Part 18

I remembered a pleasant little incident during our march through Sussex. As we passed a village parsonage--a quaint old gable-ended house, secluded among moss-grown trees--the sound of our kettledrums and trumpets, the tramp of the horses, and the clatter of the chain bridles and steel scabbards, drew forth the inmates--an aged clergyman and his two daughters--to a green wicket in the close-clipped holly-hedge, where the group stood, as in a green frame of leaves, looking with deep interest at the passing lancers, who were riding in what was then the order--sections of three. White-haired and reverend, with his thin locks shining in the sun, the curate took off his hat, and lifted up his hands and eyes in a manner there could be no mistaking. The old man was evidently praying for us. His face was expressive of the finest emotion; he felt that he was looking on many a man he would never see again. Perhaps he had a son a soldier, or was himself a soldier's son; or he felt that he, though old and stricken with years, was destined to survive many of the young, the hale and hearty in our ranks, who were still "on life's morning march." Some of our officers lifted their caps and bowed to the little group, and I am sure that Frank Jocelyn kissed his hands to the girls, who were waving their handkerchiefs, while more than one of ours cried, "God bless you, old boy!" and frequently, long after, in the snows of Sebastopol and the terrors of the valley of death, the face and form of that good old man, and the kindness of his mute prayer, came to the memory of some of us. It formed one of our last and most pleasing incidents connected with England.

In four days we reached Portsmouth, which presented a scene of indescribable bustle and activity; and the fifth day saw my troop, consisting of fifty men, with sixty horses, and with the colonel, Studhome, M'Goldrick, one surgeon, the sergeant-major, and rest of the staff, embarked from the dockyard jetty at eleven A.M., on board a splendid clipper ship, the _Pride of the Ocean_, Captain Robert Binnacle, bound for Turkey. The other five troops of the corps were embarked on board the transports _Ganges_, _Bannockburn_, and other vessels.

We had not been without hope of going in the _Himalaya_, which would have taken the entire regiment in her capacious womb, and which, moreover, is our only cavalry ship; but the authorities had declared otherwise.

The morning of our embarkation was beautiful; the scene animated, picturesque, and bustling, such as Portsmouth alone could exhibit at such a time; but we were sorely troubled by our horses. Some were conveyed on board in stall-boxes, others were lowered down the hatches by bellybands and slings, in which, being spirited and young, they were very restive, lashing out, to the imminent danger of the brains and bones of those in their vicinity, until they found themselves in the tow-padded stalls below the maindeck.

Adding to the bustle and interest of the scene, several ships of war were taking in stores and preparing for sea; boats, manned by seamen and marines in white jackets, were shooting to and fro between Portsmouth on one side and Gosport on the other. A strong detachment of the 19th (1st Yorkshire) Regiment was embarking on board the _Melita_, a Cunard steamer; the _Euxine_, a Peninsular and Oriental liner, was receiving many of the staff, a number of horses, and nearly twenty tons of ball cartridges. A squadron of the 8th, or Royal Irish Hussars, under Major de Salis, were stowing themselves on board of the _Mary Anne_ transport; and a great body of Woolwich Pensioners, a numerous staff of veterinary surgeons, members of the ambulance, ordnance, and transport corps, were all embarking at the same time. Thus the hurly-burly was prodigious, and the whole of the quays were encumbered by baggage, stores, field-pieces, mortars, shot and shell, chests of arms, tents and camp equipage, guarded by marines with fixed bayonets, or seamen with drawn cutlasses. With all this apparent activity there was, of course, the counteracting influence of that red-tapism which is the curse of the British service. When war was declared the Royal Arsenal did not contain a sufficient quantity of shells to furnish the first battering train that went to Turkey, and the fuses then issued had been in store ever since the battle of Waterloo! Even the mattocks and shovels issued to the troops had been sent home from the Peninsula by the Duke of Wellington as worthless!

