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Title: The 'Scots Brigade' and other tales
Author: James Grant
Release date: January 14, 2024 [eBook #72700]
Language: English
Original publication: London: George Routledge and Sons, 1882
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE 'SCOTS BRIGADE' AND OTHER TALES ***
[Illustration: Cover art]
THE
'SCOTS BRIGADE'
_AND OTHER TALES_
BY
JAMES GRANT
AUTHOR OF 'THE ROMANCE OF WAR'
'The dying and dead strewed the breach at Meenen,
Where our brave Scottish blades met the troops of Turenne;
When cannon and firelock and musketoon played,
As often, elsewhere, on the old Scots Brigade!
Holland's Bulwark--in many a battle of yore--
From the woods of Brabant to the far Frisian shore;
Never Frenchman, nor Spaniard, nor German essayed
To withstand the hot charge of the old Scots Brigade!'
_Camp Song._
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
NEW YORK: 9, LAFAYETTE PLACE
1882
CONTENTS.
THE SCOTS BRIGADE:
I. THE LOVER
II. THE COLONEL-COMMANDANT
III. SWORD-PLAY
IV. DOLORES
V. 'THE BULWARK OF HOLLAND'
VI. AT THE GOLDEN SUN
VII. THE GENERAL'S SECRET
VIII. THE RIDOTTO
IX. THE ABDUCTORS
X. THE FAIR WIDOW
XI. OMNIA VINCIT AMOR
XII. CONCLUSION
THE STORY OF THE CID RODRIGO OF BIVAR
THE BOY-GENERAL. THE STORY OF JEAN CAVALIER
THE BUGLE-BOY OF BADAJOZ
THE VOYAGE OF THE 'BON ACCORD'
A TALE OF THE RETREAT FROM CABUL
DICK STAPLES OF THE 'QUEEN'S OWN'
THE STORY OF LIEUTENANT JAMES MOODY OF BARTON'S REGIMENT
'OLD MINORCA;' OR, GENERAL MURRAY OF THE SCOTS FUSILIERS
[Illustration: Chapter 1 headpiece]
THE SCOTS BRIGADE.
[Illustration: Chapter 1 tailpiece]
THE SCOTS BRIGADE.
CHAPTER I.
THE LOVER.
'And you will not accompany me to call on these ladies, uncle?' said
the young man persuasively.
'Certainly not, boy; do you take me for a fool--der Duyvel!' was the
snappish rejoinder, as the General tossed his silver-mounted
meerschaum on the table, and thrust his chair back on the polished
oak floor, 'I have suspected you for some time past, and know, from
old experience, that a young fellow in love is lost to the service
and himself; among women he is as helpless as a rudderless ship among
the thousand shoals of the Zuyder Zee! You are my heir, as you know,
provided your conduct and obedience satisfy me. I am rich enough for
both of us, and I had begun to hope that, like me, you would go
through the world without the encumbrance of a wife. I shall not see
you make a fool of yourself, without making an effort to save you. I
shall give you a Beating Order, and send you to recruit for the
Brigade in Scotland; or how would you like to roast on detachment at
Guayana, or among the Dutch Isles in the Caribbean Sea?'
'Such a separation would be death to me, and to Dolores too.'
'Dol--what?' roared the General, grasping the knobs of his arm-chair
and glaring at the speaker; 'how familiar we are, it seems! Where
the devil did she get that absurd name?'
'From a Spanish ancestress, and with the name much of her beauty,'
replied the younger man, who had a very pleasant voice and manner,
which, if somewhat sad and soft, possessed the charm of cultured
influences and refinement.
'Dolores--a very Donna Dulcinea, no doubt! Well, my young
cock-o'-the-game, it is useless in me to repeat what you don't want
to hear, and in you to say the same thing over and over again, as you
have been doing for the last hour. So far as you and this--Dolores
are concerned, my mind is made up--yes, by the henckers' horns!'
The speaker was no Dutchman, as his interjection might lead the
reader to infer, but, like his nephew, a native of the northern
portion of our isle, being Lieutenant-General John Kinloch, of
Thominean in Fifeshire, Colonel-Commandant of the six battalions of
the Scots Brigade, in the service of their High Mightinesses the
States-General of Holland--a corps which boasted itself 'the Bulwark
of the Republic'--a veteran of more than twenty years' hard service,
though still in the flower of manhood.
His hair was powdered and queued, as was then the fashion; his
handsome face was well bronzed by long exposure to the tropical sun,
and his hands, which had never known gloves, contrasted in their
brown hue with snow-white ruffles of the finest lace at the wide
cuffs of his uniform coat.
His nose was straight; his mouth expressed firmness and decision, and
his dark eyes, which were sparkling then with no small amount of
anger, had somewhat shaggy brows that nearly met in one, and gave
great character to his face.
His nephew, who stood near him, playing with the gold knot of his
sword, and trying to deprecate his anger, was Lewis (or as he was
generally called Lewie) Baronald of that Ilk in Lanarkshire (the only
son of a baronet attainted after Culloden), and now a handsome young
lieutenant in the Earl of Drumlanrig's Battalion of the Scots
Brigade, in quarters, where we find him, at the Hague.
His face wore a droll expression just then, in spite of himself, as
he knew that his uncle and patron was well known in the Brigade, and
in Dutch society, as a misogynist--a genuine woman-hater, under the
influence of some never-forgotten disappointment he had endured in
early life, and who never omitted by the exertion of his advice,
influence, or actual authority, to mar--if possible--the matrimonial
views and wishes of the officers and men under his command.
When any of his brother officers would venture to express their
surprise that one who was evidently so good-hearted and warm by
nature, and who--though in all things a perfect soldier--was
apparently fond of domestic life, should have omitted to share it
with a help-mate, their remarks only invoked a torrent of grotesque
invectives upon the sex, and put the General in such exceeding bad
humour, that they were glad to beat a retreat and leave him to
himself.
He had begun to perceive that for some time past, his nephew was
abstracted in manner, that he absented himself from his quarters, was
rather estranged from his comrades, and was almost neglectful of his
military duties; and from rumours that reached him from the idlers
and promenaders in the Voorhout and on the Vyverberg, the General was
not long in discovering that a charming young girl was the cause of
all this, and great was his wrath thereat. And when he found that
Lewie Baronald's abstraction increased; that he caught him reading
poetry instead of studying the '_Tactique et Discipline dc Prusse_';
that he sighed sometimes involuntarily, and more than once had been
caught inditing suspicious-looking little missives in the form of
delicately folded, tinted and perfumed notes, he took him finally to
task, and his indignation found vent, as it did on the present
occasion.
'And you fell in with this girl----'
'When our battalion was sharing duty with the Dutch Guards at the
Prince of Orange's palace in Amsterdam.'
'And how about her mother?' growled the General.
'She was very averse to my attendance on her daughter till----'
'Till when or what?' snapped the uncle.
'She asked me some questions concerning my name and family, and then
suddenly I became quite a favourite.'
'All cunning--all cunning! But our name and our blood are as good as
any in Holland, and better than some, I suppose; but every Scot has a
pedigree, as King James was wont to say.'
And as General Kinloch spoke, the strong old Scottish accent, which
then prevailed at the Bar and in the Pulpit at home (as it had done
at Court in the preceding century), deepened with his excitement and
irritation.
'And the mother is a widow, Drumlanrig tells me,' he continued; 'a
widow who, I doubt not, loves her coffee with a glass of good curaçoa
from De Pylsteeg at Amsterdam.'
'Indeed you mistake her, uncle,' replied the young man indignantly.
'Umph--egad--do I?'
'She often speaks to me of you, uncle.'
'Does she? I am greatly honoured.'
'Yes--and seems to know all about you, and your brilliant services to
their Mightinesses the States, and so forth.'
'The devil she does! Well, she probably knows also that I never was
a lady's man--a lady-killer, a buck, or a blood in my time; so my
lady countess may spare her breath to cool her porridge. And _who_
is this Countess van Renslaer? Her name sounds new to me.'
'She has but lately come to Holland.'
'From where?'
'England last, I believe; and none seem to take a higher place at the
Court of the Prince of Orange; at the balls of the Grand Pensionary,
and of the richest burgers in the Hague and Amsterdam.'
'Ouf! Well, I go to none of them--not even to Court, save once a
year, to kiss the Prince's hand, and give in the Brigade Reports.
She has a great retinue--keeps a stately coach and two sedans, I
hear; and does this artful old--countess seem to tolerate the
advances of a penniless sub like you, to her daughter?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
'Because she is interested in me,' replied Lewie Baronald, smiling.
'For what reason?'
'Her first lover had been one of the Scots Brigade, and her heart
still warms to the uniform.'
The knitted brow of the General relaxed for a moment, and he said
with a grim smile:
'Then there have been two fools at least in the Brigade, to my
knowledge. And for this prize, Dolores--I have caught her absurd
name, you perceive--have you no rivals--no competitors?'
The young man's brow grew very dark.
'Yes,' said he, after a pause.
'Many?'
'One chiefly.'
'Whom you fear??
'I fear no man that wears a sword, uncle! She has a cousin, called
Maurice Morganstjern, whom I greatly distrust.'
'Grandson of that Morganstjern who was one of the assassins of the De
Witts in the last century? Avoid the whole brood, I say! If you
will not be guided by me, who have your interest at heart, consult
your Colonel, Drumlanrig, on this matter, and hear what _he_ will
say.'
'The last man to consult on such a topic.'
'Why?'
'Like yourself, he shuns female society. He is a gloomy misanthrope,
and one of a fated race.'
'Right: a curse fell on his house, for the duke's share in the Union
of 1707. I thought your family troubles were at an end when you
joined the Brigade; but, der Duyvel! they seem only beginning, with
this Dolores. To me it appears that there are some families--in
Scotland more especially--whom misfortune--fate--which you
will--pursueth to utter destruction.'
'The fate of mine was their own choosing: it lay between prudence and
loyalty, and ill would it have become my people to have wavered when
the Royal Standard was unfurled in Glenfinnan.'
'Your father's views and mine were different in that matter,' said
the General in a softer tone.
'Give me your hand. I do not despair of your favour for us yet.'
'Indeed!'
'Tyne heart, tyne all, as we say at home.'
'In old Scotland, yes--and before the enemy, that is well enough; but
anent a woman--go--go--or I shall lose my temper again. Besides,
Lewie, there is a cloud on the horizon--the political horizon, I
mean--which, though as yet no bigger than a man's hand, may expand
into a dark and mighty one of storm and bloodshed. A revolution is
at hand in France, and a time is coming when we--the Scots
Brigade--will have other work than love-making cut out for us, and we
shall have to choose between casting our lot forever with the
States-General or with his Majesty George III.; for there is not a
tavern and not a caserne in Holland in which the matter is not
debated keenly and hotly now.'
Though the steady opposition and hostility of his uncle and patron,
on whom all his hopes depended, left the young man depressed in
spirit and heavy in heart, and inspired by no small dread of
separation from the object of his love, he quitted the General's
house, and set forth to visit her.
CHAPTER II.
THE COLONEL-COMMANDANT.
The General refilled his glass and his meerschaum, and remained sunk
in thought after the departure of his nephew, and more than once he
sighed heavily, knit his brows, and shook his head.
He was not drinking schiedam with water, but good Farintosh whisky,
kegs of which were regularly sent to him by a Scottish merchant from
the Scotsch Dyk at Rotterdam--Farintosh which was then free from all
Excise duty, and remained so till five years after the period of our
story.
We have said that General Kinloch was a handsome man and in the
flower of manhood; and a fine picture he would have made as he sat
there, in his graceful old-fashioned uniform, with heavily-laced
lapels and skirts, his hair powdered and queued, with a Khevenhüller
hat (not unlike that of Napoleon I.) close by, adorned with a stiff
upright feather and Dutch cockade, and his silk sash worn crossways
in the old Scottish fashion.
The old Scottish officer who took a turn of service in France was
jaunty in air, tone, and bearing, as Scott describes his Baron of
Bradwardin to have been; but his countryman who served the States of
Holland became, under the influence of his flat, stale and stolid
surroundings, rather another style of man--equally brave and gallant
in war, but less gallant in the ball-room or the boudoir--often
grave, grim, and starched amid the influence of Dutch society and
Presbyterianism.
It was only thirty-four years before that Culloden had been fought;
and though his political sympathies were not with the exiled King
James VIII., his mind was full of the bitter memories of that
atrocious field left in every right-thinking Scottish heart; and his
orphan nephew, Lewie Baronald, was the son of his only sister, one of
those enthusiastic Jacobite ladies who kept guard at Edinburgh Cross
with a drawn sword when the King was proclaimed, who danced at the
famous Holyrood ball, and who, like more than one old lady in
Scottish history and tradition, had never allowed her husband to kiss
her, after the Prince did so, and after making his bed, when an exile
and fugitive, with her own hands, had laid aside the sheets thereof
to be a shroud for herself, in the true spirit of loyalty 'and that
sublime devotion which the Saxon never knew.'
Long as he had been in Holland, the eyes of our Scot--accustomed as
he had been to the grand mountain scenery of his native land--had
never become accustomed to the utter monotony, flatness, and
insipidity of the Dutch landscape, or to the brusqueness of the
natives, their stolidity and general dulness of demeanour; but the
pay was good, the quarters were comfortable, and--when not
fighting--the service was easy enough. His sword was almost his
inheritance, as the estate he inherited, Thominean, was drowned in
debt; and their High Mightinesses the States-General were sure and
generous paymasters.
Yet, times there were when he thought with the author of 'Vathek,'
that there must have been a period when Holland was all water, 'and
the ancestors of the present inhabitants fish. A certain
_oysterishness_ of eye and flabbiness of complexion are almost
proof-sufficient of this aquatic descent; and pray tell me for what
purpose are such galligaskins as the Dutch burthen themselves with
contrived, but to tuck up a flouncing tail, and thus cloak the
deformity of a dolphin-like termination.'
Reflecting angrily and sadly upon the recent conversation with his
favourite, the General continued to smoke and gaze down the long
vista of the quaint Dutch street, with its stiff rows of trees
reflected downward in the canal that lay parallel with them, and its
quaint gables on each of which, nearly, a stork was perched; the
little mirrors projecting from the windows to enable the ladies
within to see those who passed outside; the knockers tied up with
pincushions and plaited lace to indicate that a 'goodwife was in the
straw.'
There were women in the mobcaps, print-gowns, and gaudy satin aprons
wore by all ranks alike; men in broad, round, conical hats, puckered
jackets, and capacious breeches, now no longer to be seen but in very
remote districts; an occasional dominie or clergyman in his
court-like costume, ruff and cocked hat, passing homeward after
having a pipe with some parishioner, or a dish of coffee with his
vrouw.
There was the clatter of wooden shoes in the ill-paved street; the
oil-lamps were beginning to glimmer like glow-worms, and were
reflected in the slime of the canals; the drums and fifes of the
Scots Brigade, in the adjacent caserne, were playing out the dying
day, and sweetly stole upon the ambient evening the old air:
'Oh, the Lowlands o' Holland
Hae parted my love and me;'
but the General was in shadow-land, thinking of other times and
long-vanished faces, and wondering when the guilders of their High
Mightinesses, and the prize-money won from the French and Spaniards,
would free his inheritance from all its wadsets and incumbrances, and
he would be able to hang his sword, where still his father's hung, in
the old dining-hall of Thominean.
He saw it in fancy, that old house of Thominean ('the hill of
birds'), with its grey crow-stepped gables and conical pepper-box
turrets of the days of James VI., overlooked by the green range of
the lovely Ochills; and he laughed softly as he remembered how in
boyhood there he had trembled at the thought of the tiny elves, who,
on their festival nights, were alleged to make great noises under the
green turf, opening and shutting large chests of gold, and clattering
with goblets and copper kettles; and how still more did he tremble at
the story of a mysterious mirror, in which occasionally the figure of
a pale woman, clad in white, could be distinctly seen _behind_ the
reflection of the person who stood before the glass, and how it was
said to have appeared therein on the night his beloved sister, the
Lady Baronald, died, and left her only son penniless in the world.
Thus Lewie, in his boyhood, became a soldier. On an evening that he
never forgot, there came marching bravely down the quaint High Street
of Kinross a recruiting-party of the Scots Brigade, with ribbons
fluttering, drawn swords gleaming, the shrill pipes and hoarse drums,
making every lane and alley bordering on Loch Leven to re-echo 'The
Lowlands o' Holland;' and halting in front of the Bruce Arms Inn, a
portly sergeant, after a libation of Farintosh had been duly poured
forth, harangued the gathered rustics. He invited 'all lads of
spirit to join that battalion of the Scots Brigade, commanded by the
noble and valiant Henry Douglas, Earl of Drumlanrig, under their High
Mightinesses the States-General of Holland, to fight the frog-eating
French and popish Spaniards; all who so entered to have complete new
clothing, arms and accoutrements as became a gentleman and soldier,
two guineas bounty, and a crown to drink to the health of their High
Mightinesses, and to the confusion of their enemies!'
A loud hurrah and much brandishing of broadswords followed this
invitation, and ere 'The Point of War' was fully beaten, Lewie
Baronald had shaken hands with this Scottish Sergeant Kite, and had
the Dutch cockade pinned on his blue bonnet by a cunning corporal,
who showed him an old watch like a silver turnip, and worth
half-a-crown, which he boldly alleged had been presented to him 'by
his Royal Highness the Prince of Orange in person.'
His uncle's influence soon procured him 'a pair of colours,' as the
phrase was then, for a commission; and he soon proved himself worthy
of the distinction by the daring and courage he displayed, when the
battalion of Drumlanrig was employed with other Dutch troops in 1774,
at the Cape of Good Hope, in driving the natives from the Bokkeveld
and Roggeveld, back into the deserts on the south-west coast of
Africa; and since his return to Holland his name, the popularity of
his regiment, his handsome face and figure, were equally passports to
the best society in the Hague and at Amsterdam.
But now, it seemed to his uncle and patron, the Colonel-Commandant of
the Brigade, that his prospects were on the point of being marred by
this unlucky passion for the daughter of the Countess van Renslaer.
Kinloch's antipathy to women was well known in the Brigade, and it
was a standing joke among the battalions, that once, when the
coquettish wife of the Grand Pensionary of Amsterdam had lured him
into a game of battledore and shuttlecock, and contrived to let the
latter drop into her ample bosom, and pointing thereto, piteously
besought the General to take it out, that he--obtuse as Uncle Toby
with the Widow Wadman--deftly abstracted it with the tongs.
'The lad will succeed me in time, as Laird of Thominean,' he
muttered, after a time; 'the forfeited baronetcy may be restored: so
why shouldn't he marry because I--I--but better not! They are all
alike--all alike, these women: so he will be safer with the left wing
of Dundas's Battalion in the West Indies, than philandering here at
the Hague.'
But even while giving utterance to his thoughts, his features
relaxed: his irritation or annoyance seemed to abate as other
thoughts stole into his mind, and a shade of melancholy came over his
face; and resting his head upon his hands, he remained for a time in
deep and apparently painful thought.
Then he rose slowly, and selecting a key from a small bunch, opened
an elaborately-carved Dutch cabinet, and from a secret drawer
thereof, curiously and ingeniously hidden by a movable lion's head,
he drew forth the oval miniature of a young girl, and gazed upon it
long, sorrowfully, and tenderly.
There was something quaint and childlike in the beauty of the girl
depicted there, with a string of pearls round her white and slender
throat. Her complexion was clear and pure, her expression innocent,
with golden-brown hair, and golden-brown eyes that seemed to smile on
him again as he gazed on them.
A hot tear started in the eyes of Kinloch, yet he bit his lip, and,
as if angry with himself for the emotion that came over him, he
closed the miniature-case with a sharp snap, and restored it to its
place of concealment hurriedly, muttering:
'Fool that I was--fool that I am now! Heaven grant that this Dolores
of Lewie's may not make the dupe of him that girl made of me! I must
save him from himself. I shall write the Director-General of the
Forces--Berbice or Essequibo it must be. Poor Lewie! I am loth to
part with him; but, der Duyvel! he shall not be the victim of this
old jade and her daughter.'
CHAPTER III.
SWORD-PLAY.
Full of conflicting thoughts Lewie Baronald, with a slower pace than
usual, proceeded towards the residence of the Countess van Renslaer,
and quitting the Lang Vourhout, he crossed the canal that encircles
the whole Hague.
If compelled by his powerful uncle's eccentric opposition to act the
laggard now, he might leave Dolores to be won by his rival
Morganstjern! Such things have been, and may be again. His brain
whirled and his heart sank at the thought; and even if he had the
permission of the Director-General of Infantry accorded him, could he
ask the brilliant Dolores to share his solitary room in the
barracks--the _Oranje Caserne_--of the Scots Brigade?
The thought was full of folly and presumption. He was not quite
aware of the full extent of the hostile--yet well-meant--design his
uncle the General was forming, for an effectual separation between
him and the object of his love. He had left her yesterday with the
avowed intention of obtaining the sanction of the General, from whom
he had a yearly allowance: and now that the sanction was withheld, he
was in sore perplexity, for by the then rules of the Dutch service no
officer could marry without the consent of his superior; and how was
he to tell Dolores that this had been bluntly refused, and that even
exile or foreign service menaced him?
While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he came suddenly
upon Maurice Morganstjern; he was seated under one of the trees that
bordered the canal near the Hooge Wal, and was leisurely polishing
the blade of his rapier with his leather glove, while conversing with
a friend.
He was rather a handsome but dissipated-looking young fellow, and had
shifty eyes and a very sinister expression of face. He wore his
sandy-coloured hair powdered and tied, a smart Nivernois hat (such
hats were all the rage about 1780), small, and with the flaps
fastened up to the brim with hooks and eyes; his costume was bright
in colours and richly laced.
That of his companion was the reverse. He wore an old battered
Khevenhüller hat; his shaggy hair was unpowdered; his ruffles were
soiled and torn; his visage was bloated and his eyes bloodshot and
watery, while a scar on his nose, covered by a piece of black
court-plaster, did not add to the respectability of his appearance:
and Lewie Baronald, who knew him to be the Heer van Schrekhorn, a
noted bully, gamester, and frequenter of gambling-houses and
estaminets, barely accorded him any recognition, though feeling
himself compelled to present his hand to Maurice Morganstjern.
'How now, Mynheer--have you been fighting?' he inquired laughingly of
the latter.
