Page:Boissonnas, Un Vaincu, English, 1875.djvu/31

 repeat such an exploit. The storm was in its full strength, night was falling, the dangers they had escaped with such difficulty would be ten-fold in the obscurity, the rain, and the wind. To start at this time was courting death, or at least losing oneself and remaining until daytime in this maze of rocks, incapable therefore of being of any use to General Scott.

Captain Lee informed them of his resolution to carry the news immediately. He would go alone, and would try the next day to bring the army by a less perilous road. His companions exclaimed that he was inviting death if he crossed that desert by night with such a storm, and beseeched him to wait for daytime, as he would certainly, in spite of all his strength and skill, lose himself. But Captain Lee felt how important it was for the General to be informed, as soon as possible, of the presence of the Mexican Corps, and compelling his exhausted limbs to serve his energetic will, he headed into the rocky plateau.

One can imagine what such an expedition turned out to be. Guided in the obscurity only by the direction of the wind, if the storm had ceased, the Captain would have remained lost in the middle of that chaos. Fortunately, the wind held on with the same violence, and Robert Lee reached Scott′s encampments soon enough to enable adapting the plans to the information he was bringing. The same day, the U. S. Army attacked, by surprise, Valentia′s army, won the victory of