Here at Portsmouth we saw many a bitter--also to too many it proved a final--adieu. With all my soul I loved Louisa; and yet, when, standing on the dockyard jetty there, I saw the partings of husbands from their wives, and fathers from their children, I thanked Heaven in my heart that in this, to them, most bitter hour, I had only my good black charger to care for.

Midday was past ere all the passengers for the _Pride of the Ocean_, with their baggage, &c., were on board. I had personally to see the cattle stabled below; the men told off to their messes and watches; the lances, swords, and other arms stowed away in racks; the valises and hammocks slung to their cleats, and so forth. In the stables one stall on each side was left vacant, with spare slings, in case of accidents at sea.

Fortunately, I was spared the annoyance of Berkeley's society on the voyage out, as there was not space for more than one troop on board the clipper; so he was with Wilford's on board the _Ganges_. He was not exactly "in Coventry," but somehow our mess disliked him, and could not exactly comprehend, as they phrased it, "what was up" between him and me.

Now that I was again in favour with Louisa Loftus; now that the untoward affair at the Reculvers had been completely explained, and that the victory was mine, and his the shame, defeat, and rejection--nearly all emotion of hostility against him had died away, or been replaced by settled contempt. Yet the hostile meeting was still looming in the future, and would have to ensue on the first suitable opportunity.

I was not sorry when the bustle of embarkation was over, and the clipper was towed out to the famous reach or roadstead at Spithead, where she came to anchor for a time, under the shelter of the high lands of the Isle of Wight.

The noblest army that ever left the shores of the British Isles was, undoubtedly, that which departed under Lord Raglan's orders for the East.

It was the carefully-developed army of forty years of peace, during which the world had made a mighty stride in art, in science, and in civilization--greater than it had done, perhaps, between the days of the Twelfth Crusade and the last day of Waterloo.

"War," says Napier, in his "Peninsular History," "war tries the military framework; but it is in peace that the framework itself must be formed--otherwise barbarians would be the leading soldiers of the world. A perfect army can only be made by civil institutions."

The same magnificent writer says elsewhere, with terrible truth, "In the beginning of each war England has to seek in blood the knowledge necessary to insure success; and like the fiend's progress towards Eden, her conquering course is through chaos, followed by Death!" and that such was her course in the Crimea, let the errors of general routine, the trenches of Sebastopol, and the criminal red-tapism at home bear witness.

Of the morale of that army there can be no higher evidence than the voices that came from the poor fellows in our ranks--the letters with which they filled the newspapers of the day, detailing with spirit, simplicity, and pathos their humble experiences in the great events of the war.

All our men loved Beverley, who was a model commanding officer, and my troop deemed themselves (as I did) peculiarly lucky in being with him and the head-quarters staff. He took great care of his regiment, and a strict supervision of the horses.

He had left nothing undone while at home, by the establishment and encouragement of a school, a library, and so forth, to raise the moral tone of the lancers, their wives and families; hence some of the contributions of our privates to the newspapers were fully equal to any that emanated from Sir Colin's famous Highland Brigade. Beverley regularly visited the sick in hospital, and cheered them by his kindly manner; and all the little ones who played in the barrack square smiled and welcomed the approach of the colonel, who was seldom without a few small coins to scatter among them, and cause a scramble; yet, as I have said, he was somewhat of a dandy, and not without a tinge of affectation in his tone and manner.

Next evening saw us at sea.

The Nab Light had sunk far astern, and the pale cliffs of the Isle of Wight had melted into the world of waters.

Old Jack Bloater, the pilot from Selsey, had drunk his last horn of grog at the binnacle, and left us with every wish for "an 'appy journey--a bong woyage, as the monseers called it, and that we would soon give them Roosians a skewerin'."

And now I knew that many a day, and week, and month, it might be years, filled up by the perils and stormy passages of a life of campaigning, must inevitably pass ere I should again hear Louisa's voice, before I had her hand in mine, and looked into her tender eyes again--if I was kindly permitted by Heaven to return at all. But little knew our departing army of the suffering and horrors that were before it--horrors and sufferings to which the bayonets and bullets of the Russians were but child's play.