'No; only polishing some specks off my sword,' replied Morganstjern,
with a smile on his thin lips, though there was none in his watery
grey eyes; 'but apropos of fighting--do you affect that?'
'In a proper cause--yes,' replied Baronald, surprised by the question.
'And can cover yourself well?' continued Morganstjern, making a
half-mock lunge which the other--with the quickness of
lightning--parried by his sword which he instantly drew.
'I can cover myself, as you shall see,' he exclaimed; and they began
to fence in jest apparently, while the Heer looked approvingly on,
and said with a laugh and an oath:
'Now we shall see who is the better ruffler of the two.'
And the Heer, who bore Lewie no goodwill for the coldness of his
demeanour and the general hauteur he manifested towards him, looked
as if he would very much have relished to draw his old hanger and
engage in the perilous sport too--for perilous it was, with
keen-edged and sharply-pointed straight-bladed swords.
The Heer van Schrekhorn was everyway an odious fellow--a lover of the
fair sex, of schiedam and cards; but one who always avowed openly
that _liking_ for a woman was one thing, but love for her was
another--and certes he knew nothing about it.
He loudly and bluntly applauded his friend's fencing.
'Appel now!' he exclaimed; 'quick--disengage to that side again!
contract your arm--quick--dart a thrust right forward now!'
At that moment, as if in obedience to the suggestion, the point of
Morganstjern's sword struck the gilded regimental gorget of Baronald,
which was adorned with the Lion Rampant of the Netherlands.
'The devil!' he exclaimed; 'do you aim at my throat?'
'All a mistake,' said Morganstjern, beginning to pant as he was
pressed on in turn and driven back.
'Is this folly or fury--do you really wish to quarrel?' asked Lewie
Baronald; but the other made no reply, though his eyes became
inflamed, his colour deepened, his teeth were set and his brows knit;
and though he laughed, the sound of his laughter was strange and
unnatural.
This game at sharps was certainly jest with Baronald, though he
little liked his opponent; but he soon became aware that the eyes of
the latter seemed to become more bloodshot, that his cheek paled, his
grasp grew firmer on his hilt; that his thrusts came quickly and
fiercely--in short, that beyond all doubt, under cover of a little
pretended sword-play, he had--murder in his heart!
They were rivals for the love of Dolores, yet Morganstjern had not
the courage to challenge Baronald to a regular mortal duel. His
bearing now, and the perilous thrust arrested by his gorget, were a
warning to the latter of that which Morganstjern was now
capable--killing him by design, without peril to himself, while he
would affect that it was done by mere chance in rough jest; and had
Baronald been run through the body, the Heer would have been ready to
affirm and swear that it was all done by the merest accident.
Baronald felt his blood getting warm; he knew that duelling was
sternly discouraged by the Dutch authorities; and that to kill the
cousin of Dolores, even in self-defence, would preclude all chance of
possessing her favour.
But a strong measure was absolutely necessary. Darting forward he
suddenly locked-in--seized his adversary's sword-arm, by twining his
left arm round it, thus closing his parade hilt to hilt, and disarmed
him by literally wrenching his sword from his grasp.
Pale as death now, panting, and with eyes flashing fire, Morganstjern
stood before the victor, who, presenting the captured sword by the
blade, said, with a kind of smile:
'This rough play is being carried too far--here let it end.'
Hissing out some execration, Morganstjern took his sword by the hilt,
and in the blind excesss of his fury would have plunged it into the
breast of Baronald, but at the moment it was struck up by another
sword, as two officers of the Scots Brigade, Francis, Lord Lindores,
and the Master of Dumbarton, threw themselves between them.
'We do but jest, gentlemen,' said Morganstjern, lifting his hat and
sheathing his sword.
'Is this true, Baronald?' asked Lord Lindores.
'Jest assuredly, so far as I am concerned,' replied Lewie.
'I must confess that the work looked remarkably like earnest, so far
as your adversary was concerned,' remarked the Master of Dumbarton,
with a look at Morganstjern which there was no mistaking; but the
latter simply bowed, and saying:
'Gentlemen--your servant. I have the honour to bid you good evening.'
Then, accompanied by the Heer van Schrekhorn, he hastened away;
leaving Baronald to explain the matter as he chose to his two
brother-officers, who had some difficulty in making him really aware
of the deadly risk he had run.
'He is gone like a man who has lost an hour and runs as if to
overtake it,' said Lord Lindores. 'Now how came you, Lewie Baronald,
to be fencing, even in jest, with rufflers such as these?'
Baronald could not explain that one of them was the cousin of Dolores.
'At the Kanongietery we have just parted with Van Otterbeck, the
Minister of State. It is as well he did not accompany us and see
that piece of folly, Baronald; it might have gone hard with you, as
the Brigade is not greatly in favour just now,' said the Master of
Dumbarton, who was James Douglas, grandson of the loyal and gallant
Earl of that title, who was Colonel of the Royal Scots, and followed
James VII. into exile.
He was tall, had a straight nose, the bold dark eyes of the Douglas
race, and sunny brown hair tied behind with a black ribbon and
rosette.
'True,' added Lord Lindores; 'and I begin to think the Brigade has
had enough and to spare of Holland during these two hundred years
past, fighting to defend lazy boors and greedy merchants, in a land
of frowsy fogs and muddy canals; as Butler has it in "Hudibras:"
'"A land that rides at anchor, and is moored;
In which they do not live, but go aboard."'
These remarks referred to the growing discontent between the
regiments of the Brigade and the States-General--matters to which we
may have to refer elsewhere, and which led to the former abandoning
the service of the latter for that of Great Britain.
And now Lewie Baronald, after thanking his friends for their
intervention and advice, took the road to the residence of the
Countess van Renslaer, whither, unknown to him, Morganstjern had
preceded him, and was, at that very moment, engaged with Dolores.
CHAPTER IV.
DOLORES.
The villa occupied by the Countess van Renslaer stood a little
distance from the Hague, on the Ryswick road, amid a large
pleasure-garden in the old Dutch style, a marvel of prettiness, with
its meandering walks, fantastically-cut parterres, box borders,
pyramids of flower-pots, and tiny fish-pond where the carp and perch
were often fed by the white hands of Dolores.
It had more than one rose-bowered _zomerhuis_ hidden among the
shrubbery, and admirably adapted for contemplation or flirtation. It
was the month of May now, when the tulips and hyacinths, potted in
_jardinières_ full of light sand, were in all their beauty--flowers
for which, in the days of the _tulip-mania_, a hundred florins had
been paid for a single bulb.
Around, the country was intersected in every direction by canals and
trees in long straight avenues, the level surface dotted with farms
and summer-houses; an occasional steeple, the old castle where the
famous Treaty of Ryswick was signed, and the sails of many windmills
whirling slowly in the evening breeze, alone broke the flat monotony
of the Dutch horizon.
In the deep recess of a window that opened to the garden sat Dolores,
watching and expectant. But only that morning, after parade, Lewie
Baronold had talked to her of love--his love and hers--in the recess
of that window--talked so sweetly of his adoration of her own
charming self. So Dolores had thought to sit there again, with eyes
half closed and smiling lips, to think it all over once more, while
fanning herself with one of the large fans of green silk then in
fashion, while the Countess, her mother, had fallen asleep over
'Clélia,' one of Monsieur de Scudery's five-volume folio novels, in
the drawing-room beyond.
Dolores was taller, more lithe and slender, than Dutch girls usually
are, for she had in her veins the blood of more than one ancestor who
had come with that scourge of the Low Countries, Ferdinand of Toledo,
_el castigador del Flamencas_; hence her graceful figure, the stately
carriage of her beautiful head, her rather aquiline and oval
features, her dark hair, and the darker lashes that shaded her soft
eyes that were 'like violets bathed in dew,' and hence her peculiar
name of Dolores.
She had the bloom of Holland in her cheek, and the grace of Spain in
her carriage and bearing. An exquisite costume of pale yellow silk
became the brunette character of her beauty well; creamy lace fell
away in folds from the snowy arms it revealed; perfume, brilliance,
and softness were about her.
There was a step on the gravel; her colour deepened.
'Morganstjern--Cousin Maurice!' she muttered with a tone of
annoyance, as he approached her with hat in hand.
Would this creature, so incomparably lovely and winning, ever belong
to him, and lie in his bosom? he was thinking as he surveyed her; was
she not rather drifting away from him, and would soon, unless he took
strong and sure measures with yonder accursed Schottlander, be lost
to him and his world for ever?
'Always becomingly dressed, Dolores,' said he, stooping over her;
'but this costume especially suits your style of loveliness.'
'You must not say such things to me,' she replied with some asperity.
'How--why?'
'I mean such pretty or complimentary things, Maurice Morganstjern;
because if you do----'
'What then?'
'I shall think that I have forfeited your friendship.'
'Friendship!' said he gloomily; 'how long will you seem to
misunderstand me?'
Try as she might, Dolores could not feel kindly or well disposed
towards her cousin Morganstjern, and her replies to him always
sounded cold and formal, or taunting even to herself; and the face
that bent over her was, she knew, not a good one, but sinister, and
expressive of a bad and evil spirit within.
And now, as a somewhat palpable hint that his conversation wearied or
worried her, she took up her flageolet, and putting the ivory
mouthpiece to her rosy lips, began to play a sweet little air, while
his brow became darker, for this now obsolete instrument (which had
silver stops like the old English flute) had been a gift of Lewie
Baronald's, who, in the gallantry of the day, had inserted a copy of
verses addressed to herself, and which, of course, would only be
found when the instrument was unscrewed to discover what marred its
use.
Anon she paused; Maurice Morganstjern then glanced towards the
Countess, and perceiving that she still slept, drew nearer to
Dolores, and lowering his voice, said:
'Can you not love me a little, cousin?'
'Not as you wish,' she replied.
'Why?'
The musical voice of Dolores broke into a soft little laugh as she
fanned herself, and said:
'Simply because one cannot love two persons at once.'
'Meaning that you love this--this accursed Schottlander?' he hissed
through his set teeth.
'Oh, Maurice! how can you be so rude as to speak thus of any visitor
of mamma's!'
'Listen to me, Cousin Dolores,' he resumed, making a prodigious
effort to be calm.
'Well,' asked the girl, with something of petulance.
'I am probably to be sent to Paris.'
'Indeed--for what purpose?'
'In the interests of the patriots here.'
'And against the Prince of Orange?'
'Yes--of course.'
'You are unwise to say this to me even, cousin.' said she, looking up
now.
'But you, Dolores, are my second self.'
'What will you do when I go?'
'Much the same as I did before you honoured the Hague with your
presence.'
'To me it seems that you care little whether you see me or not.'
'What then?--and it may be so. Cousin Maurice, you are always
annoying me by love-making, or by scowling and taunting me about
gentlemen visitors.'
'May I hope, however, that you will pay me the compliment of feeling
my absence--of missing me a little?'
'That,' replied the provoking beauty, as an arch expression stole
into her face, 'may depend upon what amuses or interests me. Oh,
pardon me, Maurice--I am so rude!' she added, on perceiving the
sombre fury expressed by his sinister face.
'Whatever you think, only say that you will be sorry when I go,' he
urged.
'If you do go--which I don't believe--I will be sorry of course,
Maurice,' she replied, as she saw the necessity of temporising a
little; 'I am always so when I lose anyone or anything that has
become familiar to me. Do you not remember how I wept when my poor
Bologna spaniel died last year?'
'I do not expect you to weep for me. It would be too much for
Maurice Morganstjern to expect to be raised to the level of your
spaniel.'
'How sarcastic and unpleasant you are!' exclaimed Dolores, expectant
of Lewie Baronald's arrival, and now half dreading that event. 'I
wish you would be as faithful as that poor animal was, and as
unselfish in your love.'
'Could you look into my heart, you would find but one word--one idea
stamped there.'
'And that is----'
'"Dolores"--meaning sorrow and lamentation if you love me not.'
She laughed merrily again, and again the sombre look came into his
face; so she dropped her fan and held out two small white hands as if
to deprecate his wrath, for she had an energetic way with her, so he
instantly caught them in his own.
She was quite occupied in trying to release them when a familiar rap
was heard on the knocker of the street door, an enormous lion's head
of brass, with a huge ring in its jaws.
'Oh, I keep your hands prisoners,' said he: 'pardon me,' he added, as
he stooped and kissed them; and she had barely time to wrench them
away when a liveried valet ushered in Lewie Baronald, and in spite of
herself and the presence of her cousin she could not conceal the joy
with which his presence inspired her.
'Welcome,' she said, and held forth her hand. Oh, what a hand he
thought it--small, plump, and white--so slim and shapely!
There was neither shyness, coquetry, nor embarrassment in the girl's
manner, for in their assured position with each other both she and
her lover were long past anything of the kind; but the latter and her
cousin bowed rather grimly to each other, and mutually muttered:
'Your servant--Mynheer.'
Lewie Baronald now crossed the polished floor of the drawing-room to
greet the Countess, who rose to receive him, and who looked so young
and so pretty that she might have passed for an elder sister of
Dolores; and stooping low he kissed her hand, looking, as he did so,
with his sword at his side under the stiff square skirt of his coat,
and his hat under his arm, with his ruffles and cravat of fine lace,
a model of those stately manners that lingered in Europe when George
III. was King--in Scotland, perhaps, longer than anywhere else.
Of Morganstjern's privileges as a cousin, Lewie Baronald was never
jealous in the least; but on this occasion, after the recent
fencing-bout, the interview with his uncle, and the threat of service
in the Dutch West Indies, his brow was rather cloudy, and he longed
intensely to be with Dolores alone.
The rough sword-play that had been forced upon him, the risk he had
run, and the treachery of Morganstjern, had certainly exasperated
him; but courtesy to Dolores and the Countess made him dissemble, and
he treated his rival and enemy, if rather coldly and haughtily, as if
nothing remarkable had occurred between them, and the conversation
became of a general kind. But Morganstjern, in the waspishness of
his nature, could not help referring to the 'armed neutrality,' as it
was termed, a vexed and then dangerous political subject for a Briton
and a Hollander to discuss.
This was an alliance, offensive and defensive, which had been formed
by some of the northern powers of Europe; and some violent disputes
between Britain and the States-General, which seemed advancing to a
direct rupture just then, caused the position of the Scots Brigade in
their service to become somewhat peculiar and critical.
From the commencement of the disturbance with America, the Dutch had
maintained a close correspondence with the revolted colonists,
supplying them with all kinds of material and warlike stores; and
after the interference of France and Spain, the selfishness and
treachery of the Dutch became more glaring and apparent.
'The States-General of Holland are free, independent, and can do
precisely as they choose,' said Morganstjern haughtily, in reply to
some condemnatory remark of Lewie Baronald.
'Their Highnesses,' replied the latter calmly, 'have no right to
leave their ports open to the King's rebels, in disregard of
friendship and honour, and in defiance of the remonstrances of his
ambassadors.'
'Permit me to dispute your right, as a soldier in the service of
their Highnesses, to censure them.'
Baronald's nether lip quivered at this retort, and the Countess and
Dolores exchanged glances of uneasiness; for politics had become so
embittered by the American Squadron, which had recently captured
H.M.'s ships _Serapis_ and _Scarborough_, having taken them into the
Texel, and when General Yorke claimed those ships and their crews,
the Dutch refused to restore them, and soon after Commodore Fielding
fired upon their squadron under Count Bylandt, and took him into
Portsmouth; so war was looked for daily, while the Scots Brigade were
yet serving under the Dutch colours.
'Do not let us think or speak of such things, Cousin Maurice,' said
Dolores imploringly; 'I tremble at the idea of Britain invading us,
if this sort of work goes on. What have we to do with her colonists
and their quarrels?'
'Invade us, indeed!' said Morganstjern, with angry mockery; 'if our
swords fail us we can open the sluices, as we did in the days of
Louis XIV., and drown every man and mother's son!'
'But how should we escape ourselves?' asked the Countess.
'Good generalship would take care of that; and then how about your
Scots Brigade?' asked Morganstjern, turning abruptly to Baronald.
'The Bulwark of Holland, we have never failed her yet,' replied the
latter haughtily; 'but to draw the sword upon our own countrymen is
certainly a matter for consideration.'
'In Holland, perhaps, but not in America.'
'Let this subject cease,' said the Countess imperatively, while
fanning herself with an air of excessive annoyance; and now
Morganstjern, beginning to find himself _de trop_, bowed himself out,
and with vengeance gathering in his heart, withdrew to an estaminet,
or tavern, where he knew that he would find his friend the Heer van
Schrekhorn, and whither we may perhaps follow him.
To Lewie Baronald, who was naturally destitute of much personal
vanity, it had hitherto seemed rather strange that the Countess had
permitted his attentions to her daughter at all, though he was known
to be the heir of his uncle; and now that he had all the joy of
knowing himself to be her accepted lover, his soul trembled within
him at the prospect of having to announce General Kinloch's utter
hostility to the mother.
Lewie had more than once observed that the Countess always smiled, or
laughed outright, when his uncle the General was spoken of, as if she
considered him somewhat of a character--an _excentrique_.
'You have seen the General, I presume, since you were here last?'
said she.
'Yes, madam,' replied Lewie, painfully colouring.
'And told him of your love for Dolores--of your engagement to her, in
fact?'
'Yes, madam; he seems to have suspected it for some time past.'
'Suspected--that sounds unpleasant.'
Lewie played with the feather in his regimental hat, and his colour
deepened, when the Countess said:
'Then he is coming to wait upon me, I presume?'
'Alas--no, madam.'
'Indeed--why?'
'He is averse to the society of ladies.'
'In fact, is a woman-hater, I have heard.'
Lewie smiled feebly, and felt himself in a foolish predicament; so
the Countess spoke again.
'He had some disappointment in early life, I believe, and never got
over it.'
'Yes, madam.'
'Poor fellow! and of Dolores----'
'He will not hear me speak with patience.'
'How grotesque!' exclaimed the Countess, laughing heartily.
'Ah, could he but see her!' exclaimed the young man, regarding the
upturned face of her he loved with something of adoration.
'Your uncle the General is very cruel, Lewie,' said Dolores; 'he is a
veritable ogre!'
'He is the king of good fellows, but----'
'But what?'
'He has never seen you.'
'And never shall,' she said petulantly, opening and shutting her fan.
'Nay, dearest Dolores, do not say so.'
'The ogre, or worse!' exclaimed the girl, with a pout on her sweet
lips.
'Nay--no worse--only a man,' said the Countess, laughing excessively;
'he thinks of us only as women, but to be shunned--avoided--dreaded.
It is very droll!'
And looking down, she played with the _étui_ and appendages that hung
from her girdle, her tiny watch with the judgment of Solomon embossed
on its case; and as she did so, Lewie thought her hand as white and
dimpled as that of Dolores.
To him it certainly seemed strange that the opposition of his uncle
seemed only to provoke--not the pride or the indignation of the
lively Countess--but her laughter and amusement.
'And if he gets me banished on foreign service to the Dutch West
Indies!' he urged rather piteously.
'My poor Lewie,' said she, patting his cheek with her fan, 'I must
see what can be done; meantime, we must be patient and wait. From
all I have heard and know, an early disappointment at the hands of
one he loved only too well, has shaken his faith in human goodness
and integrity, and now he is soured, suspicious and sarcastic.'
'But only so far as women are concerned.'
'True; and I suppose he is like a French writer, who says that "of
all serious things, marriage is the most ridiculous;" but men are not
infallible, especially men like your uncle the General--_errare
humanum est_. Let us be patient a little, and all will come right in
the end.'
But Dolores and her lover would only sigh a little impatiently as her
hand stole into his, and the twilight of evening deepened around them.
CHAPTER V.
'THE BULWARK OF HOLLAND.'
And now while the lovers are waiting in hope, while the General is
'nursing his wrath to keep it warm,' and determined upon their
separation; and while Maurice Morganstjern is plotting what mischief
he may work them, we shall briefly tell the story of the Scots
Brigade, and how it came to be called 'the Bulwark of Holland.'
Lewie Baronald, his uncle the General, and all others belonging to
the Scots Brigade, had a good right to be proud of doing so, as it
had a glorious inheritance of military history, second only to that
of the 1st Royal Scots; and though its memory should have been
immortal, its records now lie rotting in a garret of the Town House
of Amsterdam; and even in Scotland little is remembered of it, save
its march:
'The Lowlands o' Holland
Hae parted my love and me.'
Yet the drums of that Brigade have stirred the echoes of every city
and fortress between the mouths of the Ems in the stormy North Sea,
and the oak forests of Luxembourg and the Ardennes; and between the
ramparts of Ostend and the banks of the Maese and Rhine.
In 1570 the fame of Maurice, Prince of Nassau, drew to his standard
many of those Scots whose swords were rendered idle by peace with
England, and it was by their aid chiefly, that he drove out his
Spanish invaders. Among those who took with them the bravest men of
the Borders, were that Sir Walter Scott of Buccleugh who exasperated
Queen Elizabeth by storming the Castle of Carlisle; his son Walter,
the first Earl of Buccleugh; Sir Henry Balfour of Burleigh; Preston
of Gourton; Halkett of Pitfiran, and other commanders, named by
Grose, Stewart, Hay, Douglas, Graham, and Hamilton.
These formed the original Scots Brigade in the army of Holland, and
some of the battalions must have been kilted, as Famiano Strada, the
Jesuit, states that at the battle of Mechlin they fought
'naked'--_nudi pugnant Scoti multi_.
In 1594, on the return of the States ambassadors, whither they had
gone to congratulate James VI. on the birth of his son, they took
back with them 1,500 recruits for the Brigade, which five years after
fought valiantly in repelling the Spaniards at the siege of Bommel.
The year 1600 saw its soldiers cover themselves with glory at the
great battle of the Downs, near Nieuport, and in the following year
at the siege of Ostend, which lasted three years, and in which
100,000 men are said to have perished on both sides, and where so
many of Spinola's bullets 'stuck in the sandhill bulwark that it
became like a wall of iron, and dashed fresh bullets to pieces when
they hit it;' and so great was the valour of the Brigade at the siege
of Bois-le-Duc, that Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, styled it
'The Bulwark of the Republic.'
It consisted then of three battalions--those of Buccleugh, Scott, and
Halkett.
The bestowal of some commissions on Dutch officers caused much
discontent during the time of the Prince of Orange, afterwards
William III., with whom (after being demanded by James VII. without
effect in 1688) the Brigade came over to Britain for a time, and
served at the siege of Edinburgh Castle and the battle of
Killiecrankie.
