He conducted himself with such fidelity, valour, and distinction, that he soon passed through the ranks of corporal and sergeant, and having restored, no one exactly knows how, the colours of the regiment, after they were lost at the battle of Almanza in 1706, he was appointed captain, and his pay, together with four marevedis from each soldier, were devoted to buy masses for the souls of our comrades who die on service--a very pretty perquisite, padre José, for mother church.
It would be a vain task in me to attempt enumerating the miracles performed by St. Anthony during the one hundred and eighty seven years he has belonged to the valiant regiment of Lagos in the kingdom of Algarve; for in danger, doubt, difficulty, or death, his comrades have never sought his aid in vain.
Our colours have been thrice lost in battle, after prodigious slaughter you may be sure--being Portugese colours; and were thrice restored to us, being found quietly in the colonel's tent the next morning, with the naked footmarks of a man and a pig--the blessed pig of course--impressed upon the turf! At the passage of the Guadalquiver, our drum-major was swept away and would have been drowned beyond a doubt, had he not called upon St. Anthony; and lo! an old man of most venerable aspect, clad in skins like this shepherd beside us, but with a long beard and leathern water-bottle hanging at his girdle, suddenly appeared among the reeds by the river side, and stretching out his crook, fished up the ponderous Anibale Pintado lightly as a straw, though he was at that moment in heavy marching order, with knapsack, blanket, great-coat, sword and his canteen, which was full of brandy. Then to think of the wounds that have been closed, the bullets that have been extracted, the bones that have been set, the sick made whole and fit for service, by our soldiers merely thinking on, or praying to, the glorious St. Anthony, would occupy all the paper in the kingdom of Algarve; but his crowning miracle was the birth of a child of the regiment, for one of our soldiers' wives being in labour, during the siege of Roses, and calling upon the saint in her pain, to the astonishment of the whole allied armies was delivered of a little drummer boy in the uniform of the battalion of Lagos! I hope I have now said enough to convince you that the regiment, and every member of it, are under the peculiar protection of the saint, and this, as I am about to have the honour of telling you, I experienced myself, although not a Portugese, but a native of the fair city of Seville; and as a further proof of what I have adduced, I will take the liberty of reading to you from my pocket-book, the following certificate of the military service performed by the saint--which certificate I copied fairly from the books of the noble regiment of Lagos in the kingdom of Algarve, being the document which was forwarded by one of my predecessors, then in command of the battalion, when recommending the blessed saint to further promotion from the rank of captain which he had held since the year 1706. (With this long and pompous flourish, the Spaniard opened his pocket-book, and read a translation from the Portugese, which ran as follows.)