I was now away from her finally, and without the least arrangement having been made for that which alone can soothe the agony and anxiety of such a separation--correspondence! I clung to the hope that she might write to me; if not, I could only hear of her from Cora, or perhaps when Miss Wilford wrote to her brother Fred; and, it might be, from some stray paragraph in the _Court Journal_ or _Morning Post_, if either ever found its way beyond the Dardanelles, which seemed doubtful.

I had her treasured lock of hair and the miniature, on which I was never tired of gazing, especially when I could do so unseen in my swinging cot, for a crowded transport is the last place in the world for indulging in lover's dreams or reveries. It was a poor, feeble daguerreotype, yet there were times when, by force of imagination, the pictured face seemed to light up with Louisa's smile, and when the fine feminine features became filled by a blaze of light and life, so like the original that they became perfectly lovely.

Then I would think of Cora, too, and when I reflected over all her bearing towards me, the light which broke upon me at first became clearer.

Her tears when she first told Sir Nigel of her suspicion that I loved Louisa; her sudden changes of colour, from pallor to ruddy suffusion of the cheek; her hesitation in addressing me at times, her abruptness at others, or her silence; her vehemence in defending me against the accusations of Berkeley, and her joy at my victory; her occasional coldness to Louisa and her silent sorrow at my departure; all that had at any time puzzled me was explained now.

Cora loved me with a love beyond that of cousin, and I must often have stabbed her good little heart by my impertinent confidences regarding my passion for another.

Well, well, Cora's love and my regrets were alike vain now, for the swift clipper ship was running on a taut bowline by the skirts of Biscay's stormy bay, as she bore us on "to glory" and Gallipoli.

*CHAPTER XXV.*

A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast, And fills the white and rustling sail, And bends the gallant mast. And bends the gallant mast, my boys. While, like the eagle free, Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee.

The cabin was spacious and comfortable. Binnacle, the skipper, was a short, thick-set little stump of a fellow, with a round, good-humoured face, which had become browned by exposure in every climate and on every sea under the sun. He was very anecdotical, perpetually joking and laughing, and had one peculiarity, that he never in conversation inter-larded his remarks with nautical phraseology, like the conventional or orthodox sailor of romance and the stage.

He had never sailed before with a horse on board, and now that he had actually one hundred of those useful quadrupeds under his hatches, he spent a great deal of his spare time among them, tickling their ears and noses--more, perhaps, than some of them quite relished, if one might judge of the manner in which they occasionally showed the whites of their eyes, and lashed out at the rear end of their stall-boxes.

On board we smoked, of course, played chess, loo (_rouge-et-noir_, a little), and daily watched with interest the steamers which passed us, full of troops, British or French, all on their way to the East. Some of us kept diaries and made memoranda for friends at home: but some grew tired of doing so, or reflected that they might not live to record that, on such a day, the white cliffs of old England were again in sight.

We had quite a bale of the "Railway Library" on board; but to reading we preferred telling stories, to kill time, or watching, telescope in hand, for bits of continental scenery, as we ran along the coast of Portugal, spanned the Gulf of Cadiz, and hauled up for the Straits of Gibraltar, after passing the rocky promontory of Cape St. Vincent, which we saw rising from the sea north-north-east of us, about ten miles distant, on the fifth day after we sailed from Spithead.

During the day we had not many leisure hours, as there is no situation in which troops more urgently require the personal superintendence of their officers than when on board ship.

All the lancers were supplied with white canvas frocks, to save their uniforms, and were divided into three watches, each of which in turn was on deck, with at least one officer. We had an officer of the day and guard, who posted sentinels, armed with the sword, at the breaks of the poop and forecastle, to maintain order, and, when the weather permitted, we had an hour of carbine and sword exercise, to the great edification of Captain Binnacle and his crew. Every morning the bedding was brought on deck and triced in nettings alongside; no smoking was permitted in the stables or between decks.