In 1747, by the slaughter at Val and the terrible siege of
Bergen-op-Zoom, the Brigade was reduced to only 330 men, but the
_Hague Gazette_ records how they drove the French from street to
street, and of all the glory won thus, the greatest fell to two
lieutenants named Maclean, the sons of the Laird of Torloisk, who
were complimented by Count Lowendhal, who commanded the enemy, by
whom they were taken.
The men of the Brigade were ever good soldiers, yet strict and
God-fearing Presbyterians, who would rather have had their
peccadilloes known to a stern General like Kinloch, than to the
regimental chaplain.
And it might be said of this Brigade, as it used to be said of the
Scots Greys, that the members of it retained a kind of regimental
dialect coeval with the days of its formation, when the language was
rather different from the present Scotch; so, in the Irish brigades
of France and Spain the strongest and purest old Irish was found to
the last.
As a sequel to this brief account of the Brigade in Holland, we may
sum up the story of its service in the British army--though that
service was brilliant--in little more than a paragraph.
After a long and angry correspondence between the Governments of
Holland and Britain, the Brigade--save some fifty officers who had
formed ties in Holland, or elected to remain there--was transferred
to the service of the latter, when a rupture took place between them
at the time of the American War, and was taken to Edinburgh, clad in
the Dutch uniform, and about 1794, it adopted the red coat, and there
in George's Square, when drawn up under Generals Dundas and Kinloch,
received its new colours at the hands of the Scottish
Commander-in-Chief, when it was numbered as the 94th Regiment; and
under these colours it fought gallantly at Seringapatam, winning the
elephant as a badge; at the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo, and in all
the battles of the Peninsular War, after which it was disbanded at
Edinburgh in 1818.
Then another 94th was embodied five years afterwards, on which
occasion, as we tell in our novel, 'The King's own Borderers,' 'the
green standard of the old Brigade of immortal memory was borne
through the streets from the Castle of Edinburgh by a soldier of the
Black Watch,' thus identifying the new regiment with the old; but now
even the number of the former has passed away, as under the new and
helplessly defective army organisation scheme, it is muddled up with
the 88th Regiment under a new name.
And now, having told what the 'Bulwark of Holland' was, we shall
return to the fortunes of Lewie Baronald and his _fiancée_ Dolores.
CHAPTER VI.
AT THE GOLDEN SUN.
'So--so! this Scottish adventurer stands between me and the girl I
love; between me and my own flesh and blood; more than all, between
me and the fortune of Dolores!' muttered Morganstjern--himself a
penniless adventurer and knave to boot, as he strode through the
streets with his left hand in the hilt of his sword and his right
tightly clenched. 'I have a right to hate and dread him--the right
to remove him, too, by fair means or foul!'
The latter were the only means he could think of, as he had a
wholesome dread of Lewie Baronald's skill with his sword, and the
bucks of the Scots Brigade were not wont to stand on trifles when
they resorted to that weapon; and in this mood of mind he rejoined
his friend the Heer van Schrekhorn, whom he found at an estaminet
called the _Gond Zon_, or 'Golden Sun,' in a narrow and gloomy street
near the Klooster Kerk.
There he found him seated in a quiet corner, smoking, drinking
schiedam and water, while intently studying some profitable and
useful gambling tricks with a pack of not overclean cards.
'I have just been trying some ruses or tricks at lansquenet,' said
he, as the tapster brought fresh glasses and more liquor; 'it is the
grandest of old gambling games, like those that are of French origin.
Look here, to begin with: the cards being shuffled by the dealer, and
cut by one of the party, two are dealt out and turned up on the left
hand of the dealer, _so_; he then takes one and places a fourth, the
_réjouissance_ card, in the middle of the table, _so_. On this----'
'Enough of this, Van Schrekhorn,' said Morganstjern impatiently. 'I
did not come here to be taught lansquenet,' he added, as he threw his
sword, hat, and gloves on a side-table, and flung himself wearily
into a chair.
'Oh--so you have just come from the house of _la belle_ Dolores?'
'Yes,' replied the other with an imprecation.
'And left her well and happy, I hope?' said the Heer mockingly.
I left her with that fellow of the Scots Brigade.'
''Sdeath! the more fool you. Why not keep your ground? Were you not
there before him?'
'Yes, and did my best to win her favour--even her mere regard.'
'In vain?'
'As usual. In fact, I think these two are affianced--or nearly so.
I never so bestirred myself about a woman before,' said Morganstjern,
as he drank at a draught a crystal goblet of schiedam and water, and
refilled it.
'How is the Countess affected towards you?'
'But indifferently. Indeed, she only tolerates me as a kinsman, and,
I suppose, has encouraged or permitted Baronald's addresses to her
daughter, because he is the heir of General Kinloch, while I am heir
to that only of which nothing can deprive me.'
'And that is?'
'A grave--six feet of earth,' replied Morganstjern, grinding his
teeth unpleasantly.
'Come--you have always the guilders you win at roulette.'
'Because they are so won, there is the greater necessity that I
should have those of my cousin Dolores.'
'Which also reminds me that you owe me a good sum of money--cash
lent, and lost at play.'
'Why the devil remind me of that just now?' replied, or rather asked,
Morganstjern, savagely; and then for a little time the two smoked
moodily in silence.
The would-be lover of Dolores had long been subjected to a run of
evil fortune at the gaming-table. 'So long as there is the beacon of
hope,' says a writer, 'life is able to show up a gleam now and then
of rose-colour; but when adverse circumstances render any change
_impossible_, life becomes intolerable.' And to this verge of
desperation had Maurice Morganstjern come.
It was a source of keen irritation to him, to find that his
rival--favoured by the Countess--could be with Dolores daily, while
he--her cousin--could only visit her at stated times; and that all
the advances he made to her seemed utterly futile and hopeless now.
'Nearly penniless as I am, Schrekhorn,' said he; 'I might have waited
patiently, but have never had a gleam of hope.'
'If you waited a hundred years, it would be all the same, while she
is under the influence of this fellow's voice, eye, and society.'
'What would you have me do?'
'Remove him, or remove her!' replied Schrekhorn with a fierce Dutch
oath.
'More easily said than done. With her money, by the henckers! how I
should enjoy myself all day long and do nothing!'
'About all you ever cared to do,' rejoined his friend, who was rather
disposed to treat him mockingly.
'Don't attempt to act my Mentor.'
'Why?'
'Because I should make but a sorry Telemachus.'
'Then it seems all a settled thing between them!'
'What?'
'How dull you are! Marriage?'
'Ach Gott! it looks like it.'
'Then you have been a trifle late of taking the field?'
'Nay,' replied Morganstjern, smoking his meerschaum with vicious
energy. 'I was the first, but when this fellow Baronald came, I
found myself instantly at a discount.'
'Jilted--eh?'
'Nay, I was never on such a footing with her that she could treat me
so, because she was ever utterly indifferent.'
'Then it is too late for fair means now, but not for foul.'
Then, after a pause, the Heer said in his mocking tone;
'If money is your object, and you openly avow that it is so, why not
propose to the mother, if the daughter won't have you? She is rich
enough and certainly handsome enough, and only some fifteen years
older than yourself. She is a widow, and all the world knows how
easily widows are won. 'Sblood! cut in for her, and leave the girl
to the Scot.'
Morganstjern thought for a minute, and then uttering one of his
imprecations, added:
'No--_no_--NO! I shall be thwarted by no man!'
'Right!' exclaimed the other; 'I like this spirit--give me your hand.'
'This infernal Scots Brigade has married at the Hague and Amsterdam
more than fifty Dutch girls within the last few years, and all of
them rich.'
'Der Duyvel!'
'Many of them girls of the first rank.'
'Thousand duyvels!' said the Heer with a mocking laugh.
'Is it not enough that these Scots--the Bulwark of the Republic as
they boast themselves----'
'And have done so since the old siege of Bois-le-Duc--well?' asked
the Heer.
'Is it not enough, I say, that they should assume our glory in war,
and win our guilders in peace, but they must carry off our prettiest
girls too?'
'They do not assume your glory, but win their own,' said the Heer,
who had some contempt for his companion; 'their guilders have been
hardly won on many a Dutch and Flemish battlefield; and if the pretty
girls of Haarlem and the Hague prefer them to Walloons, they are
right.'
Morganstjern's brow grew black.
'I am no Walloon,' said he, huskily.
'I did not say so,' said Van Schrekhorn; then he added, 'I have some
news for you, and a hint to make thereon. Dolores van Renslaer is to
be at the ridotto given by the wife of the Sixe van Otterbeck, the
Minister of State, on the night after next.'
'That I know, and of course this pestilent Scot will be there too.'
'No; on that night he is on duty at the Palace of the Prince of
Orange.'
'Well--what about all this?'
'Listen,' said Van Schrekhorn, leaning forward on the table and
lowering his voice almost to a whisper, while the colour in his
bloated visage deepened, and an expression of intense cunning stole
into his watery bloodshot eyes: 'let us carry her off as her sedan
bears her from the ridotto!'
'To where?'
'Listen. I know a skipper whose ship is now in the Maese, and almost
ready to sail for the coast of France. She is anchored off Maesluis
now; let us once get her on board and the Hoek van Holland will soon
be left astern, and the girl your own, unless you are a greater fool
than I think you.'
Morganstjern made no immediate reply, so his tempter spoke again.
'Once on board that ship, her honour will be compromised, and
marriage alone can restore it. Let her be once on board that ship
with you, I say, and she cannot be so blind as not to see that she
will have gone a great deal too far to draw back.'
'Right!' exclaimed Morganstjern, as a glance of triumph came into his
eyes. 'I have a political mission to France, and it will be supposed
that she has eloped with me, and befooled the Scot Baronald. With
all her contempt and scorn of me, she little knows that her fate is
to become my wife--my wife--_mine_! Once that, and then let her look
to herself!' he added as a savage expression mingled with the triumph
that sparkled in his shifty eyes, and he smote the table with his
clenched hand.
'The distance from the Hague to Maesluis is only eleven miles--a few
pipes, as the people say,' resumed Schrekhorn; 'my friend shall have
a boat waiting us at a quiet spot among the willows that fringe the
shore, near a deserted windmill on the river-bank; and then we shall
take her on board. Once under hatches, her fate will soon be sealed.'
'How can I thank you?'
'By refunding what you owe me out of the guilders of Dolores,'
replied the Heer, as he and Morganstjern shook hands again; but the
latter became silent for a time.
He knew the Heer van Schrekhorn to be a rascal capable of committing
any outrage, and also that he had personally a special grudge at
Lewie Baronald. Dolores was beautiful. What if this scheme so
speciously arranged, was one for his own behoof, to carry her off,
leaving the onus of the abduction on the shoulders of
him--Morganstjern--after passing a sword through his body among the
willows near the old mill on the Maese.
But this grave suspicion was only a passing thought, and he thrust it
aside.
'This may preclude your return for some time, and compromise you with
the authorities,' said the Heer.
'Their reign will soon be over; and when a French army comes to the
assistance of the Dutch patriots, the Prince of Orange may find
himself a fugitive in England.'
'But we must be wary; not for all the gold and silver bars in the
Bank of Amsterdam would I be in your shoes if we fail. The
Burgomasters are worse than the devil to face, and we may find
ourselves behind the grilles of the Gevangepoort or the Rasp-haus, as
brawlers.'
'A thousand duyvels!--fail? don't think of it.'
Had Maurice Morganstjern known the intentions of General Kinloch
towards his nephew, and the plans he had formed to separate him from
Dolores, he might have patiently awaited the events of the next few
days; but as he was ignorant of them, he and the malevolent Heer van
Schrekhorn laid all their plans for the abduction of the girl with
caution, confidence, and extreme deliberation, before they quitted
the Golden Sun that night.
CHAPTER VII.
THE GENERAL'S SECRET.
Next day, when Lewie Baronald, apparelled in all his regimental
bravery, was setting forth to visit Dolores, he was summoned by
General Kinloch, who, after working himself up to a certain degree of
sternness or firmness, real or assumed, for the occasion, said:
'Stay, young man, I pray you, as we must have some conversation
together.'
Lewie took off his Khevenhüller hat, and fearing that some
animadversions were coming, played a little irresolutely with its
upright scarlet feather.
'Your name has gone in for foreign service, Lewie,' said the General.
'To whom, sir?'
'The Director-General of Infantry.'
'Sent by you, uncle?'
'Yes, sir, by me.'
'You might at least have consulted with me in this matter. How cruel
of you, uncle, under all the circumstances!' exclaimed Lewie, with
sudden bitterness and intense anger.
'You will come to think it kindness in time, boy; I seek but to save
you from what I, in my time, underwent.'
'If I refuse to go?'
'Refuse, and compromise your honour and mine--yea, the honour of the
Brigade itself! My dear Lewie, when you have lived in this world as
long as I----'
'Why, uncle, you are only forty!'
'Not yet twice your age, certainly--well?'
'If detailed for the Colonies, anywhere, separation from Dolores will
be the death of me!' exclaimed the young man passionately.
'No, it won't; nor of Dolores either. So you are very much in love
with her?' asked the General with a scornful grin.
'God only knows how purely I love her!' exclaimed the nephew in a low
concentrated voice.
'Nature is full of freaks, certainly!'
'How?'
'She has varied the annals of the old fighting line of the Baronalds
of that Ilk, by having them varied by something else.'
'By what?'
'A moonstruck fool!'
'This is eccentricity combined with unwarrantable interference and
military tyranny,' cried Lewie, as he stuck his hat on his head and
drew himself haughtily up; then in a moment his mood changed, for he
loved this kinsman to whom he owed so much, and he said with an air
of dejection, 'How shall I ever tell Dolores of what you have done to
us both? I cannot sail for the Cape or the Caribbean Isles, and
leave her bound to me! I must release her from her promise, though I
know that she would wait a lifetime for me.'
'Poor fool that you are, Lewie! Do you forget the adage, "Out of
sight, out of mind"? You think that, like Penelope, she will wait
your return in hope, in love, and all the rest of it? You may be
like Ulysses, but never was there a Penelope among women.'
The General indulged in many more doubting and slighting remarks upon
women, particularly on their faith and constancy; and while he was
running on thus, grief struggled with rage and indignation for
mastery in the heart of Lewie, which seemed to stand still at this
sudden wrench, and the prospect of an abrupt and protracted
separation from Dolores--a separation that might be for years--every
moment of which would be an agonised heart-throb, it seemed to him
then!
How hard, how cruel, that they should be thus separated, and forced
to drink, as it were, of the bitter waters of Marah, because this
stern soldier hated all women so grotesquely, as the Countess had
said, viewing them all through the medium of one; while Lewie and
Dolores were so young that all the world seemed too small to contain
the measure of their joy, and now--now, thought was maddening!
He would resign, 'throw up his pair of colours,' as the phrase was
then; but his uncle had compromised him, by sending in his name to
the Director-General of Infantry!
Already in anticipation he imagined and rehearsed their parting;
already he saw her tears, her blanched face, and heard himself
entreating her not to forget him, while vowing himself to be true to
her--each regarding the other mournfully and yearningly, hand clasped
in hand, lip clinging to lip; then came the void of the departure;
the seas to plough, and the years that were to come with all their
doubts and longing.
It was too bad--too bad; he owed his uncle much--all in the world
indeed; but this stroke--this harsh interference, ended all between
them for ever!
Overwhelmed with dejection he cast himself into a chair; there the
General regarded him wistfully, and placing a hand kindly on his
shoulder, said:
'Lewie, shall I tell you of what once happened to me?'
But, full of his own terrible thoughts, Lewie made no reply.
'It may have been that evil followed me,' said the General, looking
down, with a hand placed in the breast of his coat.
'Evil?' repeated Lewie.
'Yes. When a boy I shot in the wood of Thomineau the last crane that
was ever seen in Scotland, and my old nurse predicted that a curse
would follow me therefor; thus, I never see a crane on a house-top
here that I don't remember her words. Now listen to what happened to
me when I was on detachment in the Dutch West India Islands. I
belonged then to the battalion of Charles Halkett Craigie, who six
years ago died Lieutenant-Governor of Namur, and we garrisoned Fort
Nassau, or New Amsterdam as it is called now. There,' continued the
General, alternately and nervously toying with his sword-knot and
shirt-frill, 'I was silly enough to fall in love with the daughter of
a wealthy merchant, a Dutch girl, like your Dolores, with some of the
old Castilian blood in her, though a lineal descendant of the great
Dutch family of Van Peere, to whom, in 1678, Berbice was granted by
the States-General as a perpetual and hereditary fief. She possessed
great beauty, and what proved more attractive still, a hundred sweet
and winning ways, with the art of saying pretty and even daring
little things, that endeared her to all--to none more than me. I was
a great ass, of course; but, heavens, what a coquette she was!'
'What was her name?' asked Lewie, with just the smallest amount of
interest.
'Excuse me telling, as I have sworn never to utter it again; nor do I
wish it to go down in the annals of our family. She wound herself
round my heart; my soul, my existence, seemed to be hers. My love
for her became a species of idolatry; but poverty tied my tongue, and
I dared not speak of it, till one evening, which I shall never
forget, the secret left me abruptly, drawn from me by _herself_. We
were lingering in the garden of her father's villa near the Berbice
river, and the stars were coming out, one by one, in the deep blue
sky above us. The hour was beautiful--all that a lover could wish;
and around us the atmosphere was fragrant with the perfume of
flowers--among those wonders of the vegetable world--the gigantic
water-lilies, each leaf of which is six feet in diameter. I was soon
to leave for Holland on duty, and my heart was wrung at the prospect
of a separation.
'I had her hand in mine: my secret was trembling on my lips; and
gazing into her eyes which were of a golden-brown colour, like that
of her hair, I said very softly:
'"If your eyes have at all times an expression so sweet, so beautiful
and winning, what must they seem to the man who reads love in
them--love for himself!"
'"Can you not read it now?" she asked in a low voice, as she cast her
long lashes down.
'I uttered her name and drew her close to me, my heart beating wildly
the while, in doubt whether this was one of the daring little
speeches I spoke of.
'Taking her sweet little face between my hands, I kissed her eyes and
forehead, on which she said, in her low cooing voice:
'"I wonder if you will ever think of me after you are gone?"
'"Darling, do you think there will ever be a day of my life when I
will not think you! Oh, the thought of our parting is worse than
death to me!"
('A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind,' thought Lewie, becoming
fully interested now.)
'"We are jesting," said she; "do not say this."
'"There is no need to tell you that I love you," said I, "for you
know that I do--dearly, fondly: that this love will last with life,
end with death;" and much more rubbish I said to the same purpose,
adding, "And you, if quite free, could you love me?"
'"I love you now; have I not admitted as much?"
'So it all came about in that way,' said the General; 'umph--what an
ass I was! May you never live to be deceived as that girl deceived
me! I thought our passion was mutual; and then perhaps she thought
so too--all perfidious though she was!
'But how happy--how radiantly happy I was for a time, till a Dutch
squadron came to anchor off the bar of the Berbice river, and in one
of the lieutenants thereof she discovered, or said she discovered, a
kinsman; and from that moment a blight fell upon me, and I discovered
that she was variable as the wind. Her attentions seemed divided for
a time; at last they were no longer given to me. Her smiles were for
the stranger; she sang to him, played to him, and talked to him only.
At home or abroad, riding or driving, or boating on the river, he was
ever by her side when not on board his ship.
'What rage and mortification were in my heart! The rules of the
service alone prevented me calling him to a terrible account, though
indeed he was not to blame.
'When I attempted to reason or remonstrate with her, she laughed;
then after a time became indignant. We parted in anger, and I felt
fury and death in my heart when she tossed my engagement-ring at my
feet.
'Once again we met, alone, and by the merest chance. How my pulses
throbbed as our eyes met, and she coyly presented her hand, which I
was craven enough, and fool enough, to fondle!
'"Oh, what have I done," said I, "that you should treat me thus? that
you should tread my heart under your feet, and leave me to long years
of sorrow and repining?"
'Then she laughed, and snatched her hand away, while once again my
soul seemed to die within me.
'"Do you love this kinsman?" I asked her fiercely; and never till my
last hour shall I forget her reply, or the almost cruel expression of
her face.
'"Yes; I love him--love him with my whole heart, and as I never loved
you!"
'Turning away, she left me--left me rooted to the spot. Yet she had
some shame, or compunction, left in her after all; for next day came
a would-be piteous letter of explanation, that she had given this
lieutenant a promise to please her father when he was dying--her
father who was his guardian; how she had never had the courage to
tell me so at first; that she did not dream I loved her so much; that
I must learn to forget her, though she would never forget me; and
so--a thousand devils!--there was an end of it.
'A few weeks after I saw her marriage in the papers, to the
Lieutenant--d--n his name--to her and her fortune of ever so many
thousand guilders.
'I tore her farewell letter into minute fragments, and set to work to
adopt her advice.'
'What was that?' asked Lewie.
'To forget her; and to do so I threw myself into my profession. I
never looked upon her face again, and I thanked God when I heard our
drums beating as we marched out of Fort Nassau, and when the accursed
shore of the Berbice river faded into the evening sea! Now, Lewie,
have I not the best of reasons for mistrusting women, and seeking to
save you from the fangs of this little ogress--this Dolores?'
'Ah, you know not her of whom you speak thus!' exclaimed Lewie.
'Nor am I likely to do so. Shun her, nephew! a girl, doubtless, with
a fair face, and a heart as black as Gehenna! Be firm, Lewie
Baronald!--firmness is a great thing, as you will find when you come
to be a general officer and as old as I am.'
Lewie had done his duty like a man and a soldier--like one worthy of
the glorious old Brigade--among the savages in the old Cape War; but
it was cruel, absurd, and, to use the Countess van Renslaer's phrase,
'grotesque,' that he should now be treated like a child, and in the
most momentous matter of his life and happiness too!
'I was weak enough--idiot enough, to wish I might die, then and
there, when that girl deceived me,' resumed his uncle bitterly; 'but
I knew that I must live on and on; I was very young, and thought I
might live for forty years with that pain in my heart at night and in
the morning. It is twenty years since then, and though the pain is
dead, I suppose, I cannot laugh at it yet, or the memory of Mercedes.'
'Mercedes! was that her name--Mercedes?'
'The devil--it has escaped me!'
'So that is the name which is not to go down in the annals of the
family?'
'Precisely so.'
'But surely, dear uncle, after all these years, you must have
forgiven her? Besides, she may be dead.'
