Next day was likewise chiefly spent by those off duty in search of food, some returning with one or more of such articles as wheat flour, cabbages, turnips, carrots, and beans. A fellow-corporal of mine seeing this, and neither of us having been out, said, "Lawrence, I'll go and try my luck too, and if the drums should beat for orders, you go and get them for me, and then we can share the profits of my search." I consented, and he soon went, and was gone for at least two hours before he returned loaded with his findings, having taken his shirt off and tied the sleeves and collar up, and then filled his impromptu sack quite full. He had evidently carried his burden no small distance, for on his return the perspiration was running down as big as peas. "Tare an' 'ounds," poor Paddy said, for he was an Irishman, "I've got a fine lot of flour, but am as tired as a dog, and as hungry as a hunter." "Well done, Burke," said I, for that was his name, "we will soon have a blow out of dough-boys and mutton."
I accordingly got a tin dish which I took from a Frenchman at Vittoria, and having filled it with our supposed flour, I poured some water on it, intending to make some balls of dough for the pot; when I suddenly found Paddy had been making a great mistake and that it was nothing more or less than lime that he had brought instead of flour. I said, "I'll be bothered if you haven't brought home lime for flour;" but Paddy would not believe it, saying it was the best white flour, till I told him to come and see it boiling and smoking in the pot, which quite confounded him, and taking up the remainder in his shirt he hove it out, saying, "Well I'm blessed, comrade, if I ain't off again, and I'll take good care not to come back again this time till I have some good flour."
He had been gone about an hour when he returned with at least half his shirt full, for he had got on the same scent as a great many who had been before him and were now fast returning already loaded. I then commenced making the dough-boys by mixing a little salt and water with the flour, and put them into a kettle swung over a fire on two sticks placed perpendicularly on each side with a cross-bar on the top, gipsy fashion, and by night our supper was hot and well done. As is perhaps well known, dough-boys cannot be very greasy without fat or suet of any kind, but they were quite passable in the hungry state we were then in, and as we had no bread, we used some more of the mutton to help them down. Our fires were then made up the same as the night before, and at the proper time we again retired to rest comfortably and were soon lost in a profound slumber.