The cattle were of course our chief care, and Beverley was always particular about his mounts. Experience and theory had long convinced him that the sire dominated in the breed of chargers; thus he ever eschewed the produce of half-bred stallions and stud horses. We gave them mashes dashed with nitre, and mixed bran with their corn; daily we had their hoofs and fetlocks washed in clean salt water, their eyes and noses sponged, and when at times the windsails failed to act, and the hold became close, we washed the mangers with vinegar and water, and sponged the horses' nostrils with the same refreshing dilution.

Notwithstanding all our care, however, before we sighted Malta we lost three--one of which was my uncle's present, the black cover-hack with the white star on her counter. It became glandered.

Pitblado, who had seen the nag foaled, and had many a day taken it to graze in Falkland Park, and on the green slopes of the Mid Lomond, flatly refused to shoot it when I ordered him to do so, but gave his loaded carbine to Lanty O'Regan, who had fewer scruples on the subject.

When this episode occurred, Cape Espartel was bearing south-east of us, about twelve miles distant; and by our glasses we could distinctly see the features of that remarkable headland of Morocco, the north-western extremity of the mighty continent of Africa, with its range of basaltic columns, which nearly rival in magnificence those of Fingal's Cave at Staffa; and the noon of the following day, as we bore into the Mediterranean, saw the great peak of Gibraltar rising from the horizon like a couchant lion, with its tail turned to Spain.

When my poor nag, previous to its slaughter, was being slung up from the hold, Beverley was much impressed by the real grief of honest Pitblado for its loss; and told me an interesting Indian anecdote of a pet horse that belonged to the 8th Royal Irish Hussars.

Beverley seldom spoke of India, for it was a land that was not without sorrowful recollections to him; and we all knew that he wore at his neck a large gold locket, containing a braid of the hair of his intended bride--a lovely girl, who was shot in his arms, and when seated on his saddle, as he was spurring with his troop through the horrors and the carnage of the Khyber Pass--on that day when nearly our whole 44th Regiment perished--and poor Beverley, with her dead body, fell into the hands of the Afghans.

"When we last went out to India," said he, "that was when I was but a cornet of sixteen, and several years before you joined us, we relieved the 8th Royal Irish, who had been there long--I know not how many years, but time enough to gain on their colours _Pristinae virtutis memores_, with 'Leswaree,' and 'Hindostan'--honours which they shared with the old 25th Light Dragoons,[*] for five-and-twenty years was then the common term of Indian expatriation.

[*] A corps disbanded in 1818; and formerly the 29th Light Dragoons, were raised in 1795.

"The 8th had been at the storming of Kalunga, where their old and beloved colonel--then General Sir Robert Rollo Gillespie--was killed at their head, and fell with that splendid sword, inscribed 'The gift of the Royal Irish,' clenched in his hand. His horse was a remarkably noble animal, which had been foaled of an Irish mare at the Cape of Good Hope; but he had the beautiful Arabian head, the finely-arched neck, long oblique shoulders, ample quarters, well-bent legs, and long elastic pastern of his sire--a splendid Godolphin barb. Black Bob was indeed a beauty!

"After the affair at Kalunga he was put up for sale, with his saddle and housings still spotted with the blood of the gallant Gillespie, who was so greatly beloved by the brave Irish fellows of the 8th that they resolved to keep his horse as a memorial of him; but, unfortunately, the upset price was three hundred guineas.

"Two officers of the 25th Light Dragoons raised it speedily to a hundred more. But not to be baffled, the poor fellows subscribed among themselves, and actually raised five hundred guineas, for which the beautiful black horse, with his housings, was sold to them.

"Black Bob thus became their property, and always preceded the regiment on the march. He knew the trumpets of the 8th better than those of any other regiment. The men were wont to affirm that he had a taste for the Irish brogue, too, and that he pricked his ears always highest at 'Garryowen,' in regard that his mother was a mare from the Wicklow Hills.