'Dead to me, certainly! Forgiven her--well, perhaps I may have
forgiven her; but what can make a mere mortal forget a wrong, a
cruelty, or an injury?'
'Then you will not yield, but insist that I shall go abroad?'
'I will not yield an inch, and march you shall!' replied the General,
as he turned on his heel and left him.
'My darling Dolores--the first and only love of my life!' exclaimed
the young man passionately; 'how can he--how _dare_ he--act thus
towards us? But that I love him, I think, I may soon come to hate
him!'
He rushed away in search of Dolores; but she and the Countess were
from home. He was on duty at the Palace next day, and Dolores was to
be at the ridotto; thus, ere they could meet, events were to
transpire which were altogether beyond the conception of both.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE RIDOTTO.
The 'ridotto,' the Italian word then fashionable for an entertainment
of music and dancing, at the huge old red-brick villa of the Heer van
Otterbeck, Minister of State, in the vicinity of the Hague, was one
of the gayest affairs of the season.
The Prince of Orange (whose son afterwards became King of the
Netherlands) was not present, but all the rank, the wealth, and
beauty of the Hague were represented; and among those present were
many officers of the Scots Brigade, including the Earl of Drumlanrig,
General Dundas, in after years the captor of the Cape of Good Hope;
and there too was the Conservator of Scottish Privileges at Campvere,
John Home, then the celebrated author of the nearly forgotten tragedy
of 'Douglas.'
A band of the Dutch Guards furnished music on the lawn, and there
dancing was in progress in the bright sunshine of the summer
afternoon; and, in the fashion of the time, many of the guests were
arrayed in what they deemed the costume of Arcadian shepherds and
shepherdesses.
People danced early in the evenings of the eighteenth century, and
were abed about the time their descendants now begin to dress for a
ball. Ices were unknown; no wine was dispensed, but the liveried
servants of the Heervan Otterbeck regaled his guests on coffee, green
tea, orange tea, and many kinds of cakes and confectionery in the
intervals of the dancing, in which Dolores (all innocent and unaware
of the plots in progress against her peace, even her honour and
liberty--one of them born of avarice, wounded vanity, and foiled
desire) indulged joyously and with all her heart.
For the information of the ladies of the present day we shall detail
the dress worn by Dolores on that evening as described in the _Hague
Gazette_, and they may imagine how charming she looked:
'Her body and train were silver tissue, with a broad silver fringe;
her petticoat was white satin covered with the richest crape,
embroidered with silver, fastened up with bunches of silver roses,
tassels, and cords. Her pocket-holes were blonde, her stockings were
blue, clocked with silver, and her hair was twisted and plaited in
the most beautiful manner around a diamond comb.'
Seated under a tree, flushed with a recent dance, she was alternately
playing with her fan and silver pomander ball, with a crowd of
admirers about her, and looking alike pure and bright, with 'a skin
as though she had been dieted on milk and roses.'
'No wonder it is, perhaps, that Lewie loves me,' thought the girl, as
she looked at the reflection of her own sweet face in a little bit of
oval mirror in the back of her huge Dutch fan; 'I _am_ pretty!'
She might have said 'lovely,' and more than lovely; and then she
smiled consciously at her own vanity.
Under the genial influence of her surroundings the heart of the girl
was full of happiness, and had but one regret that Lewie Baronald was
not there. Yet, she thought, 'to-morrow I shall see him--to-morrow
be with my darling, who at this moment is thinking of me.'
And amid the brilliance of the scene, so rich in the variety of
colour and costume, the strains of the music and beauty of the old
Dutch pleasure-grounds, she almost longed to be alone, with the
grass, the birds, the insects, and the flowers--alone in the sweet
summer evening with the perfume of the roses, the jasmine, and the
glorious honeysuckle around her.
On one hand, about a mile distant, was the Hague, with all its Gothic
spires and pointed gables; on the other spread the landscape so usual
in that country of cheese and butter--church-towers and wind-mills,
bright farmhouses, long rows of willow-trees, their green foliage
ruffling up white in the passing breeze; the grassy dykes and
embankments, a long continuity of horizontal lines, which seemed so
tame and insipid to the mountaineers of the Scots Brigade, and to all
but the Dutch themselves.
Among the groups around her, Dolores, as usual now, heard the growing
political quarrel between Great Britain and Holland openly and freely
discussed, together with the consequent and too probable departure of
the Scots Brigade from the latter for ever. That seemed almost a
settled thing--a certainty, if the quarrel became an open one, and
the probabilities wrung the girl's affectionate heart.
How would all this affect her lover and herself? Alas! she knew not
that the doom of the former for foreign service was nearly a fixed
thing now! And she was fated to receive her first mental shock that
evening, all unwittingly, from the Earl of Drumlanrig, who drew near
her, and with the stately manner of the time lifted his hat with one
hand, and with the other touched her hand as he bowed over it.
The golden light of the setting sun fell full upon her hair, flecking
its bronze with glorious tints, and giving her beauty a brilliance
that, to the Earl's appreciative eye, was very striking.
'You look like one of Watteau's beauties, waiting to hear herself
addressed in the language of Love,' said the old peer, smiling.
'Love has three languages, my lord,' observed Dolores.
'Three?'
'The pen, the tongue, and the eyes.'
'True; but I am too old to use any of these now,' said the Earl,
shaking his powdered head.
'The evening is a lovely one,' observed Dolores, after a pause.
'And the landscape yonder, as it stretches away towards Delft, is
wonderfully steeped in sunshine; and but for its flatness----' the
Earl paused.
'Your Scottish eyes cannot forgive that,' said Dolores laughing, as
she recalled some of Lewie Baronald's complaints on the same subject;
'but people cannot live on scenery.'
'So the great Samuel Johnson has written.'
'Who is he?' asked Dolores.
'A great lexicographer--a wonderful English savant--who believes in a
ghost in London, yet discredited the late earthquake at Lisbon. I
think I have seen you at the Vyverberg with Lewis Baronald of my
battalion; he has the honour of being known to you.'
'He visits us,' replied Dolores, the flower-like tints of her sweet
face growing brighter as the Earl spoke.
'He is a fine and handsome fellow, young Baronald; but it is strange
that he should wish to quit the Hague when it possesses such peculiar
attractions,' said the Earl markedly, and with a courteous bow.
'Quit the Hague!' repeated Dolores, as if she had not heard him
aright.
'I do not know whether the desire to do so, has any connection with
his uncle's scheme for the recapture or restitution to Holland of the
Island of Goree, off the coast of Senegal, in defiance of the old
Treaty of Nimeguen, which gave it to France, a scheme which will win
him the favour of their Mightinesses; but young Baronald's name was
sent, through me this morning, to the Director-General of Infantry,
for instant foreign service.'
'Foreign service!' whispered Dolores, in an almost breathless voice,
while her white throat gave a sharp nervous gasp, and her long lashes
drooped over her beautiful eyes. 'Surely, my lord, this must be some
mistake. Lewie--he had no desire to leave Holland, in any way--he
dreaded nothing so much as the departure of the Brigade to Britain;
and this--this----'
'No mistake, I assure you,' interrupted the Earl, all unaware of the
astonishment he was exciting and the pain he was inflicting, and both
of which he must have perceived had not the Heer van Otterbeck,
fortunately for Dolores, approached at that moment, and tapping and
proffering his Sèvres china snuff-box, 'buttonholed' him on the
inevitable subjects, the quarrel between Britain and Holland, Paul
Jones in the Texel, and Commodore Fielding's conduct in firing on the
Dutch fleet in the Channel, which the Commodore did with hearty
goodwill.
But for Dolores, the charms of the ridotto had vanished now; and in
sore perturbation of spirit and anxiety of heart, she bade her host
and hostess a hurried farewell, summoned her sedan, and took her
departure homeward.
The lights, the music--the music of Lulli; the _minuet de la cour_,
and the gaiety of the ridotto, faded away behind her as the heiress
took the somewhat lonely road that led to the villa of her mother.
She was escorted to her sedan by an officer of the Brigade, a friend
of Lewie's, who, as he closed the roof of it over her, thought that
she looked like--as he vowed to some others--'a lovely queen in
wax-work done up in a glass-case.'
CHAPTER IX.
THE ABDUCTORS.
What was this mystery concerning the movements and intentions of
Lewie Baronald, on which the Earl of Drumlanrig had so abruptly but
unconsciously thrown a light?
When last they met and parted, Lewie had given no hint of any desire
for foreign service, and certainly, with the relations then existing
between himself and her, it was the last thing to be thought of.
'Oh,' thought Dolores, 'that I were at home to consult mamma on this
amazing subject!'
Her bearers seemed to crawl; she narrowly opened and shut her fan
again and again in her impatience, and stamped her little foot on the
floor of the sedan in her irritation and anxiety.
Yes! that horrid General--that odious uncle, the eccentric
woman-hater, was no doubt at the bottom of it, and had thus resolved
to separate Lewie from her, and hot tears started to her eyes at the
thought.
Though in the immediate vicinity of the Hague, the road was as lonely
as those who awaited her thereon could have wished. The blue dome of
heaven, a dome studded with diamonds--each itself a world--was
overhead; and steady and silvery was the light of the uprisen moon,
above the far expanse of the level landscape.
Suddenly Dolores heard the sound of voices; there were threats on one
hand and expostulation on the other. The sedan, with a violent jolt,
was suddenly deposited on the ground, and its bearers were dashed
aside, as she supposed, by foot-pads. Then a shriek of dismay
escaped Dolores, when a man, whose face was half-concealed by a crape
mask, threw up the roof of the sedan, opened the door and attempted
to drag her out by the hand.
She saw another similarly masked, and a caleche, with a pair of
horses, close by.
Never dreaming of outrage for a moment, she thought that she must be
the victim of some extraordinary mistake, till she recognised the
voice of Maurice Morganstjern, when her alarm and astonishment
instantly changed to indignation.
'Maurice,' she exclaimed, 'for whom do you mistake me? What outrage
is this?'
'No mistake at all, my pretty cousin; will you please to take your
seat in this caleche?' he replied deliberately.
'For what purpose?'
'Time will show, beloved Dolores.'
'Loose my hand. I wish none of your fair words; they are ever
hateful and unwelcome to my ear: more so than ever when you come
thus--as you must be--intoxicated,' she added, believing this to be
the case.
'Beware, cousin--beware! You know how I love you, and yet you spurn
me. Come, Schrekhorn, and help me to lift her into the caleche. For
all the past bitterness I shall have a sweet revenge; and, Dolores,
you will learn to love me, when you will have none else in this world
to cling to.'
On seeing the Heer van Schrekhorn, of whose character she had heard
something, approach her, the girl looked wildly round in terror: the
road was lonely; her home was at some distance, yet the lights in its
windows were visible; but no help was nigh. She now perceived that
nothing less than her forcible abduction was daringly intended; but
what lay in the future beyond that, she could scarcely realise.
Her first fears returned with double force, for she knew the
recklessness of the two men at whose mercy she found herself. How
lovely and helpless she looked!
Ruffian and coward though he was, Maurice Morganstjern was a
consummate egotist, and her continued indifference and contempt of
him had deeply wounded his _amour propre_, and roused a spirit of
revenge.
'It is useless to fight against Fate, Cousin Dolores; and Fate
decrees that you are to be mine!' said he, firmly grasping her hand.
'Oh that I were a man!' exclaimed Dolores.
'For what purpose?'
'To strike you to the earth for your insolence and daring.'
'In that case I would not seek to carry you off; so, I thank Heaven
that you are not a man, sweet cousin!' He placed his face close to
hers, and lowering his voice, said through his clenched teeth:
'Listen to me, Dolores; you have, I fear, plighted yourself to the
Scotsman Baronald in ignorance of yourself, and now I am here to
rescue you from the death in life to which your girlish folly would
doom you. I will soon teach you to forget that artful interloper, if
you ever thought seriously about him, which I cannot believe, and our
marriage will alter all your ideas.'
These references to her lover infuriated Dolores, who was a
high-spirited girl; but he wound his arms round her despite all her
efforts. With all her strength she kept him, however, at arms'
length, exclaiming:
'I hate you--oh, how I hate you!'
'Cease this nonsense, cousin; a day is coming when you will love me
as much as you may think you hate me now!'
'And what will cause the change?' she asked scornfully.
'Marriage.'
'Why waste time thus?' asked the Heer van Schrekhorn, who had not yet
spoken, and who listened to all this with manifest impatience and
uneasiness; 'we know not who may come upon us; so into the caleche
with her at once!' he added with an oath.
''Sdeath, but she is as strong as I am!' exclaimed Morganstjern, as
he strove to drag her from the sedan.
Her slender figure stood very erect, and with tiny hands she strove
to free herself from his odious grasp; but the scorn, indignation,
and passionate resentment that flashed in her dark eyes and curled
her tender lips, now gave place to much of genuine fear of her
assailants and how far their daring might carry them, especially when
the Heer laid his brutal hands upon her; and uttering a wild cry she
clung to the sedan, and without a resort to extreme violence would
not be torn from it.
Meanwhile the driver of the caleche, who was in ignorance of the
purpose his employers had in view, looked on somewhat scared, and was
thinking of how he might, in the future, be handled by the
Burgomaster or other authorities.
Dolores suddenly found her strength give way, and felt about to
faint, when she heard a loud and wrathful exclamation as Morganstjern
was dashed aside on one hand, Schrekhorn knocked down in a heap on
the other, and there towered between her and them a tall
military-looking man, wearing a Khevenhüller hat, and having a
scarlet roquelaure wrapped round him.
The latter he instantly threw off, and drew his sword, on which the
driver of the caleche whipped up his horses, and fled at full speed
towards the Hague, leaving his employers to get out of the affair as
they best could.
The first impulse of the two conspirators was to unsheath their
swords also; but their second was to pause ere attempting to use
them, as they recognised in their assailant an officer of the Scots
Brigade, and one of high rank apparently by his gold aiguilette.
'Protect me, sir--save me!' implored Dolores.
'Scoundrels!' exclaimed the new-comer, waving in a circle round her
his long straight sword, the blade of which glittered in the
moonlight, and at sight of which Morganstjern fairly shrunk back;
'scoundrels, come on if you dare!'
'Accursed fool that I have been to delay as I did!' said Morganstjern.
'An accursed fool indeed!' rejoined the Heer furiously.
'Defend yourselves!' exclaimed the officer, attacking them both at
once, and in a moment Morganstjern found his sword twisted out of his
hand and flung high in the air by a circular parry, while the Heer
was rendered defenceless by a thrust between the bones of his
sword-arm, on which they both turned and fled, muttering curses loud
and deep.
'Heaven sent you to my aid, sir, just in time,' said Dolores,
bursting into tears now; 'another moment, and I should have fainted
helplessly in their clutches.'
'These seemed no common brawlers--can you name them?' asked General
Kinloch, for he it was, as he sheathed his sword, and lifted his
Khevenhüller respectfully.
'I can name them; but would, as yet, rather be excused, sir.'
'Henckers! I should like to see both tied to the _Gesteel Paul_'
(_i.e._, the whipping-post).
The General now found himself face to face, in the bright moonlight,
with a young lady of more than ordinary beauty; but, when the
expression of her eyes, her thick brown hair, defined eyelashes, and
lovely lips reminded him, as he thought, of a face he had known long
ago, and loved to look upon; and her voice, too, was so like the
voice of that other, coming as it were out of the mists of memory, he
grew cold and rigid in manner, as he said:
'I have no desire to penetrate your secret, young lady, if secret
there is that leads you to conceal the names of these men.'
'I have no secrets, sir; but one of these assailants is my near
kinsman--a cousin,' replied Dolores, a little haughtily.
'Then allow me to have the honour of escorting you home.'
'I thank you, sir; the gate is close by.'
Again the courteous officer lifted his hat, and held it in one hand,
while he led Dolores to the iron gate, which led to the garden-path
terminating at the door of the Countess's villa; and then bidding her
farewell, he turned away, his good opinion of her by no means
increased by her peculiar reticence as to the names of those from
whose outrageous conduct he had saved her.
'Odd--very!' he muttered; 'but every woman is an enigma!'
As he was about to close the iron gate, something glittering on the
gravelled path caught his eye, and it proved to be a bracelet of
considerable value, which had become injured in the struggle between
Dolores and her assailants, and thus no doubt dropped from her wrist.
'One of her vain gauds, of course,' muttered the General; 'yet why
should she not wear such, as all other female tricksters do?--a
pretty creature--a charming girl, in fact! But what the devil am I
saying? with all her prettiness she is no doubt false as she is
fair--Dead Sea fruit, in fact. I shall send her bauble by my servant
to-morrow, and--but no--egad! I'll deliver it in person.'
Returning to the door of the villa, the General used the great
knocker, with which--all unknown to him--the hand of his nephew Lewie
Baronald was so familiar.
CHAPTER X.
THE FAIR WIDOW.
While waiting on the door-step he looked a little contemptuously at
the female ornament, though it was suggestive of a slender and a
pretty wrist; but suddenly the expression of his face changed. He
had either seen that gold bracelet before, or one most strangely like
it, with a similar circle of diamonds round a large emerald; it gave
him some curious, angry and bitter thoughts.
'Mynheer, did you knock?' asked a servant, rousing him from his
reverie; and the General then became aware that the door was open,
and a flood of warm light was streaming from a chandelier through a
stately entrance-hall beyond.
He made known his errand, asked for the young lady, and was ushered
into the drawing-room, which at that moment was untenanted.
Then, as now, the Dutch drawing-room was deemed a kind of sanctum or
state-room, entered but seldom, the chief glory of which is always
its highly-polished floor; so much so, that in some parts of Holland
the visitor is still obliged to take off his shoes, or be very
careful how he cleans them before admittance is granted.
In the aspect of the mansion there was much that indicated a
substantial account at the Bank of Amsterdam; but that was as nothing
to General Kinloch: he never thought of it.
By the light of a large lamp, the General had only time to remark
that on the walls hung some clever and brilliant flower-pieces by De
Heem, Huysum, and others, when Dolores stood before him, still clad
in the brilliant costume she had worn at the ridotto, and looking
radiantly beautiful.
Though surprised by the visit, she was glad to see her preserver so
soon again. Her heart was full of intense gratitude for the succour
he had afforded her, and she felt conscious that in her confusion and
perturbation of spirit she had not shown enough, or half enough, of
gratitude to him; yet he had saved her from a fate that would have
been worse than death.
With a low bow he tendered her the bracelet, with a few well-chosen
words of explanation.
'Thank you, dear sir, a thousand times!' she exclaimed; 'it was
mamma's, and its loss would have grieved me much. To whom am I
indebted for all this kindness?'
'My name is Kinloch--General Kinloch, at your service,
Colonel-Commandant of the Scots Brigade,' he replied with another
profound old-fashioned bow.
Lewie's uncle--the terrible General--the ogre, as she had been wont
to call and deem him! The breath of poor Dolores was quite taken
away with surprise.
'Mamma is a widow,' said she after a pause; 'you must see her and
receive her thanks. A widow and very beautiful,' she added in
thought, with the hope that the Countess might win the favour of this
grim soldier for Lewie and herself.
'A widow,' repeated the General, with an unmistakable grimace, and
with ill-suppressed cynicism in his voice; 'oh, indeed!' and he
thought with a writer who says, 'A widow smacks of the charnel-house;
she either did love her husband, or she didn't; and in either case
who would care to be his successor?'
The Countess at that moment entered the room and came forward with
one of her brightest smiles; but suddenly she paused, and the smile
faded out of her beautiful face. Kinloch returned her bow with a
startled air, and to the acute eyes of Dolores it seemed that a
recognition, that was no common one, took place between her mother
and the General.
For a time--but a very little time--amid her terror and dismay at the
attack made upon herself, Dolores had forgotten the Earl of
Drumlanrig's startling intelligence about Lewie's departure for
foreign service; but now the memory of it returned in full force, and
she looked coldly and earnestly yet distrustfully upon the General as
their mutual enemy.
'Mamma,' said she, 'this is the gentleman of whom I told you, and who
saved me from my assailants.'
'My daughter is under the greatest of obligations to you--how can I
thank you, General Kinloch?' added the Countess, presenting her hand,
which he touched slightly, but with reluctance and hesitation.
'Mercedes,' said he; 'you recognise me, then!'
Both were agitated and pale; but the Countess was the first to
recover herself.
'What--you know each other, and he even knows your name!' exclaimed
Dolores with blank astonishment.
Finding a necessity for speaking, the Countess thanked him for the
service so promptly and gallantly rendered to her daughter, and
expressed no small indignation at the daring of Maurice Morganstjern
and his abettor; but while she spoke the General listened to her as
one in a dream, while the sorely puzzled Dolores looked wonderingly
on.
The original of the miniature now concealed in a secret drawer of the
Dutch cabinet before referred to, treasured for years through all his
alleged misogyny, was again before him.
'It is long since we met,' said the Countess.
'And--parted,' replied the General, in a hard voice.
'You have attained high rank now.'
'I was but a lieutenant in Halkett-Craigie's Battalion, _then_,' said
he pointedly.
'Sir, I pray you to be seated,' and he mechanically took the chair
indicated by a motion of her pretty white hand; 'you are not much
changed since--since----'
'And you are scarcely changed at all.'
In the lovely matron, in ripe and full womanhood, he had recognised
her in a moment--the girl of the hidden miniature, the early love of
his youth, Mercedes who had deceived him, who had well-nigh broken
his heart and embittered his whole existence.
The golden-brown hair his hands had once loved to fondle and toy
with, seemed now more golden than ever, as it was sprinkled a little
with brown _marchale_, in the fashion of the day; but Dolores, in
advance of it, wore her rich hair without any such doubtful
accessory, and simply brushed backward over a low toupee that showed
the contour of her low, broad, and beautiful forehead.
Twenty years had come and twenty years had gone since he last looked
on them, yet in the eyes of Mercedes was the old subtle influence, in
her voice the old subtle power; and he felt both so keenly--so
intensely--that the thrill which passed through the heart of Kinloch
amounted to--if we may use a paradox--a joyous pain!
Memories of the past time, by the Berbice river--memories sweet and
sad and thrilling--were coming back with strange and curious force;
the past returned, the present fled, and much that both had thought
was long since dead, was reawakened within them.
'Mamma!' exclaimed Dolores, with irrepressible impatience and
curiosity; 'you know General Kinloch! you have met before!'
'Yes, Dolores darling--my heart certainly tells me so,' replied the
Countess, colouring deeply.
