"Not so bad as that, Major," the young ensign said, colouring, as there was a general laugh from the rest; "but there does not seem much satisfaction in thrashing an enemy when we are three to one against him." "But that is just the art of war, Ryan. Of course, it is glorious to defeat a greatly superior army and to lose half your own in doing so; that may be heroic, but it is not modern war. The object of a general is, if possible, to defeat an enemy in detail, and to so manoeuvre that he is always superior in strength to the force that is immediately in front of him, and so to ensure victory after victory until the enemy are destroyed. That is what the general is doing by his skilful manoeuvring; he has prevented Junot from massing the whole of the army of Portugal against us. "To-morrow we shall defeat Laborde, and doubtless a day or two later we shall fight Loison; then I suppose we shall advance against Lisbon, Junot will collect his beaten troops and his garrison, there will be another battle, and then we shall capture Lisbon, and the French will have to evacuate Portugal. Whereas, if all the French were at Rolica they would probably smash us into a cocked hat, in spite of any valour we might show; and as we have no cavalry to cover a retreat, as the miserable horses can scarcely drag the few guns that we have got, and the carriages are so rickety that the artillery officers are afraid that as soon as they fire them they will shake to pieces, it is not probable that a single man would regain our ships." "Please say no more, Major; I see I was a fool." "Still," Captain O'Connor said, "you must own, Major, that one does like to win against odds." "Quite so, O'Connor; individuals who may survive such a battle no doubt would be glad that it was a superior force that they had beaten, but then you see battles are not fought for the satisfaction of individuals. Moreover, you must remember that the proportion of loss is much heavier when the numbers are pretty equally matched, for in that case they must meet to a certain extent face to face. Skill on the part of the general may do a great deal, but in the end it must come to sheer hard fighting. Now, I expect that to-morrow, although there may be hard fighting, it is not upon that that Sir Arthur will principally rely for turning the French out of those strong positions. "He will, no doubt, advance directly against them with perhaps half his force, but the rest will move along on the top of the heights, and so threaten to cut the French line of retreat altogether. Laborde is, they say, a good general, and therefore won't wait until he is caught in a trap, but will fall back as soon as he sees that the line of retreat is seriously menaced. I fancy, too, that he must expect Loison up some time tomorrow, or he would hardly make a stand, and if Loison does come up, Ryan's wish will be gratified and we shall be having the odds against us.