"Bob was fed, caressed, petted, and stroked as no horse ever had been before; and always when in barracks, as the corps proceeded from station to station where he had been with his old rider, he took the accustomed position at the saluting base when the troops marched past, just as if old Rollo Gillespie was still in the saddle, watching the squadrons or companies defile in succession, and was not lying in his grave, far away beneath the ramparts of Kalunga, among the Himalaya mountains in Nepaul.

"Well, as I have said, at last we came to relieve the 8th, who were dismounted, and had their horses turned over to us. They were to go home, as we had come out, by sea. The funds of the hussars were low now; pay was spent and prize-money gone. They were in despair at the prospect of losing their pet horse; but no such passengers ever went round the Cape, so they had to part with Bob at last.

"A civilian at Cawnpore bought him, and the hussars gave him back more than half the price, on receiving a solemn promise that Bob was to have a good stable and snug paddock wherein he was to pass the remainder of his days in comfort; and this pledge the new proprietor kept faithfully. But Bob had only been three days in his new quarters, when he heard the trumpets of the 8th waking the echoes of the compound, as they marched, dismounted, before daybreak, to embark on the _Ganges_, for Calcutta.

"It was the old air of the regiment, 'Garryowen.' Then Bob became frantic. He bit and tore his manger to pieces; he lashed out with his hoofs and kicked the heel-posts and treviss boards to pieces. He destroyed his whole stall, and sunk among the straw, bleeding, cut, and half strangled in his stall collar.

"After a time, when day by day passed, and he saw no more the once familiar uniforms, and heard no more the voices or the trumpets of his old friends, he pined away, refused his corn, and even the most tempting mashes, totally declining all food. So he was turned into the paddock; but then he leaped the bamboo fence, and with all his remaining speed rushed direct to the barracks at Cawnpore.

"There he made straight for the cantonment of the European cavalry, and came whinneying up to the saluting post, where he had so often borne old Gillespie and seen the squadrons of the 8th defiling past, and there, on that very spot, the horse fell down and died!"[*]

[*] There was another pet of the 8th Hussars, which met with a different fate. The jet-black horse, on whose back their colonel, T. P. Vandeleur, was killed at the battle of Leswaree "long kept his place with the regiment, and afterwards became the property of Cornet Burrowes, who took great care of him until the corps left India, when he was shot, that he might not fall into unworthy hands."--_Narrative of Leswaree_. By Dr. Ore.

"I have often heard similar stories of dogs--but never such a yarn of a horse," said Captain Binnacle, who was greatly impressed by this anecdote, and smoked a long time thoughtfully and in silence after it.

"Fact though!" said Beverley, curtly, and rather haughtily, as he tipped the ashes off his cigar.

"That horse had the heart of a man. But I could spin you a yarn, colonel, of a man that had the heart of a beast--ay, of a wild wolf; and it all occurred under my own eye--for I had to shed human blood in the matter; though I doubt not God above will acquit me therefor, seeing as how my own conscience acquits me."

The impressive manner so suddenly adopted by our worthy little skipper attracted the attention of Beverley, Studhome, and M'Goldrick, and all the listening group.

Even Jocelyn--a gay fellow, who had more _affaires de fantaisie_ than _affaires de coeur_, and who never permitted the impulses of that useful utensil, his heart, to go further than proved convenient or comfortable--felt himself interested by the gloomy and stern expression that came into the face of Captain Binnacle.

"Would you like to hear my yarn, gentlemen?" said the latter.

"With pleasure--certainly--by all means--if you please," said we, alternately, and all together, for Binnacle was evidently anxious to spin it.

He gave a glance aloft, and another at the sky. The evening was fine and clear. The mate had charge of the deck, the ship was running under her head-sails, courses, top-sails, and topgallant sails before a fine strong breeze, which, as she rolled from side to side, made our horses reel and oscillate in their padded stalls below. The watch of lancers were all smoking or chatting on the port side; the sail-makers, squatted under the break of the forecastle, were busy on a set of new studding-sails; the carpenters were at work repairing the headrails forward.