'Heart!' said the General; 'madame, the heart is an obsolete organ,
in this our eighteenth century.'
'Perhaps it is too late in life to assume you can have any interest
in me now; but if you will not, even once, take my hand kindly in
yours, I shall think that it is not wounded love, but wounded pride,
that inspires you still.'
The Countess spoke sweetly, and with one of her brightest and most
caressing smiles.
He pressed her little hand for a moment; it was a mighty advance for
the General to do so, but the touch sent a thrill to his heart, and
he thought how absurdly young she looked to be the mother of Dolores!
'Good heavens!' that young lady was thinking, 'wonders will never
cease.'
So the courteous gentleman, the brave Scottish soldier who had saved
her--Lewie's terrible uncle--was her mother's early lover!
'The past is gone,' said the General gravely and sadly, and making an
effort to withdraw, and yet staying nevertheless; 'so let us not tear
open an old wound.'
'Pardon, and permit me to heal it, if I can,' said the Countess
coquettishly, as she touched his bronzed hand with her lovely lips,
and at this touch he trembled; so Dolores, saying something about
taking off her ornaments, withdrew and left them, wonder and joy
mingling in her heart together, while the General made an effort to
appear indifferent, and to speak calmly, an effort in which he,
eventually, signally failed.
'It is strange, madame,' said he; 'but I have lived so completely in
camp and caserne, that I knew not that Mercedes--the Mercedes of
other days, and the Countess van Renslaer, of whom my nephew speaks
so much, were one and the same.'
'My husband, the Lieutenant----'
The General coughed, and said interrupting:
'Whom you preferred to poor John Kinloch of the Scots Brigade--well?'
'Died soon after succeeding to his title--a Flemish one--and I have
been a widow since.'
'All these years?'
'All these years.'
Her long dark eyelashes flickered as she looked coyly at him, and
then cast them down.
'I have never cared for another woman since _that_ time,' said the
General after a pause; 'and I never shall if I lived for--for--as
long as the Brigade has been in Holland--and that is two hundred
years.'
She laughed, but noiselessly; for she knew that when he began to talk
thus, how his thoughts were wandering, and that he might, after all,
begin to think that his future, for pleasure or pain, lay in the
little white hands of the charming widow before him--of herself--the
Mercedes of his early days by the Berbice river.
'As for the Count----' she began, but paused, for the General made a
gesture of impatience, and playing with his sword-knot, said:
'Well, you married him, and not John Kinloch. You are a free woman
now; would you like to take my heart in your toils again, Mercedes,
to make sport of it after all these years?'
'Do not speak to me thus,' said she in her most seductive voice, as
she touched his hand caressingly; 'I say too, after all these years,
do not be so implacable. Ah! what must I think of you?'
'Think what you please.'
Again the long lashes flickered, and the snow-white eyelids drooped.
The General felt his position was becoming imperilled, that he 'was
getting his flanks turned,' and so forth; and he rose to retire.
But the General resumed his seat, and began to look a little vacantly
and helplessly about him.
CHAPTER XI.
OMNIA VINCIT AMOR.
'In the course of our lives it chances,' says a writer truly, 'that
most of us influence directly or indirectly, in a greater or lesser
degree, the lives of others; but, as a general rule, we do not
recognise this influence until _after_ the effect has taken place.'
The Commandant of the Scots Brigade was yet to realise this.
There was a strange tremor in the usually stout heart of the general
now, for though, after the sudden recognition of his first and, sooth
to say, only love, he had begun to school himself to meet her with
calmness or indifference, as a new friend, or old acquaintance, he
felt himself as wax in her hands; and that it was impossible, even
after the lapse of all these years, to meet her unmoved, and to sit
eye to eye, and listening to her voice--the voice that had thrilled
his heart in the old time, and was thrilling it now again.
He took her hand in his, and she permitted him to retain it; but for
the life of him he knew not what to say, or how to take up the thread
of the old story; so she took the initiative.
'You were but a young lieutenant,' said she softly, 'when last we
met.'
'And parted, as I said before.'
His reply conveyed a species of reproach, as he had much to forgive;
yet it seemed that there was an almost unconscious appeal in this
reference to the old tie that bound them together once, and that now,
did not seem to have been so completely severed after all.
'To my dying day, Mercedes, I thought I should remember your farewell
glance at me,' said he.
'Forget it now,' she replied softly.
'Can I do otherwise?' he asked, as he read the shy light in downcast
eyes. 'But oh, Mercedes, if--if----'
'What?'
'But I must not think it now--if your sweet lips should be but
tricking me again!'
'Oh, think not so!'
Round hers his hand closed once again, and with its clasp came the
earnest of a promise that each would never fail the other again; and
then a great brightness seemed suddenly to fall upon the hearts and
lives of both.
'Oh face so loved in the past time!' said Kinloch, as he drew her
towards him and kissed her fondly, to the growing amazement of
Dolores, who was about to enter the room, but withdrew softly, her
heart tremulous with joy, though laughing, as a young girl is sure to
do, at what she deemed a pair of elderly lovers; and yet the General
was barely in his fortieth year.
It seemed to her that his resentment against her sex in general, and
against widows in particular, had evaporated very quickly!
The General had felt the cold coquetry of Mercedes in the past--her
desertion of him--too keenly, not to be deeply stirred and to feel
her influence now.
The old love that in his heart had never died, but had been curiously
woven up with a species of hate, came to the surface once more, and
the assurance of it was flattering to the still beautiful Mercedes.
'Love,' it is said, 'cannot be measured by time; it springs up like
fungus in the night. It flourishes apace, and, like the wind, none
know whence it cometh, or whither it goeth.'
'Could you care still for such a fogey as I have become?' asked the
General in a low voice; 'care for me again, I mean?'
'I am not now the thoughtless girl you loved in the past time.'
'But you are the woman I love now--the girl I never forgot and never
ceased to love!' he exclaimed, while surprised at his own impetuosity
and fluency. 'Once, at least, in our lives heaven seems to open to
all of us: it opened to me when I first knew and loved Mercedes; and
now heaven seems to have come to me again!'
And now, to the memory of both, there came back the murmur of the
Berbice river, with its giant water-lilies; the glorious moon and
stars of the tropics, looking down on the grassy ramparts of Fort
Nassau, the palisades and spires of New Amsterdam, and the
love-scenes of the past time; and when Kinloch rose to depart, it was
with the promise that he would return betimes on the morrow.
It would be rather difficult to describe the emotions of the whilom
misogynist, as he turned on his homeward way.
Joy at being restored to Mercedes, and gratified vanity that he could
yet inspire love, conflicted curiously with a dread that he had
compromised his own dignity and his long-vaunted opinions of the sex
by this sudden surrender--this yielding to her great beauty and her
old influence over him.
What would Drumlanrig, Dundas, and other old chums of the Brigade
think of him? and what would Lewie Baronald say?--poor Lewie, whom he
had doomed to foreign service to save him, as he had phrased it,
'from the fangs of Dolores'!
He felt his brown cheek blush hotly at the thought.
'That must be amended,' he muttered; 'to-morrow I shall see the
Director-General of Infantry.'
It was impossible for him to shut his eyes to the fact that Dolores
was every way a desirable bride for Lewie; and that, apart from her
being the daughter of his own first and only love, she was the
_lionne_ of the Hague, who was fêted and courted, whose toilettes
were copied, whose sallies were retailed, and who was the central
figure in society there.
At last he stood in his old familiar room, where hung more than one
old tattered colour of the Brigade, riven by Spanish bullets and
Walloon pikes. How much had passed--how great was the change in his
thoughts, hopes, and intentions, since he had left it, but a few
hours ago!
He scarcely thought himself the same John Kinloch, as he drew forth
the miniature from its secret drawer in the old cabinet, and sat down
to contemplate it with loving and tender thoughts, and literally to
'feast' his eyes, as the phrase is, on the face of her who, before
she went to sleep that night, pressed her ripe coral lips to her own
hand; and they sought the exact place where the General, ere leaving,
had pressed _his_.
CHAPTER XII.
CONCLUSION.
We have not much more to relate.
Maurice Morganstjern quitted the Hague suddenly, and betook him on
his diplomatic mission, whatever it was, to Paris; and his compatriot
the Heer van Schrekhorn thought it conducive to his personal safety
to make himself scarce about the same time; so both were beyond the
just vengeance of Lewie Baronald.
Great was the amazement of the latter when he found his uncle, the
General, quite _en famille_ at the villa of the Countess, and learned
from Dolores something of what had transpired on the night of the
ridotto, and of her perilous adventure.
It seemed simply incredible!
'How now, uncle, about the name of Mercedes?' he asked him laughingly.
'What about it?' asked the General testily, yet reddening like a
great schoolboy.
'Is it to go down in the annals of our family?'
'I hope so.'
"And how about all the Dead Sea fruit, the blackness of Gehenna, your
firmness, and all that?'
'Silence, you young dog!'
And merrily laughed Dolores as she ran her white fingers over the
piano, and sang a verse of the song that had now become so familiar
to her:
'The love that I have chosen
Is to my heart's content;
The salt sea will be frozen,
Before that I repent.
Repent it will I never,
Until the day I dee,
Though the Lowlands o' Holland
Have parted my love and me.'
'And your home is Scotland--the home to which you may take me, is it
like this?' asked the Countess softly of the General, as they sat in
the recess of a window; and from the question it may be safely
gathered that events had progressed rapidly between them.
'Like _this_!' exclaimed the General; 'you must see it for yourself
to know the difference,' he added, as his eye swept the dull, dead
flat of the Dutch landscape--flat as the flattest part of England.
Then he laughed as he thought of Thominean overshadowed by the
majestic Ochills, the deep glens of which, with their solemn shadows
and silence, are calculated to fill the soul at times with a species
of poetic or melancholy ecstasy; the grey precipices past which the
river rushes to Loch Leven, and the old mansion on its rock--half
chateau and half fortress--of which Mercedes would some day be
chatelaine.
But soon after all this, a shock awaited the General, when an orderly
dragoon placed in his hand a large official packet addressed to
himself, and sealed with the official seal of the Dutch Republic.
It announced that which had long been expected, that their High
Mightinesses the States-General had dispensed with the services of
the Scots Brigade, and a day was named when it would embark on board
a squadron of British ships for Scotland, and be placed, as so many
of its officers now desired, at the disposal of his Britannic Majesty.
The General's heart gave a throb. He had ruthlessly been on the
point of separating his nephew from Dolores; and here, perhaps, he
might eventually be separated from the old love he had so recently
found again!
But Mercedes placed her hand in his, in token that they would never
separate in life again.
So the old Brigade, of gallant memory, was going home _en masse_ at
last--home to Scotland, with its mighty crop of laurels, gathered in
the Lowlands of Holland, France, and Spain; home after two hundred
years of foreign service, during which, as the Scottish
commander-in-chief soon after told its soldiers in Edinburgh, they
had captured in battle and siege many a standard, but _never lost
one_.
The brilliant sun of a July evening was shining on the broad blue
waters of the Maese, and the pale-green willow groves that fringe its
banks; on the tossing sails of many a windmill far afield; on the red
mansions and spires of Rotterdam, the great brick tower of St.
Laurence, and the high gables of the Hoeg Straat; on the long line of
the Boompjies with all their stately elms, when the old Scots
Brigade, with the drums of all its battalions waking Dutch echoes for
the last time to 'The Lowlands of Holland,' marched to the
landing-place for embarkation, accompanied by vast crowds of
sympathising, admiring, regretful, and kindly-hearted Dutch folk; for
a thousand old historical, warlike, and, better than all, friendly
ties and associations were, on that evening, to be severed for ever!
Before that day of embarkation came, two marriages, which created the
deepest interest in the departing Brigade (which the brides
accompanied), had been celebrated at the Schotsche Kirk of the Hague,
by its pastor, the Reverend Ichabod Crane: on which occasion there
were present the Burgomaster; Heer van Otterbeck, the Minister of
State; and two or three of their Mightinesses of the States-General.
Need we say whose marriages these were?
[Illustration: Chapter 2 headpiece]
THE STORY
OF THE
CID RODRIGO OF BIVAR.
[Illustration: Chapter 2 tailpiece]
THE STORY OF THE CID RODRIGO OF BIVAR.
It is in old Castile, and on the banks of the rapid Ebro, that our
story opens, during the wonderful era of the Cid Campeador, when in
Spain there were about twenty kings, some of whom were Christians,
but more were Mohammedans; and in the land were many independent
warlike lords, who roved about on horseback, completely armed, with
trains of knights, offering their services to princes and princesses
who were at war.
This custom, says Voltaire, had already spread over Europe, but
nowhere to such an extent as in Spain; the Christian knights were
dubbed as such, with many solemn ceremonies, 'and watched their arms
before the altar of the Virgin Mary; but the Moslem paladins were
content with simply girding on a scimitar. This was the origin of
knights-errant and of such numbers of single combats.'
What with twenty kings all warring among themselves; lawless robbers
in the Sierras to fight; Jews to capture, torture, and mulct;
knights-errant besetting the highways and bridges with shield
uplifted to meet all comers; Moors on every hand to slay without
mercy, but more particularly at Seville, Granada, and Valencia, and
the still more abhorred Morabathans, the restless spirits who wished
to be up and doing, for good or for evil, amid the din of kettledrums
and cymbals, the glitter of lances and banners and so forth, must
have had plenty of work cut out for them in the sunny Spain of those
days, long ere Cervantes had laughed her 'chivalry away.'
Near the right bank of the Ebro, about ten miles from Burgos, at the
base of the Montanos de Santander, stood the Convent of Miraflores;
and though many times repaired and renewed, it stands there still:
but it was in the zenith of its fame when one day in the June of that
year, while Sancho, the ambitious King of Castile, was preparing to
besiege Zamora, an armed knight reined up his horse on its most
sequestered side, where one solitary window overlooked the river and
all the groves of olive and myrtle that grew thereby.
Though we write of a period so remote, strange to say the window is
there still in the old wall, against which the Moors have more than
once hurled their strength in vain, and it projects like a carved
stone cage of three pointed arches, supported by the head and wings
of a time-worn and gigantic figure of grotesque design; and thereat
was a fair young face, that grew bright with joy when the young
knight drew near.
The latter was a typical Spaniard, vigorous, tall, and well developed
in figure; black haired, with eyes full of fire; dark, well-defined
eyebrows, and features sharp and grave. Save that he wore a species
of Moorish basinet, bright as silver, with a tippet of mail; he was
clothed in chain armour to the tips of his fingers and the soles of
his feet, for the land teemed with fighting and peril, and no man
ventured abroad save completely equipped. His spurs were goads
without rowels, and a cross-hilted sword hung in his glittering belt.
The girl who welcomed his approach was not a _religieuse_, for young
ladies were boarded in convents then as now; but her costume declared
her to be of rank, as it was of shiny, golden-yellow silk, trimmed
with black of the same material, tightly sleeved to the wrist; and
she wore her thick, dark hair plaited in several divisions, after the
old Gothic custom that lingered still in Spain.
Her complexion was fair and bright; her features delicate and
harmonious; she was bewitching rather than beautiful--quite enough so
to be the heroine even of a romance! and the _Madre Abadesa_ of
Miraflores, who had very special instructions given her regarding the
care of this young lady, had accorded her the secluded apartment with
the projecting window--a circumstance which led to the young knight
discovering and making her acquaintance, a fact that would have
filled the good lady with intense dismay--for by flirting their
falcons, the young pair had come to a flirtation, and rather more,
between themselves.
In those days he who bore the hawk on his left wrist in the most
graceful way, was deemed the most accomplished cavalier; and to
please ladies, it was the fashion to play flirty tricks with the
pinions of their hawks. Thus, more than once, when passing, had the
strange knight's hawk flown upward to the full length of its silken
jess to flirt with the merlin on the hand of the lady, and hence it
came to pass that the owners met as we find them. In those days
people seem to have fallen in love more suddenly and desperately than
they do in our railway times, and their love seemed always to delight
in struggling with difficulties.
There was much of the Romeo and Juliet passionate tenderness in the
suddenly-developed regard of these two, but we cannot suppose that
the lovers of those days spoke more 'on stilts' than those of the
present time. The old story that was first told in Eden will have
ever the tender trivialities and endearing epithets, so we shall
imagine all these said, and come to prose at once.
'Your name, señor mio--dear love rather--in all your visits you have
never yet told it to me?' she said softly.
'I have to win it yet,' he replied.
'Where?' she asked.
'Where does a hidalgo win his name save in battle against the Moorish
curs? When so won, you shall know it. But yours, sweet lady?'
'May not, must not, be told to one who conceals his own.'
'But I must call you something, Estrella mia,' said he tenderly.
'Then your "star" be it,' said she, laughing and kissing her hand to
him, 'and my love and my prayers go with you to battle.'
'Nay, I go not to battle just now.'
'Whither then, and armed thus?'
'To fulfil a vow of vengeance on a craven who smote my aged father on
the beard with his mailed hand.'
'Is it not better to forgive?'
'Some things, perhaps, but not a deed like that! Ay de mi, is it not
hard for you to be shut up in this solitary place, dependent on
yourself for all joy and amusement?'
'Nay, señor mio, I am content; and is not contentment joy? I shall
never be happier than I am, till I rejoin my dear old father.'
'Where?' asked the knight.
'To tell that would be to disclose myself.'
'Tie a ribbon to my lance-head, thou dear one, and I shall dip it in
the blood of him I have vowed to slay.'
She did so, saying in the spirit of the age:
'Rival, if you can, the Cid Rodrigo, who has been known to meet ten
knights in arms, and unhorse them all; who, with his sword, slew that
giant Moor, the Caliph of Cordova, and released six Christian
maidens.'
The knight laughed lightly.
'Dios guarde à ustéd, mi querida!' he exclaimed, gathering up his
reins, and spurring his horse--the Babieca of so many ballads and
romances--for sooth to say, he was the identical Cid Rodrigo of whom
she spoke; and waving a farewell to 'the sweet face at the window,'
he rode off with lance and helmet flashing in the sun, and she
watched him till he disappeared in the direction of Miranda--watched
him departing on his deadly mission with less anxiety, perhaps, than
a girl of the present day would see her lover start by express train.
The Convent of Miraflores, with its garden and vineyard, formed a
kind of oasis in the long sweeping plain at the foot of the rugged
Sierra; shy bustards stalked about there in the loneliness amid the
silent scenery, for silent it is in Spain, where there are no singing
birds. A train of mules crossing the waste, where the wild
mignonette grows still in sheets of green; a solitary horseman in
mail, with lance-head glittering in the sun, or a friar jogging along
on a mule, alone were seen from time to time from the convent windows.
Gentle and soft in disposition, the fair _pensionaria_ had a deal of
pent-up tenderness at her disposal. Hitherto it had been bestowed
upon pet birds and flowers, mingled with many prayers in chapel and
much musing and reverie at the projecting window, where she would sit
for hours in that non-literary age, when there were no books, no
Berlin wool-work, and no pianos, gazing at the sparkling stars of the
summer night or at the morning sun, as he tipped the transparent
foliage of the myrtle groves and lit up the current of the Ebro; till
a day came when she was roused and excited by finding a gallant hawk,
hooded and plumed, flirting with the merlin on her wrist, and saw its
owner, the young mailed horseman, below the window regarding her with
pleasure and admiration; and as he had some trouble in luring back
his bird, a secret acquaintance, that ripened into love, began
between these two. The girl--for she was but a girl, and very young
too--loved with all her newly-awakened woman's heart and with a wild
yearning, very different, perhaps, from that of a young woman of the
present day, for her life was one of intense seclusion, and he
rapidly became (like Romeo) 'the god of her idolatry' in the
unreasoning enthusiasm of those days of romance and chivalry.
How little could she dream that her lover was the Cid Rodrigo of
Bivar, with the fame of whose exploits all Spain resounded now!
He was born at Burgos, where his father, Don Diego Lainez, was a
powerful noble, and his mother was Donna Teresa, 'daughter of the
Conde Don Nuno Alvarez,' as the inscription on her tomb bears now in
the church of San Pedro de Cordova, near Burgos.
In the year our story opens, the aged Don Diego had been grossly
insulted by the haughty and powerful Count of Gormaz, better known as
Don Lozano Gomez, who dared, with his iron gauntlet, to smite him on
the face in presence of Sancho the King and his Court. Mingled fury
and deep dejection filled the heart of the old man at this
unparalleled affront; he refused food; sleep left his eyelids, and
hourly he brooded on his dire disgrace, till his son Rodrigo vowed to
avenge him. Before the miraculous crucifix which is still in the
Cathedral of Burgos, and which tradition avers to have been fashioned
by St. Nicodemus, he had sworn to do this--and so strongly were the
minds of men constituted in those days, that even as he registered
the evil vow, his heart was filled by a glow of reverence and
adoration--and then he rode forth in search of their enemy, for these
were not times like our own, when young fellows affect to be so much
'used up' in all the joys and sorrows of the world that nothing
excites them.
Quitting the vicinity of the Convent of Miraflores, he took the way
to Miranda del Ebro, and had not ridden many miles when he saw an
armed knight approaching, attended by four esquires, or men-at-arms,
and a sense of fierce joy filled the soul of the Cid on recognising,
by the blazoning of his surcoat, the very man of whom he was in
search, Don Lozano, the Conde de Gormaz, delivered over to him, as he
believed, specially by the hand of Heaven! Goldsmith tells us that
'it is easier to conceive than describe the complicated sensations
which are felt from the pain of a recent injury and the pleasure of
approaching vengeance;' and some such mingled emotion there was in
the heart of the knight.
Reining up his horse in the centre of the narrow and dusty road,
Rodrigo cried:
'Don Lozano--craven dog, who smote my father, defend yourself!'
'Begone, rash youth, lest I have you disarmed and scourged!' replied
Lozano, lowering his lance however, as he knew that he who barred the
way would not stand on trifles. 'We are five to one.'
'Villain, come on! on my side are right and nobility--worth a hundred
comrades!' cried Rodrigo; and meeting at full speed with a dreadful
shock, the splinters of their lances flew twenty feet into the air.
Rodrigo then drew his sword, the famous Tisona, and almost ere
Lozano's blade had left its sheath, he was hewn down from his saddle
and bleeding in the dust, while his armed attendants in terror took
to flight. Rodrigo then tore the surcoat from the dying Count, as a
token of his victory--Mariana the historian, we think, adds that he
cut off his head--and then rode leisurely homeward to Burgos; for if
a little homicide by way of duello was thought little of here when
George III. was King, it was a matter of decidedly less consequence
in Spain in the days of the Cid.
