duty, he rejoined the Seventh Cazadores, with whom he served at Nivelle, Orthes, and Bordeaux. His bugle was heard for the last time in battle near the hill of Toulouse, when he sounded the charge by the order of the Viscount de Sa. In that advance the latter fell wounded from his horse, and, seeing that Captain de Lobiera, the next senior officer, was defenceless, his sword-blade having been broken off near the hilt by a ball, he gave him his own, saying: 'Lead on, De Lobiera! forward, the Cazadores! I can do no more to-day.' And once again the bugle of José sounded the command to charge. When the army was disbanded at the peace, José endeavoured to support himself by teaching music, but in a way so humble that he led a life of privation and penury, and sought, in vain, a pension from the Portuguese Government. It was at the little town of Golega, on the Tagus, in Portuguese Estramadura, that we last heard of 'the Bugler of Badajoz.' This was more than twenty years ago, and he was earning a precarious livelihood by teaching the cornet. He was then an old man, bent with years and infirmity, and had for the last time renewed his prayer for a pension to the Portuguese Government. 'Let us charitably hope it will be granted,' said a writer in the Lisbon _Jornal de Commercio_ of that year, 'for there is now in the Ministry a soldier who has not forgotten the part he bore himself in the bloody episodes of the Peninsular War, one who has left an arm on a gory battlefield, and whose hearing has been destroyed by the thunder of artillery--the noble and valiant Viscount de Sa (the son of his old colonel). This gallant soldier will yet have ears for the petition of the poor _trombadero_, and be able to award him the meed he merits.' [Illustration: Chapter 5 headpiece] THE VOYAGE OF THE 'BON ACCORD'. [Illustration: Chapter 5 tailpiece] THE VOYAGE OF THE 'BON ACCORD.' My name is Bob Slingsby, and in the autumn of last year I was senior apprentice, or midshipman (for we wore a smart uniform), on board the good ship _Bon Accord_ of Aberdeen, freighted from London to Hong Kong, and a few who may survive to read these lines will recall the story I am about to tell--the plain unvarnished one of a sailor boy (I was then only sixteen) in the Indian seas.