At the head of three hundred mounted hidalgos, 'all wearing gold and
silken raiment, with perfumed gloves, and caps of gorgeous colours,'
Don Diego, now, as he thought, redeemed from disgrace, rode forth to
meet the King and kiss his hand, while Rodrigo repaired to the
Convent of Miraflores, with the blood-stained ribbon streaming from
his casque, but the face was not at the window now. Thrice he came
thither and watched and waited for it in vain, and believing that the
Mother Abbess had discovered his love-affair, he returned with a
heavy heart to Burgos, to take counsel of the King Sancho, though
some say it was of this latter's father, King Ferdinand.
But soon tidings came to the Court of Castile that a beautiful lady,
who had been foully wronged, was coming hither attended by a numerous
train, to seek justice at the hands of the King. All the young
knights were ready to embrace her cause, whatever it might be; but
all, including the famous Bellido Dolfos, withdrew in favour of
Rodrigo, who first demanded to make it his own; and yet he thought,
'God wot, why should I champion her, when my own and only love is the
Recluse of Miraflores?' And then the sweet face at the window came
before him in memory with all the soft brightness of an opium-eater's
dream.
Clad in black, with a gauze veil over her dark dishevelled tresses,
her eyes streaming with tears, the lady fell on her knees before the
King, exclaiming, as the Spanish ballad has it:
'Justice, King! I am for justice--
Vengeance on a traitor knight!
Grant it me! So shall thy children
Thrive and prove thy soul's delight.'
Her voice found a painful echo in the heart of Rodrigo, who was
filled with sudden horror.
'Estrella mia!' he exclaimed, as she threw up her veil; 'can such
sorrow be? Are you Ximena Gomez?'
'And _you_--you--the slayer of my hapless father! O mi padre murio!'
she cried in a piercing voice, as they both made this terrible
discovery. Filial affection had been a ruling passion in the gentle
mind of Ximena, who now experienced a dreadful shock on finding that
it was by the hand of her lover, her father had perished. And great
too was the grief and dismay of the young Cid at a catastrophe--a
revelation so unexpected. A blight fell upon the hearts of both.
Lozano had no son to avenge his death. He left only the helpless and
weeping Ximena, whom the King raised up, and who now ceased to demand
on Rodrigo the punishment she had craved before, and returned to
Miraflores, vowing that she would take the veil, while Rodrigo,
accompanied by his comrades, Bellido Dolfos, Pedro Bermudez, and
Martin Pelaez, Ordono, and others, plunged at once into a series of
warlike exploits and expeditions, seeking to appease thereby the
memory of the sorrow that had fallen upon them all. 'Of all the
knights, the Cid distinguished himself most against the Mussulmans,'
says Voltaire briefly. 'Many of them ranged themselves under his
banner, and altogether, with their squires and horsemen in armour,
composed an army covered with iron and mounted on the finest horses
in the country. The Cid conquered more than one Moorish king, and
having at last fortified himself in the city of Alcazar, formed there
a little sovereignty.'
Spanish history makes the conquered kings five in number, and states
that he caused them to pay tribute after he set them at liberty,
'wherefore they served him faithfully, and called him their Cid, or
Lord.' It also records that Ximena did not take the veil at
Miraflores, but, curiously enough, exhibited another strange sample
of the manners of the age by petitioning the King 'either to execute
Rodrigo for killing her father, or give him to her for a husband.
The King chose the latter, and Rodrigo joyfully received Ximena and
took her to his mother, who kept her as her own child, and they were
betrothed; but Rodrigo promised to gain many more battles against the
Moors before he would claim her as his wife.' And so, while the Cid
was winning five provinces, and gaining glory too, with the edge of
Tisona among the infidels--of whom he slew an incredible number, till
a saying of his is a Spanish proverb to this day, 'The more Moors the
more gain'--Ximena spent her time in fear and hope among her
favourite flowers and love-birds at the house of Donna Teresa, in
Burgos (Coronico de los Moros, etc.).
And even after their marriage it was his boast, 'God wot! oftener is
Tisona than Ximena by my side.'
After the siege of Zamora, during which King Sancho was
slain--treacherously, it is averred, by Don Bellido Dolfos--the Cid,
as the former was repairing to Burgos, gave him a special message to
Ximena:
'Tell her that I am coming; and, as an earnest thereof, give her this
ring, which I took from the hand of the Caliph of Cordova.'
Don Billido, who in his heart cherished a secret and treacherous love
for the betrothed of his friend, took the ring, and, saying
emphatically, 'Rodrigo, amigo mio, haya cuenta sobre mi' (_i.e._, 'My
friend, rely on me'), rode gaily home to Burgos.
Bellido has been described as a man with a fierce hooked nose, a
black beard, and slightly treacherous eyes, that, if such are the
true index of the soul, might have revealed his natural character.
He gave the ring to Ximena, and told her that the Cid awaited her at
Miraflores. She was surprised at this, but, never doubting the
comrade of her intended husband, attended by two ladies, she set out
for Miraflores, closely veiled. They rode white palfreys, with
velvet caparisons embroidered with gold, and having silken bridles
covered with little bells. Bellido and some ruffians, on whom he
could rely, formed their escort; but they never reached Miraflores.
In due time the Cid Rodrigo came to Burgos with his heart full of
Ximena, his old love for her mingling with gratitude that she had
forgiven him for the terrible wrong he had done her, and already he
seemed to see her winning smile and her soft and lustrous eyes, that
looked so truthfully under the long, dark lashes that fringed them.
'Madre mia, where is Ximena?' he exclaimed, as he alighted from his
horse.
'At Miraflores, whither you sent for her,' was the reply.
'I sent no such message--there is some mistake.'
'Or treachery,' said Donna Teresa; 'my mind misgives me, or I
distrust Don Bellido.'
'Can he have decoyed her away!' exclaimed the Cid, with alarm and
rage in his voice and eye.
But the old lady knew not what to think, and began to weep bitterly;
and still more did she weep when sure tidings came that in revenge
for repelling his addresses, the double traitor Bellido Dolfos had
betrayed Ximena into the hands of Hiaja, the savage Caliph of Toledo.
Rodrigo was beside himself with sorrow and dismay; but bethought him
at once of his sword, and prevailed upon his new master, Alphonso
VI., King of Old Castile, to besiege the city of Toledo, offering him
all his knights for that enterprise.
The report of this siege, and the cause thereof--a Christian lady of
rare beauty and high rank, more than all, the betrothed of the Cid,
being a captive in the hands of the odious Hiaja--brought many
knights and princes from distant lands, particularly Raymond, Count
of Toulouse, and two princes of the royal blood of France, of the
branch of Burgundy.
Their armies covered all the fertile plain amid which Toledo stands,
on a steep hill, round the base of which flows the Tagus. In some
places the spears of the infantry--whose massed columns seemed like a
sea of glittering steel--stood thick as upright corn; in others were
the squadrons of barbed horse, the knights and men-at-arms, all
clothed in chain armour, bright as winter frost or polished silver,
their many-coloured plumes, their square banners, and swallow-tailed
pennons streaming out upon the wind.
High overall, with its towers and the minarets of its mosques, rose
the then infidel city of Toledo, the upper part of which was then, as
now, girt by Roman, and the lower part by Moorish walls. History
tells us that when Alphonso VI. had been a fugitive under the
persecution of his brother and predecessor, Sancho, he had found an
asylum at the Court of the Caliph of Toledo, who treated him with
hospitality and princely distinction; and now more than one Moorish
warrior rode forth from the city to reproach Alphonso with
ingratitude to his benefactor, and many a terrible and remarkable
combat was fought under the walls of Toledo, among the defenders of
which was Don Bellido Dolfos, who had renounced his faith and adopted
the turban.
In the combats before the city, the Cid was daily occupied, and many
a Moorish warrior, horse and man, rolled in the dust beneath his
lance or battle-axe; and his followers were enriched by the spoil,
the rare weapons, the costly garments and jewels, that his hand won.
At last there came a day--the anniversary of the victory won by
Mohammed at Bedr, between Mecca and Medina--when the Moors made a
dreadful sortie from Toledo, led by the renegade, Bellido Dolfos; and
closing in on every hand, the Christians met them with equal ardour
and fury.
The hand-to-hand fighting was terrible, and the Christian knights,
led by the Cid, the Count of Toulouse, and others, dashed their
horses through and through the living tide of Moors that surged
around them. Gorgeous as a field of flowers, with their
many-coloured turbans and flowing garments, seemed the Moors as they
kept shoulder to shoulder, guarding their heads with round shields
covered with glittering bosses, their sharp scimitars flashing in the
sun, their shouts rolling like thunder between the Tagus and the
walls of Toledo, as they fought with demoniac strength and ferocity,
but fought in vain. High over all the throng towered the Cid upon
Babieca, its mailed flanks stuck full of arrows and even broken
lances.
'Santiágo y cerra España!' he shouted ever and anon--the old war-cry
of Spain--and he hewed on all sides with Tisona, till his sword-arm
grew weary, and the last who bit the dust beneath it was the traitor
Don Bellido, after whose fall the Moors were driven headlong into
Toledo.
The siege lasted a year, during which Ximena and her two attendants
occupied a noble chamber in the palace of the Caliph. Its ceiling
was adorned with arabesques and fretwork, brilliant with gold and
delicate pencilling. In its centre was an alabaster fountain of
perfumed water, and round it were cages of gold and silver wire, full
of singing birds; and there daily the three ladies offered up their
prayers on their knees for the success of the Christian arms, and for
their own release.
After a year and a day Toledo capitulated, and Ximena was restored to
the Cid, to whom all New Castile submitted, and who took possession
of it in the name of Alphonso VI.; and Madrid, then a small village,
one day to become the capital of Spain, was for the first time in the
hands of the Christians, and Hiaja was the last Caliph of Toledo.
To narrate all the heroic deeds performed by the Cid after his
marriage would require the space of a very large volume indeed. The
great dominions he acquired for his royal master the latter increased
by espousing Zaid, a daughter of the Moorish King of Andalusia, after
which Rodrigo, at the head of his knights, subdued the whole of
Valentia. No sovereign prince in Spain was more powerful than he;
but he contented himself with the title of Cid, and never assumed
that of King, though he might easily have done so. No warrior in
Spain did more evil to the Moors, yet he occasionally joined the Beni
Huds of Zaragossa against the Counts of Barcelona, whom he conquered
twice. While he never failed in his word to a Christian, he
mercilessly despoiled the Jews, from two of whom he raised money for
war, by depositing with them two chests which were alleged to be full
of plate, but which contained only stones and sand.
His two daughters became queens of Aragon and Navarre.
Five years after the conquest of Valentia, worn out by incessant
warfare, he fell ill, and was abed when tidings were brought to him
that Bucar, the Moor, whom he had expelled from that kingdom, was
advancing to regain it with a mighty army of horse and foot; but
Tisona lay idly in the scabbard now. For seven days preceding his
death, the Cid would taste nothing but a little myrrh and balsam; and
on the day he departed he took a solemn farewell of Ximena, his
kinsmen, and all his knights, whom he requested to carefully bury his
old war-horse Babieca, 'to the end that no dogs might eat the flesh
of him whose hoofs had trodden down so much dog's-flesh of the
Moors.' He bequeathed a coffer of silver to the two Jews, and
desired that his body should be borne to San Pedro de Cardena, and
laid beside that of his mother.
He died in the year 1097; but he who had been the terror of the Moors
for so many years when in life, was still fated to strike terror to
them in death, even while all the host of King Bucar were rejoicing
that he had passed away. At midnight, twelve days after that event,
the Christians prepared to abandon the city of Valentia--'Valentia of
the Cid,' as it is called to this day. His body, which had been
placed, we are told, 'in a sitting posture, and left to stiffen
between two boards,' was placed on the back of Babieca, upright in
the saddle, with the feet tied in the stirrups. To all appearance he
was completely armed; a light shield of parchment, painted with his
device, was hung on his left arm; the terrible Tisona was fixed bare
and upright in his sword-hand. Geronymo, Bishop of Valentia, led
Babieca by the rein; Pedro Bermudez, with the banner of the Cid
upraised, led the van with 400 knights; then came the Cid's body,
with Ximena and her ladies, guarded by 600 men, and when day broke,
though the Moors were terrified to find that the Cid was there in his
saddle again, a battle ensued, and King Bucar was defeated; but
Valentia was lost, and the sorrowing warriors of Rodrigo continued
their retreat to Old Castile and beyond the Ebro.
At Olmedo they were met by his daughters, with all the knights of
Aragon, clad in black cloaks, with hoods rent, and their shields
reversed at their saddle bows; and with every religious and military
solemnity incident to the time, they laid him in his grave at San
Pedro de Cardena, and two years afterwards Gil Diaz, one of his most
faithful followers, buried Babieca before the gate of the church
there. In the course of seven centuries and a half the remains of
the famous Cid Rodrigo have been removed several times, the last
occasion being by the French, in 1809, to the Espolen, or public
promenade of Burgos; but in 1826 they were restored to San Pedro,
where the tomb and effigies of himself and Ximena now remain in a
small but noble chapel. In that chapel lie the bones of Alvar Fanez
Minaya, whom he was wont to call his 'right arm;' of Pedro Bermudez,
Ordono, Martin Pelaez, the Asturian, and many more of his captains
and valiant friends.
His statue, as 'the dread and terror of the Moorish curs,' has a
prominent place in the quaint gateway of Santa Maria, erected by
Charles V. at Burgos. In the time of Cervantes the saddle of Babieca
was preserved in the Royal Armoury at Madrid, and Southey avers that
he had personally seen and handled Tisona, now an heirloom in the
family of the Marquis de Falces. On one side of the blade is graven,
'I am Tisona, made in the year 1002;' on the other is the legend,
'AVE MARIA GRATIA PLENA DOMINUS TUUM.'
[Illustration: Chapter 3 headpiece]
THE BOY-GENERAL.
THE STORY OF JEAN CAVALIER.
[Illustration: Chapter 3 tailpiece]
THE BOY-GENERAL.
THE STORY OF JEAN CAVALIER.
'Guillot--you here! Why have you left the mountain of St. Julian?'
'To be with you, brother Jean--to fight for the Cevennes.'
'With a beardless face and a feeble hand!'
'I have about as much beard as you, mon frère; and if my hand be
feeble, it has brought down many a wolf in Mialet and the Gevaudan,'
replied Guillot, slapping the butt of his carbine emphatically.
The speakers were young Guillot Cavalier and his elder brother Jean,
who was then, at the age of _seventeen years_, actually a general and
second in command of the Camisard army, the Insurgent Protestants of
Languedoc; who fought many a battle with Villars and De Montrevel,
the best leaders of the age; who, with Roland, led the great revolt
in 1703; and who in his twentieth year became a full colonel in the
English army!
Both were very handsome lads, and both wore the white tunic (in
Languedocian, _camisa_) to distinguish themselves from their enemies,
and hence their well-known name of Camisards. Both were well armed,
with swords, silver-mounted pistols, and short carbines; but the
elder wore over his shoulder the scarf of a French general, and in
his white velvet cap the wing of an eagle. Strong--and tender as
strong--was the bond of affection between these two lads, who had
both been born in the village of Ribaute, among the pastoral
mountains north of the Valley of Garden; and though Jean was ready to
face any peril and to 'do all that may become a man' for the cause in
which he had been so suddenly made a leader, and in which he had
already won such high distinction, his heart sank at the
contemplation of Guillot--a delicate boy, and their mother's chief
care--encountering the risks of that most savage and rancorous Civil
War which now devastated Languedoc.
Jean, as a very little boy, had been bred a shepherd, and was
afterwards apprenticed to a baker at Anduze; and it was from the
employ of the latter that, with a carbine in his hand, he went forth
to become a Camisard, 'and soon proved himself to be,' as history
tells us, 'a most able general, as well as a powerful prophet and
preacher.'
'Return, Guillot--return,' he is said to have urged again; 'our poor
mother cannot spare us both.'
'La Bonne Madelon is the mother we must serve just now, and I will
not quit your camp,' replied Guillot, whose eyes lit up, as he
referred to one of those wild, half-frenzied, and wholly enthusiastic
prophetesses, or female preachers, who thronged the camps of the
Camisards, attended their councils, and followed them into battle.
'Then be it so,' said Jean Cavalier resignedly; adding, 'I have good
news for you and all the faithful, Guillot. The Queen of Great
Britain--the good Queen Anne--is sending a fleet to our aid.'
'Of what use will it be to us among the mountains?' asked Guillot,
laughing.
'It brings us troops, Guillot--troops, who will help us to beat those
of Montrevel,' replied Jean, referring to the expedition consisting
of thirty-five British and twelve Dutch ships of the line, which was
to sail on the 1st of July, 1703, from St. Helens, to the assistance
of the Cevennois, and to the arrival of this expedition off the coast
the elder Cavalier looked confidently forward to repulsing the column
of De Montrevel, while Roland was fighting the King's troops
elsewhere. And now to explain briefly what brought all these affairs
about.
In the 'Histoire des Pasteurs du Désert,' and other annals, we are
told the terrible story of that Civil War in which 30,000 Cevennois
perished in battle or on the scaffold, between November, 1702, and
December, 1704. Well fitted for desultory warfare are the mountains
of Cevennes, with their rocky labyrinth of deep gorges and dark
defiles, which a mere handful of bold peasantry were able to hold
against the best troops of Louis XIV., and where, to this hour, the
population is almost entirely Protestant, inhabiting some six hundred
villages, which are all but inaccessible.
The white-shirted Camisards had these steep ridges to encamp on;
gorges for ambuscades; forests to rally in; paths trodden only by the
wolf or the fox to retreat by; and caverns which became their
arsenals and fortresses. Army after army came to annihilate these
peasants as heretics, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
but only to be destroyed or hurled in ruin and defeat into the
valleys; but the miseries of the war, the slaughter of women and
children, the burning and pillaging were fearful, and spread from
thence to the ocean on the south, and the Rhone on the east, among
the hundred churches of Dauphine. With much sublime piety and heroic
valour the armed peasantry, as in the similar case of the Scottish
Covenanters, combined a great amount of psalm-singing and the
strongest religious fervour, bordering at times upon fanaticism, and
prophets and prophetesses, like La Bonne Madelon, roused a wildness
of enthusiasm never seen in France since the days of Joan of Arc.
'The spirit of resistance began to show itself, drawn forth by the
recital of their wrongs, the denunciation of their tyrants, and the
assurance of support from heaven; conventicles were held, in spite of
the terrors of prison, torture, and the soldiery, and in the open air
among the rocks and caverns.'
Roland and Cavalier levied their troops from the different parishes,
each of which furnished its quota of armed men and money, and fresh
heroes to fill up the vacancies in the ranks. Many believed
themselves to be sword or bullet proof, while 'the seizures,
tortures, executions by breaking on the wheel and burning alive (the
common modes of punishing a Camisard), led to reprisals on their
part--to the slaying of priests and the sacking and burning of
Catholic churches.' But in the spirit of outrage, the French troops
were far surpassed by the guerilla bands, called Florentins, in the
pay of the Grand Monarque.
Jean Cavalier thought of these things keenly now, as he gazed on the
soft boyish face of his brother Guillot, when posting his column of
Camisards in ambush one morning, ere dawn, to give a hot welcome to
the royal forces under the Sieur de Montrevel, an officer high in
repute for great valour, but merciless in his severity.
The sound of the drums had died away, but the sheeny bayonets
glistened in the sun, and the white Bourbon colours of the regiments,
with their golden fleur-de-lys, were waving in the wind, as the
column of royal troops began to penetrate a defile that was clothed
with the olive, the vine, and the fig-tree. The church and hamlet
there had perished by fire; the place was desolate; not a human being
was visible, and without halting, the troops pushed on, with an
advanced guard to 'feel the way,' in front, till they reached a
portion of the defile where the impending rocks were higher, the way
narrower, and the trailing vines had given place to the dense, dark,
and woody luxuriance of forest trees. The flower of the column was
composed of one of the four battalions of the ancient regiment of
Champagne, raised so far back as the reign of Henry II.
'Halt!' cried the officer of the advanced guard, whose quick eye had
detected the bright flash of steel amid the green branches. In
another moment, a combination of fearful sounds burst like a storm
upon the silent air, while the soldiers halted, panting with the
exertion of climbing the long and steep ascent. An enormous fragment
of rock, dislodged from above, crashed with the sound of thunder into
the defile below, a mass that must have annihilated the entire
advanced guard, had the officer not halted it in time. Other masses
of rock and rubbish came thundering down, barring all advance, while
more than a thousand voices made the defile re-echo with the shouts
of fierce exultation, mingled with a religious hymn.
On the fallen rock in front there was suddenly seen a female, 'the
Good Madelon,' kneeling in an attitude of frenzied supplication, her
arms thrown wildly up, her hands clasped, her black hair floating
loose, her drapery streaming on the wind, and by her side stood
Cavalier. As yet no shots had been fired.
'Voilà! 'Tis the rebel Cavalier!' cried De Montrevel, almost leaping
in his saddle with exultation; and his sharp words of command
followed fast.
A volley was poured in front and on both flanks, and from these three
points it was closely responded to; and then the soldiers, who were
in great force, began, at the bayonet's point, to push up the woody
sides of the defile, firing as they went and driving the peasantry
before them; and meanwhile the prophetess--she of the supposed
charmed life, La Bonne Madelon, remained on her knees immovable,
absorbed in prayer, half seen, half hidden, amid the eddying smoke.
Guillot strove to lead her aside, but in vain; and when a bullet
grazed his cheek, he rushed away to join his brother, who, like him,
strongly believed in the power of immunity from death possessed by
Madelon, and was now busy in the act of concentrating and directing
the operations of his scattered followers.
It is said that when the prophetess, whose eyes had in them the gleam
of insanity, felt the bullets whiz about her, a sense of danger came
with the sound, and that she opened her eyes and glanced about her,
as if seeking to escape, but she was grasped by four soldiers of the
line; and that when the Camisards beheld her feeble hands bound with
cords, while her head sunk on her breast, and she was dragged away,
they became for a time panic-stricken, and though they hovered on the
precipice above the corpse-strewn defile, they ceased to fire, and
gazed on her conveyance to the rear in a species of stupid wonder.
'She can save herself,' Cavalier is reported to have said, so perfect
was his belief, as a credulous mountaineer, in her divine mission;
'we cannot rescue her now, but,' he added, lifting his cap and
looking upward, 'some miracle from heaven will.'
But no miracle was wrought, and with his solitary prisoner the Sieur
de Montrevel marched down, somewhat triumphantly, to the nearest
town, the white houses of which could be seen a league or two distant
from the mountains. That night Guillot, with a chosen party, stole
from them, and entered the silent street, from which all the
inhabitants had fled, hoping to find some trace of the Good Madelon,
perhaps in the public prison, from which they might see a way to free
her.
But Montrevel and his men had departed, leaving in the market-place a
fearful object, which greeted the eyes of Guillot and his followers
when daybreak came in. Suspended by the neck from a gibbet in the
centre of the place hung the body of their prophetess in its
well-known drapery, and literally full of bullets, as the departing
Florentins had made a target of it. She had been a beautiful woman,
whose husband and children had been cruelly destroyed before her, and
sorrow had doubtless turned her brain.
Accustomed though they had become to atrocities, the Camisards gazed
at each other in horror at this spectacle, and then bore away her
body for interment, sadly, slowly, and reverentially, and from the
side of her grave went up the united vow for vengeance!
The fleet of Sir Cloudesley Shovel failed to land either succour or
allies, and returning to England, says Schomberg, in his 'Naval
Chronology,' was off the Isle of Wight on the 16th of November; so
the Camisards now had no hopes but in their own hearts and hands.
Intent on avenging the barbarous death of the Good Madelon, Jean
Cavalier, with 1,500 Camisards, took post near La Tour de Bellot, a
deserted sheep-farm and watch-tower to the westward of Alais, from
whence he meant to issue and attack De Montrevel, who was, he
believed, ignorant of his vicinity, and who, keeping somewhat
careless guard, was encamped not far off among the mountains. In the
afternoon the Camisards were plentifully supplied with food by a
wealthy miller on the Garden, whom they believed to be true to their
cause. By nightfall, Cavalier had reconnoitred all the country; and
as the sun set, dark clouds gathered fast, and premature twilight
shrouded the valleys. Through them the wind howled, foreboding a
storm, and Cavalier laughed with stern joy, when telling his
followers that their attack would be veiled by the war of the
elements.
He had laid out his plans with wisdom, and alone, and a little apart
from his troops, was waiting the time to give them the signal to
move, when from all points around the Tour de Bellot burst forth a
half-random storm of musketry, and the boom of cannon announced that
the King's troops were upon him!
'We are betrayed!' cried Guillot, rushing bare-headed to his side.
'By whom?'
'The miller of the Garden!' replied Guillot, passionately.
And so it was; ere the Camisard outposts had been able to give the
alarm, they were cut to pieces, and only Cavalier and a few of his
men were able to sally from the tower before it was invested on all
sides. Guillot and others were shut up in it! Furious were the
efforts made by Cavalier--efforts urged by filial love and
despair--to drive back the soldiers and relieve those in the tower,
from the windows and every cranny of which its slender garrison
poured a deadly fire for eight hours, till their ammunition was
expended, and then the edifice was set on fire; 290 perished in it,
says history, 100 Camisards lay dead outside, and around it were
1,200 of the King's troops killed or wounded!
Compelled to retire some distance, yet fighting every inch of the
way, Cavalier beheld, with horror, the tower sheeted with fire. His
soul died within him as he thought of his brother, the boyish and
gentle Guillot, and all who were perishing there, and he strove to
fight his way back just as day was breaking, and by the light of it
he could see, apart from all the hurly-burly of the strife, a
remarkable combat proceeding, and on the very verge of a cliff close
by.
It was a boy--a boy, sword in hand--Guillot, fighting with a young
officer of the Regiment of Champagne. His cap was off--his white
camisa was stained by blood and dirt and scorched with fire. Borne
back by bayonets, Cavalier could only look on in agony, as he saw his
brother driven step by step to the very verge of the dreadful cliff
behind him, and of which he was unaware. Unyielding, though
retreating, Guillot kept parrying thrusts and warding cuts with
consummate skill, till a cry escaped him, and he vanished!
A groan from the breast of Cavalier echoed that cry; a mist came over
his sight, yet he continued to fight, like a blind man, to cover the
retreat of the wreck of his followers, by whom wild justice was soon
after done on the treacherous miller. He was seized, condemned to
death, and led out to execution in front of the insurgents, who,
according to their wont, knelt around him, while offering up prayers
for his soul. His parting embrace was refused by his two sons, who
served under Cavalier, and who looked on unmoved by the terrible
death he had to die.
That his brother Guillot might perish in battle, or by torture in the
hands of the enemy, Cavalier had always dreaded; but the catastrophe
by which he lost him was altogether unconceived: and the fortunes of
the conflict led him far from the vicinity of La Tour de Bellot, thus
he could neither search for the remains of Guillot, nor bestow
funeral rites upon them.
For months the war went on. The bright valour and cool judgment of
Cavalier, 'the Boy-General,' for such he was, exalted him still more
above all other leaders of the Camisards, and especially so when he
succeeded in utterly defeating a considerable body of the royal
troops at Martinarque, under the Sieur de Montrevel, who commanded
them.
The 6th of April, 1704, saw Cavalier again betrayed by one he
trusted. At the head of 900 foot and 300 horse, all well equipped,
he entered the Vaunage, or Valley of Noyes, so called from a little
town of that name, in the fertile district westward of Nismes,
intending to waylay the Marechal de Montrevel, who was on the way to
Montpellier, but was himself lured into a dreadful ambuscade, and
surrounded on all sides by the royal troops, including a great body
of King James's-Irish, who had recently fought at the battle of the
Boyne.
On all sides burst forth from amid the shelter of trees and hedgerows
the withering fire of musketry, the boom of the cannon, and the
hissing showers of grape.
Undismayed by the sudden scene of carnage, and by numbers six times
exceeding his own, Cavalier, perceiving a design of the enemy to
completely cut him off, 'wheeled his column rapidly round under the
hottest fire, and in the face of a charge of bayonets drew off his
men, retreating in echelon--a masterly man[oe]uvre of the baker's
boy, which drew forth the admiration of the Marechal Duc de Villars.'
Eventually, however, his retreat was cut off, the royal troops
occupied every height, every avenue and pass that remained, and
nothing was left for him now but to cut his way out at all hazards,
or die! He was not long in choosing. 'Throwing aside his
magnificent uniform and white plume, he put on a common dress,' we
are told, and ordering his comrades to close their ranks, made a
headlong dash at the enemy.
'Notre Dame de frappe morte!' was the shout of the regiments of
Champagne and Normandy, as they brought their bayonets to the charge;
but Cavalier broke through the first line. In the attack on the
second, he was singled out when discovered, and a soldier seized the
bridle of his horse, but had his hand hewn off by a young Camisard
wearing a scarlet scarf over his white camisa. He was next grasped
by a dragoon, whom he pistolled; but now, beyond appeared another
line and a whole squadron of dragoons barring his way to the Pont de
Rosni--the only issue. Panic-struck, his fugitive horsemen poured
madly down upon it sword in hand, forgetful for a time of their
leader, who was in the rear, and who would probably have been cut off
but for the young Camisard in the red scarf--his brother--his brother
Guillot (of whose escape anon), who suddenly appeared upon the
ground--'his brother, a boy _ten_ (?) years old,' says the French
account, 'who drew his horse across the bridge, and with a pistol
presented to the fugitives, summoned them to defend their chief and
not abandon him.'
Cavalier, with the remainder of his force, escaped into the forest of
Cannes. This battle extended over all the ground from the mill of
Langlode to the town of Noyes. Of one thousand dead who lay on the
field, one half were Camisards. During the whole of the conflict one
of their prophets, named Daniel Gui, stood on the summit of a rock,
amid six female enthusiasts, three of whom were afterwards shot,
invoking the God of Battles to favour their cause.
The miraculous restoration of his brother--for such it was
deemed--alone was a palliation to the heart of Cavalier for the deep
mortification of his defeat; and yet it had come about simply enough.
Recent rains had formed a deep basin of water under the cliff from
which he fell, in a place where jagged rocks alone had been visible
shortly before. Sinking, he rose to the surface, struggled to the
bank, faint and wounded, and had found shelter, till well and whole,
in a shepherd's hut, till he could join his brother in the Valley of
the Noyes, and now tender indeed was their meeting and the mutual
embrace they gave each other.
But brief time had they for mutual explanations, as ere long the
report of musketry began to wake the echoes of the forest, and Daniel
Gui came rushing in with tidings that the Sieur de Lalande was
putting to the sword the entire inhabitants of the village of Euzet.
Entering it suddenly, he had found a bullock newly-skinned, and bales
of hams, bread, and sausages made up for the men of Cavalier, whom he
at once traced and attacked with vigour, and defeated with the loss
of 170 men. Final vengeance now fell on the unhappy villagers of
Euzet, which, together with a cavern close by, was found to be full
of the wounded, ammunition, medicine, and stores of Cavalier's
forces. This sealed the fate of the former; and every human being
lying there was slaughtered, including the helpless creatures in the
cavern. Such was the awful system on which this war was carried on.
Cavalier's commissariat was supplied by requisitions upon districts,
irrespective of their faith, and when not given with goodwill, he was
compelled to write thus to the chief magistrate of the place:
'MM.,--Vous ne manquerez point de nous préparer demain le diner, son
peine d'être assiégé et mis _à feu et à sang_!--CAVALIER.'
But it was while he was still struggling manfully and bravely to
maintain a desperate cause against the whole force of the French army
that the crushing intelligence came to him of the fall of his
compatriot, Roland Laporte. This was on the 13th of August, 1704, at
Castelnau, near the Ners, a river which in winter rolls down from the
mountains in a mighty flood.
His presence there would seem to have been betrayed to the Duc de
Villars. At midnight, when he and his companions were fast asleep,
the sentinel on the tower-head suddenly heard amid the stillness of
the hour the distant noise of horses approaching at a furious gallop,
and gave the alarm just as a column of cavalry was entering the town.
Half-clad and half-armed, the Camisards rushed to the stables, and
mounting their horses bare-backed, rode off without saddles, bits, or
spurs; thus they were soon after taken in a deep hollow way, and
compelled to halt and dismount. Planting his back against an aged
olive tree, Roland made a desperate resistance, to every summons of
'Rendez vous! bas les armes coquin!' replying by a blow of his sword,
or shots from his pistols, a row of which he carried in his girdle.
He slew several dragoons, ere one by a musket-shot brought him down,
by a mortal wound, on which his comrades threw themselves above his
body, and were seized and bound.
On the 16th of August his body was dragged at the tail of a cart into
Nismes and burnt, while five of his companions were broken alive on
the wheel around his funeral pyre. Many Camisards perished thus
here, the most memorable executions being those of Catenat and
Ravenel, who were burned alive, almost within sight of the
battle-field on which they had defeated the Comte de Broglie.
Jean Cavalier found himself almost alone now, yet his spirit did not
quail.
Marshal Villars had now come to the conclusion that the warfare
seemed likely to become interminable; that it was possible to harass
the hardy mountaineers of the Cevennes, but not to conquer them. So
resolute was the spirit of the Camisards, so impregnable their hilly
fortresses, that all hope of ending the war so long as one was left
alive, was relinquished by this able officer; and we are told that in
the heart of Cavalier, who beheld the sufferings of the peasantry
from incessant toil and famine, there rose a great longing for peace,
if it were possible with safety and honour; and on ascertaining that
10,000 of the Huguenots were ready to lay down their arms and submit
to the king, he consented to hold an amicable parley with any officer
the latter might send.
Cavalier's first interview was with Lalande, who was sent by Marshal
Villars. 'Lalande surveyed the worn garments and pale cheeks of the
young hero, whose deeds had reached the ears and troubled the mind of
Louis XIV., in the midst of his mighty foreign wars; he looked upon
the bodyguard of the rebel chief, and saw there, too, signs of
poverty and extreme physical suffering, and believed that he knew how
to treat with men in such a condition.'
He proffered a large sum in gold, not a coin of which Cavalier would
touch, though he allowed his followers to accept it for their
starving wives and children; and he made preliminary arrangements
with Lalande for a final interview with the Marechal Duc de Villars.
It was in the summer of 1704 that the latter, the renowned antagonist
of Marlborough, entered the garden of the Recollets, at St. Cesaire,
near Nismes, the site of which is now occupied by a theatre, to
discuss peace and war with 'the Boy-General,' Jean Cavalier, who,
resolved to produce all the effect he could, appeared on this
occasion magnificently mounted, with a richly-laced coat, and a hat
plumed with white feathers. Cavalier's young face looked sad, we are
told, and the tone of his voice was melancholy, 'and Villars looked
on him with a deep admiration and sympathy.'
On this occasion Cavalier's bodyguard was a mounted force of
Camisards in white tunics.
The result of this memorable conference was, that the insurgents laid
down their arms on the assurances of justice and tolerance in
religion to the persecuted Protestants of the Cevennes, and
flattering promises of reward and rank in the army of France to Jean
Cavalier; but neither one nor the other was destined to be kept or
fulfilled, and the Place de Boucarini, at Nismes, was soon deluged
with the blood of all who fell into the hands of the Government. The
Camisards now repudiated the treaty made by Cavalier, and, finding
himself reviled by many of these on the one hand, and neglected by
the Court on the other he became an exile, and entered the army of
Queen Anne at the head of a regiment entirely formed of Huguenots.
As a colonel, in his twentieth year, he fought in the British Army in
Spain at the Battle of Almanza, under the Earl of Peterborough, and
there, in the defeat, his battalion of Camisards was almost cut to
pieces by the victorious French, and there young Guillot, its major,
died sword in hand.
Of the after life of Cavalier we can trace little. It is only known
that by the British Government he was made Governor of the Isle of
Jersey, and died at Chelsea in the May of 1740.
It has been more than once asserted that he died _in_ the Hospital a
pensioner, which is a mistake the records there distinctly prove.
In the year before his death, on the 2nd of July, he and his
countryman, Colonel Balthazar Rivas de Foisac, were appointed
Major-Generals in the British Army.
[Illustration: Chapter 4 headpiece]
THE
BUGLE-BOY OF BADAJOZ.
[Illustration: Chapter 4 tailpiece]
THE BUGLE-BOY OF BADAJOZ.
'Mother! mother! come out of the cold ground; come to your little
José, who is so lonely now!' wailed a boy stretched on his mother's
grave, while wetting with his tears the flowers that had been laid
there, and the green turf, into which he dug his little hands in the
wildness of his great grief.
It was in the cemetery of the Penha Convent at Cintra, and when
ravaged Portugal lay wasted and bleeding under the feet of the French
army, led by Marshal Junot, the Duc d'Abrantes, to Lisbon, in 1808, a
period that seems long ago now, yet was fresh enough in the memory of
our fathers.
It was on a glorious evening in autumn, and the hill of Cintra, the
base of which is clothed with wood, but which terminates in loose
crags and splintered pinnacles, was bathed in warm light, while every
fissure was covered with amaryllis and aglow with crimson geranium,
and giant evergreen oaks and cork-trees were intertwined with vines,
all adding to the beauty of the scene.
On one hand towered up the hill with the Penha Convent, on the other
were the ruins of a Moorish castle; but the sunshine and the scenery
were lost on the orphan boy. He saw only his mother's grave, and all
the rest of the world seemed dark to him indeed.
'Look up, my boy,' said a voice, as a hand was kindly laid on his
neck, and, rising from the turf, he found himself face to face with
an officer of Cazadores, or Portuguese Light Infantry. He was a
handsome and pleasant-looking man, clad in green uniform faced with
scarlet, and wearing silver epaulettes. 'Who lies here that you weep
for?' he asked.
'My mother,' replied the boy, in a tone of infinite tenderness.
'And your father?'
'Was De Castro, the guerilla chief, whom the French shot at the gate
of the Torre Vilha. You have heard, perhaps?'
'Yes; he was taken prisoner in Lisbon; a brave fellow--I knew him
well,' replied the officer, with kindling eyes and lowering brow.
'My mother never held up her head afterwards--and--and three days ago
she left me--and--and they brought her here,' said the boy, with a
fresh fit of heavy weeping, as he pressed his knuckles into his
inflamed eyes.
In tatters, and dusky in complexion, yet rich in colour, like the
beggar-boys of Murillo's famous picture in the Dulwich Gallery, he
was a handsome little fellow, with a clear olive skin, sparkling eyes
of the deepest hazel, and thick, wavy black hair.
'Have you no brother or sister?' asked the officer, patting his
uncovered head, for poor José was without hat or cap.
'None now. I had a sister once.'
'And she?'
'Was carried off by the French voltigeurs, and was never seen again.
Poor Theresa!' said the boy, in a gasping voice.
'And have you no home, my little fellow?'
'None, but the church porch.'
'Then come with me, and I will find you another.'
'Where, senhor?'
'Under the colours of His Majesty Pedro the Third.'
The boy's face lighted up. It was too soon for him to despair yet;
he had youth and hope, 'youth, with which the linen folds seem robes
of purple, the chaplet of cowslips becomes a monarch's crown, and the
wooden bench is as an ivory throne of empire.'
So little José Francisco de Castro, for such was his name, gave his
hand in confidence to Captain Dom Pedro de Lobiera, and became a
bugle-boy in the Seventh Regiment of Cazadores, among the Portuguese
troops under the gallant Marshal Beresford, and destined to
co-operate more immediately with that division of the British army
which, led by Lieutenant-General Sir John Hope, took possession of
Lisbon in 1808.
A curious combination of wrath and exultation made José's heart beat
tumultuously on the day he first assumed his uniform, and he slung
with a green cord over his shoulder the bugle with which he was to
summon his comrades.
He had an admirable ear for music, and soon mastered all the many
bugle-calls requisite for the man[oe]uvres of light troops in the
field, and by his coolness and bravery, while yet in his teens,
became a prime favourite with his captain, with his colonel, the
Viscount de Sa (whose 'orderly bugler' he became), and with the whole
of the Seventh Cazadores he became a species of regimental pet.
When the battle of Salamanca was won by Wellington in the glorious
summer of 1812, when we attacked the Duc de Ragusa, and when Park's
Portuguese column was foiled in the first attempt to storm the
Arapiles, two steep, rugged, and solitary hills that overlook the
plain, it was José's bugle sounding the 'rally' amid the hottest of
the fire that caused the southern hill to be re-won; and when Marshal
Beresford was unhorsed and wounded in the leg, while charging at the
head of the 11th Light Dragoons, and again while leading a Portuguese
brigade, it was 'José de Castro, a bugle-boy of the Seventh
Cazadores,' that helped him to remount, as the _Portuguiz Telegrafo_
of that week records.
On the plains of Talavera de la Reyna, at the heights of Busaco, and
by the green hill of Albuera, when the Anglo-Portuguese army fought
Soult--that memorable hill, by whose slope, at the close of the
terrible day, the men of our old 'Die Hards' of the 57th were seen
lying in two distinct ranks, dead but victorious--the Seventh
Cazadores, when wavering under the dreadful fire of the French
infantry, and menaced by the heavy cavalry of Latour-Maubourg, were
rallied in square by the bugle of José de Castro.
He was 'ever foremost in the path of danger,' says the _Jornal de
Commercio_ of Lisbon; 'and the notes of his bugle were heard in many
of the desperate onsets and bayonet charges of those well-fought
fields. In all these actions he did his duty; but his name ought
ever to be remembered for a deed of valour, for which, at the time,
he gained well-merited applause, and which was long afterwards passed
from mouth to mouth whenever the terrible siege of Badajoz was
mentioned.'
It is to the third siege of the city that the paper refers.
'Give me your hand, José,' said the Viscount de Sa on one occasion.
'What a boy you are! You beat the trumpeter who blew two trumpets at
once at the siege of Argos.'
As yet he seemed to have a charmed life; no ball had ever touched
him. He was a good, devout, and very grave boy, for, as Captain de
Lobiera said, he believed 'that the spirit of his dead mother
accompanied him wherever he went.'
It was on the 6th of March, 1812, that the army of Wellington broke
up from its cantonments, and, ten days after, crossed the Guadiana,
and three divisions, under Beresford and Picton, at once invested
Badajoz, then garrisoned by five thousand men under Generals
Phillipon and Vaillant, whose tenacious resistance caused some
uneasiness to the British leader, as a defeat under its walls might
have seriously disarranged all his plans for the future.
Before the Seventh Cazadores entered the trenches they had halted a
few miles from Badajoz, after a long and harassing day's march. The
rain fell in torrents that night. Amid the misty gloom, in the
distance, the guns of the beleaguered city were seen to flash redly
out upon the night, and weird was the glare of the port fires as they
sputtered on the gusty wind.
All that comfortless night, José, like the rest of his comrades,
spent the weary hours in the open air. He placed his canteen on the
ground, put his knapsack above it, and, thus improvising a seat,
strove to sleep, with his greatcoat and blanket spread over his
shoulders for warmth. And when the chill gray dawn came, he was so
stiff that, at first, he could scarcely place the cold mouth of the
bugle to his lips.
'Now, my men--la générale!' cried the Viscount de Sa, as he leaped on
his horse, and the buglers, at the head of whom stood little José de
Castro, poured clearly and melodiously on the morning wind, 'the
générale,' that old warning for the march--a warning long since
disused in the British service, where it was well known once.
Then the Cazadores took the road for Badajoz, and that night were
there in the trenches.
It is recorded of José that before the Cazadores marched that morning
he and a comrade bugler, Diaz of Belem, gave up the little pay they
possessed to repair the loss of a poor woman whose hen-roost had been
pillaged of its inmates in the night.
The early weeks of 1812 were cold and rainy at Badajoz, and the
howling tempests of wind often concealed at night the noise of the
shovels and pickaxes, as the troops broke ground, within a hundred
and sixty yards of Fort Picurina, and pushed forward the trenches,
till they achieved an opening four thousand feet long--a work of five
days' duration, under a dreadful shower of shot and shell.
Our artillery had succeeded in making a practicable breach, by which
the columns of assault might enter whenever the order to advance was
given; but the position of the enemy was strong by nature, and made
more so by art. Enormous beams of timber, loaded shell, huge stones,
hand grenades, cold shot, all to be launched from the hand, with
relays of ready-loaded muskets, were there, for those who were to
keep the breaches; in these, too, were hundreds of live bombs and
sunken powder-barrels, ready to blow an assaulting force to pieces;
and it became evident that the chances of that force proving
successful were small, unless some of the unforeseen accidents of war
turned the tide in their favour.
This point, say the Portuguese, it was the good fortune of José de
Castro to achieve. For the actual truth of the episode which won him
the name of 'The Bugle Boy of Badajoz,' we do not vouch. There is
not a word of it in Napier, or in the despatches of the Duke of
Wellington; but yet it was universally believed in the army of
Marshal Beresford.
It is related in history that when the final, and, to so many, fatal,
night of the 6th of April came--that awful night of horror and of
triumph when Badajoz was won--when more than two thousand of our
officers and men perished in the breaches alone, and when the heart
of the 'Iron Duke' gave way to a passionate burst of grief for the
slaughter of his gallant soldiers--on that night, we say, the
'unforeseen accident,' recorded by history, was a feint attack
unexpectedly becoming a real one; but the Portuguese have it that
José de Castro, being of an inquiring turn of mind, and having,
during his service, had many opportunities of hearing the French
bugle-calls, had learned them all to perfection, and now resolved to
turn his knowledge thereof to good account.
After a lighted carcase, composed of the direst combustibles, and of
giant size, had been flung blazing from the walls by the French,
compelling the assault to be anticipated by half-an-hour, when the
stormers neared the great breach, José and his comrade, Diaz of
Belem, advanced with the rest of the Cazadores.
When Diaz was in the act of taking some brandy from his canteen, a
sixteen-pound shot took off his head. Yet, bugle in hand, José kept
on, resolved to put in practice the scheme he had formed, and with
which he had acquainted his colonel, the Viscount de Sa, and his
captain, De Lobiera.
As leaves are swept before a tempest, the stormers came sweeping up
the rough _débris_ of the breach covered with dead and wounded men,
encumbered by these at every step, shells bursting, shot and grenades
falling among them. Their shouts were terrible; the yells of the
French more terrible still! Up, up they went, till they found the
perilous gap was crossed by a glittering, dreadful, and impassable
_chevaux-de-frise_, composed of sword-blades, keenly edged and
sharply pointed, fixed in ponderous beams, chained together, and
strongly wedged in the shot-riven ruins. Beyond it were masses of
the French pouring in their deadly fire, sweeping the gap with sheets
of lead as the wind sweeps a tunnel.
Under the _chevaux-de-frise_ the gallant José contrived to creep
unseen, and, getting beyond it, to conceal himself among a heap of
dead. On again crept, his dark blue uniform, splashed with blood
clay, enabling him to pass unnoticed among the French, till he
reached an angle of the ramparts.
Then he put his bugle to his lips and blew loudly and clearly, again
and again, above the awful din of the assault, the French _recall_!
On this the French gave way, fell back, and eventually fled across
the river into Fort San Christoval, where, next day, they surrendered
as prisoners of war to Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the future Lord Raglan
of Crimean fame.
The action of José de Castro, say the Portuguese, was noised about,
after the surrender of Badajoz, until it reached the ears of the
Commander-in-Chief--the great Duke--who sent for him, and presented
him with a sum equal to a hundred guineas English, which, in
consequence of his youth, Captain Pedro de Lobiera was to pay him in
small instalments. It is also said that the Duke gave the money from
his own private purse. José also received a good service medal, and
the Portuguese decoration No. 3.
He was now only eighteen, and the honours he received might have
turned an older head; but he continued to be as grave, modest, and
well-dispositioned as, when a boy, Captain de Lobiera found him
beside his mother's grave in the cemetery of the Penha Convent at
Cintra; and while many were promoted to commissions, he followed the
fortunes of the Peninsular army with his bugle slung at his back.
That bugle was heard on the plains of Vittoria, and among the passes
of the Pyrenees, where De Castro was wounded and conveyed to the town
of Elizondo. There, while stretched on a pallet of straw, in the
vestibule of a convent, which had been turned into a military
hospital, he was attended and nursed by a lay sister, who turned out
to be his sister Theresa, who had been carried off by the French, but
had achieved her escape after their defeat and total rout at Vittoria.
It would be difficult to describe the mingled joy and grief of such a
meeting; but both were of brief duration. As soon as José was
reported fit for duty, he rejoined the Seventh Cazadores, with whom
he served at Nivelle, Orthes, and Bordeaux.
His bugle was heard for the last time in battle near the hill of
Toulouse, when he sounded the charge by the order of the Viscount de
Sa. In that advance the latter fell wounded from his horse, and,
seeing that Captain de Lobiera, the next senior officer, was
defenceless, his sword-blade having been broken off near the hilt by
a ball, he gave him his own, saying:
'Lead on, De Lobiera! forward, the Cazadores! I can do no more
to-day.'
And once again the bugle of José sounded the command to charge.
When the army was disbanded at the peace, José endeavoured to support
himself by teaching music, but in a way so humble that he led a life
of privation and penury, and sought, in vain, a pension from the
Portuguese Government.
It was at the little town of Golega, on the Tagus, in Portuguese
Estramadura, that we last heard of 'the Bugler of Badajoz.' This was
more than twenty years ago, and he was earning a precarious
livelihood by teaching the cornet.
He was then an old man, bent with years and infirmity, and had for
the last time renewed his prayer for a pension to the Portuguese
Government. 'Let us charitably hope it will be granted,' said a
writer in the Lisbon _Jornal de Commercio_ of that year, 'for there
is now in the Ministry a soldier who has not forgotten the part he
bore himself in the bloody episodes of the Peninsular War, one who
has left an arm on a gory battlefield, and whose hearing has been
destroyed by the thunder of artillery--the noble and valiant Viscount
de Sa (the son of his old colonel). This gallant soldier will yet
have ears for the petition of the poor _trombadero_, and be able to
award him the meed he merits.'
[Illustration: Chapter 5 headpiece]
THE
VOYAGE OF THE 'BON ACCORD'.
[Illustration: Chapter 5 tailpiece]
THE VOYAGE OF THE 'BON ACCORD.'
My name is Bob Slingsby, and in the autumn of last year I was senior
apprentice, or midshipman (for we wore a smart uniform), on board the
good ship _Bon Accord_ of Aberdeen, freighted from London to Hong
Kong, and a few who may survive to read these lines will recall the
story I am about to tell--the plain unvarnished one of a sailor boy
(I was then only sixteen) in the Indian seas.
We had left Swatow on the 24th of September, after getting on board a
pilot, who was the cause of all the mischief that followed.
The _Bon Accord_ was a fine full-rigged clipper ship, of Aberdeen
build, 900 tons, coppered to the bends, with masts that raked well
aft; she was straight as an arrow in her planksheer, and was well
armed, for there are some ugly customers to be met with in these seas
beyond the ordinary track of our cruisers, as we found to our cost.
The ship's company consisted of Captain Archibald, a good and
resolute seaman, who hailed from the port of Leith; three mates, the
doctor, Joe Ruddersford, boatswain, two apprentices (myself and my
chum, little Charlie Newcome, for we were three short according to
our tonnage), and thirty men--thirty-eight all told, and a few
lubberly Lascars who all bolted when the first sign of danger came.
We had been well warned on nearing Hong Kong to keep a bright
look-out for Macao piratical boats, and particularly for one large
lorcha manned by only such desperadoes as are to be found about these
shores; and the captain of which, we were informed--Long Kiang by
name--was as great a ruffian as ever figured of old, when Hong Kong
was named by the Spaniards the Island of Ladrones, or thieves.
In a copy of the _China Mail_ brought on board at Aden, we read a
description of Long Kiang, which told us that he had been pierced and
scarred by many wounds; that one of his eyes had been scorched out by
gunpowder, and that his left arm, having been severely shattered by a
shot from a swivel gun, had never been properly set, the fragments
had worked themselves out, and this gave him the singular appearance
of having an arm and elbow adhering to the shoulder by the flesh and
tendons alone; yet this arm possessed double the strength of his
right, and it was his boast that he had slain more men by it than
with the other.
We made the name of Long Kiang a kind of joke--a bogie--on board
during the voyage through the bay of Bengal and into the China seas,
and had nearly forgotten all about him, when without other adventure
than a foul wind or so we reached Swatow, some fifty miles distant
from Hong Kong, and after anchoring for a little time, left it, as I
have said, on the 24th of September, with a light fair wind, and by
sunset had made an offing.
As evening deepened upon the crimson sea, the wind became lighter;
then it fell calm, and the fore and main courses were hauled up,
while the top-sails were left to flap idly against the masts; and now
it was that a native boat came alongside with a pilot, who offered to
take us to our destination for a certain sum in British money, and
his services were accepted by Captain Archibald, to whom he showed,
of course, good and well-attested certificates.
No trousers covered the long, lean, mahogany-coloured legs of this
official; an ample abba was rolled round his body, and a tattered
keffiah, of no particular hue, thrown loosely round his head, partly
muffled his face, so that we could see but little of his features.
The wind freshened after a time; we let fall the courses and
stretched them home, glad to make way on the ship; which had been
drifting with a current.
Instead of standing by the binnacle and giving instructions to a
steersman, the native pilot grasped the wheel unaided in his powerful
hands, and from time to time it seemed to me that he cast his eyes
oftener to the shore than aloft to keep the canvas full. As he stood
there between us and the moonlight, his tall and muscular form and
fantastic dress, when viewed in dark outline, had something weird and
mysterious about them, and so thought Charlie Newcome, who was
watching him narrowly, as we stood on the starboard side of the
quarter-deck.
The mate of the watch was forward, looking after the 'ground tackle'
and large anchor, and the captain was below, when suddenly Charlie,
on whom the tall, stark figure of the stranger seemed to make an
impression, twitched my sleeve and whispered:
'Look, Bob! look now! By Jove! isn't he like--like----'
'Like who?'
'Long Kiang, that we talked so much about--the fellow described in
the _China Mail_.'
'You've got Long Kiang on the brain,' said I, laughing; but the
laughter ceased when I _did_ look.
The light breeze had partly deranged the Arab-like keffiah that
enveloped his head, and by the rays of the binnacle lamp we saw that
he was minus the left eye, that the whole of that side of his face
was distorted as if scorched by powder, and for a moment or two the
strange malformation of his left arm was distinctly visible, as he
gasped one of the under-spokes of the wheel.
'It cannot be,' said I. 'How about his certificates, Charlie?'
'Another man's papers--stolen, no doubt.'
'If he should, after all, be Long Kiang,' I began, and then paused,
for as I spoke the name seemed to catch his ear, and he turned on me
his solitary eye, which in the moonlight glistened redly, like that
of a rattlesnake. A knife of portentous length was in the same
sheath with his chopsticks, a knife suggestive of cutting other
things than yams or salt junk.
'Won't you youngsters turn in?' said the mate, coming aft. 'You are
both in the middle watch.'
'Thank you, sir; not just yet,' said I, for, truth to tell, we were
disposed to be wide awake as weasels.
Long Kiang had been such a standing joke during the latter part of
our voyage--at least after leaving Aden--that neither of us, whatever
we thought, ventured to tell our fears or suspicions to the mate, or
to the men forward. While we were talking to the mate, the captain,
who had come on deck, called him to the port side of the ship, which
was going before the wind, but very slowly.
The captain was a tall, stout, and well-built man, with a florid
complexion and a mass of iron-grey hair, luxuriant as when in youth,
and likely to be so for years to come. There was an air of sturdy
Scotch power and strength of mind and body about him that showed at
once his resolute will and energetic brain.
He and the mate of the watch were in close conference at the port
quarter, and looking at some object with an interest that soon became
anxiety after they had resorted to the use of a night-glass, on
seeing which the tall pilot grinned and showed all his white teeth
like a row of dominoes.
'It is a lorcha--full of men, and evidently dodging us--a Macao
lorcha, too,' said the captain, in a low voice. 'You see that
craft?' he said suddenly to the pilot, who had evidently for some
time affected not to do so.
'Si--si--yaas--senhor,' he replied in the broken lingo peculiar to
Macao.
'And what do you think of her?'
'That piecey boat makey fightey if you meddle with her,' he replied
quietly, in what is called 'pigeon English' in these regions.
'Oh, she will, will she?' exclaimed the captain; 'bring the starboard
tacks aft. Keep the ship away a few points.'
But the breeze was so light that the lorcha was able to pass and
repass us with ease, on each tack coming nearer us, and, indeed, it
became but too evident that the steersman handled the ship in such a
way that in a short time the stranger would be quite able to overhaul
us. She was already within half-a-mile of us when Captain Archibald
roughly accused the pilot of treachery, and ordered the third mate to
take the wheel. Ere he could do so the native uttered a shout,
quitted the spokes, letting them revolve at will, throwing the ship
in the wind, and then he leaped overboard.
An exclamation burst from all, for had the breeze been fresher the
top-mast would have snapped off at the caps and left us a helpless
wreck; but the captain--quick, ready, and powerful--caught the wheel
in a moment, brought the ship again upon a wind, and without looking
whether the traitor who had left us sank or swam, ordered the ship to
be close hauled, as she was clipper-built, and to be steered 'full
and by.'
Some of the watch said the lorcha had picked up our pilot. Charlie
and I now spoke, and not a doubt remained in the minds of all that we
had been deceived by Long Kiang, who, using the papers of some man he
had robbed, and very probably destroyed, had steered the ship to a
part of the coast of Swatow, where his vessel and men had been
concealed in some bay or creek.
By nine p.m. the lorcha, which we knew must be manned by the
ferocious half-breeds who are the sons of Chinese and Tartar slaves,
with a mixture of Caffre and Portuguese, the refuse of Macao, was so
close, that in the moonlight we could see them distinctly, and
reckoned that she must have at least seventy of these on board, and
all armed to the teeth!
Charlie and I had read much about pirates and wild adventures, and
had longed to meet some; and now the time had come with a vengeance!
The Scottish firm to whom the _Bon Accord_ belonged had wisely armed
her well.
'Now, my lads,' cried Captain Archibald, as all the small arms were
brought on deck, and the crew mustered aft the mizenmast, 'obey me;
act well and steadily; have faith in yourselves, for without it no
man succeeds.'
A cheer responded, and under the care of the old boatswain, who had
sailed with Archibald for more than twenty years, the guns were cast
loose and loaded, and as some of our fellows belonged to the Royal
Naval Reserve, they were at no loss how to go to work.
In common with several others, Charlie and I had revolvers; but
somehow, as I loaded mine, my heart was beating wildly, and, like
Charlie Newcome, I thought of my mother, far away in Kent, as I had
never thought of her before!
If captured, we knew that every soul on board would perish by a
miserable death. Of a peaceful escape we had no chance, as the wind
was so light, and many a glance was cast aloft to see how the sails
drew.
The lorcha was stealing steadily after us in our wake now, for
doubtless Long Kiang had told his crew of our guns, and knew that
while she was kept astern they would be useless. Already the pirates
were so close that we could hear their voices, and see knives,
bayonets, and tulwars glittering among them, and towering amid the
throng the tall and muscular figure of the ferocious Long Kiang, so
we could have no doubt of the intentions of his followers now.
'She will soon be under our counter, sir,' said the old boatswain,
'and, as we have little or no steerage way on the ship, our
eight-pounders will soon be useless.'
'Then let fly the starboard gun, and bring her to on the wind.'
Bang went the gun, its white smoke curling over the moonlighted
water. A yell rose from the lorcha, and a red, flashing, and
spluttering fire of musketry responded. No one was hit as yet, but
white splinters were knocked off the woodwork on deck.
'Fill the yard heads! Stand off; Re-load, and then bring to again!'
This man[oe]uvre was repeated more than once.
Bang! bang! went the six-pounders from the port quarter. The yells
were redoubled, and as every man who was not at the guns was busy
with his breach-loading rifle, the work soon became hot indeed.
While lying close to the gunwale, Charlie and I fired at random with
our revolvers under the open leeboard; yet the whole situation was so
strangely sudden--so unexpected and improbable--that it seemed as if
all this peril was happening not to me--Bob Slingsby--but to someone
else.
Close by us was the captain, busy with his Winchester repeating rifle.
The yells of the infuriated pirates, maddened by the slaughter we
made among them, became every moment closer and more appalling, and
united with the sound of the firing, made such a din that we could
not hear ourselves speak.
In the foretopmast of the lorcha they were now getting their horrible
stink-balls ready, while, by the use of sweeps, they came close under
our stern, and we could see their fierce, dark visages, their glowing
eyes, and white glistening teeth. These stink-balls are an odious
composition of mealed powder, saltpetre, pitch, and sulphur, rasped
hoofs burned in the fire, assaf[oe]tida, and all manner of
foul-smelling herbs, and they threw them, smoking and flaming, on the
quarterdeck by dozens, compelling us to retire forward, if we would
escape suffocation.
Several of our men had now fallen, killed or wounded, and the crew of
the lorcha came swarming up the mizen chains, over the quarter, and
rushed on madly with swords, knives, and fixed bayonets; and then it
was the Lascars vanished by running below, or leaping overboard.
In vain our stoutest seamen strove to stem the tide by bayonet and
rifle, and the scene became to me agonising and terrific. The whole
deck became slippery with blood.
Captain Archibald, bleeding from a wound, was shot again in the
forerigging.
'Oh, my wife and bairns!' he cried, and fell dead on the deck. The
chief mate fell next: another and another fell, and I found myself
seeking shelter from the bullets near the forecastle bitts.
Who had fallen or who escaped I knew not, but the crew of the lorcha
were now in full possession of the _Bon Accord_. Two or three dark
faces appeared above the topgallant forecastle. Shots were fired at
me, and with a prayer on my lips I fell into the sea, and then
thought all was over with me. Mechanically I swam, and the
miscreants kept firing at me and some Lascars who were in the water.
An oar belonging to the lorcha was floating near me. I grasped it,
and got close to the forechains. All voices on deck, save those of
the captors, had ceased. The firing was at an end. A few dead
bodies, thrown overboard, plunged heavily into the water near me, and
raised great phosphorescent circles and bubbles of water in the
gorgeous moonlight. The breeze had freshened a little; the reef
points had ceased to patter upon the white sails which now curved
gracefully out, and as the ship began to make a little way upon the
water, I grasped the iron work under the forechains, and was carried
with her.
Suddenly a rope's-end was lowered within my reach, and I heard a
voice saying, in pigeon English:
'Comey up--me no killy you.'
I looked upward, and saw the terrible face of Long Kiang, with an
indescribable gleam in his solitary eye, as it regarded me. Aware
that it was either for life or death, and that I might as well trust
him as perish by a bullet or of drowning by exhaustion, I allowed
myself to be drawn on board, and one of the first sights I saw was
the body of poor little Charlie Newcome, lying near one of the
maindeck guns. Many dead and wounded pirates lay about.
On deck, I found myself the only living white!
Long Kiang grasped me by the arm with one hand, a long knife
glittered in the other, and in a mixture of broken Portuguese and
pigeon English, which would seem ridiculous to read, but was very
terrible for me to hear, he questioned me about the ship; where she
was from, what was her cargo, and where any money was stored.
Finding that I was unable to give any account of the latter, Long
Kiang, whose fierce eye when he was excited seemed to emit sparks as
if struck from a flint--a peculiar phenomenon--gave me a terrible
blow with the hand of his boneless arm, and, falling senseless, I
remembered no more.
Meanwhile the Macao men completely sacked the ship. Rice,
biscuit-bags, beef-barrels, the fowls in the coops, wines, spirits,
bedding, clothes, all loose ropes, and everything portable were
carried on board the lorcha, and setting fire to the cabin, intending
to destroy all trace of the ship by burning her to the water's edge,
they finally shoved off to the lorcha, and getting the spirit casks
aboard, began, like savages as they were--to make merry and have a
night of it--and a night they _had_ of it, that they little
anticipated!
About eleven p.m. I recovered, and found myself alone in the silent
ship. The lorcha lay off about a quarter of a mile distant, floating
on the calm and lonely moonlit sea, over which came the united noise
of laughter, singing, and shouts, as the orgies were continued in her
bunks below and on deck. The odour of burning wood drew me to the
cabin, which I found full of smoke; but on lifting the skylight, as
well as the wound I had received would permit me, I found where the
fire was smouldering, and after extinguishing it by a bucket or two
of water, began to look about me with a heart torn by anxiety and
apprehension. Lamps, chronometers, compasses, everything, were gone;
but had they remained, of what use would they have been to me?
On the blood-stained deck, where still some bodies, slashed and
mutilated, were lying, their pallid visages looking doubly pale under
the moon, I crawled forward, concealing myself under the bulwarks, to
avoid being seen by the occupants of the lorcha, which was floating
like a log upon the water.
In the forecastle bunks and elsewhere, to my intense joy, I found
seven of our own men, all more or less wounded, coming forth now from
their places of concealment--the old boatswain among them--but all
doubtful what to do or how to act; for the slightest sound or
movement in the ship might bring these wretches on board of her
again; so we all cowered together in the forecastle, considering the
future, and listening to the shouting and singing on board the
lorcha. These seemed to grow fainter the nearer she was drawn
towards the _Bon Accord_ by the current; and some time after midnight
they totally ceased, and the deepest silence reigned upon the sea,
for the breeze had died completely away, and we heard only the slow
flapping of the topsails, and the pattering of the reef-points above
our heads.
Old Joe Rudderford, our boatswain, who was certain, he said, 'that
every man Jack of them was drunk as a lord,' now resolved to take
measures that would rid us of them effectually ere day dawned; and,
acting under his orders, we put them in practice thus:
The port-quarter boat was softly lowered, on the side that was not
next the lorcha, and he, with two men and myself, with oars muffled,
pulled swiftly, yet noiselessly, off to her. All our revolvers were
loaded, and Joe, the boatswain, had with him the largest and sharpest
auger he could find in the carpenter's tool-chest, and a fierce,
triumphant expression shone on his grave, grim Scotch face, which had
a chin and eyebrows that expressed resolution and firmness of purpose.
Never shall I forget the keen and aching anxiety and excitement of
that time, as we crept towards the hateful lorcha, and at every
stroke of our oars, at every respiration, expected to see some of her
merciless crew start up and fire on us; but all remained still--still
as death--on board, as we got close under her starboard counter.
Our first mission was to cut away and scuttle her only boat, and
while the boatswain, with strong hands and brawny arms wrenching
round the cross-handle of the augur, bored a succession of large
round holes between wind and water--with a few _below_ the
latter--two of our men with knives cut away all the starboard shrouds
or stays; and as we left her, and pulled away to our own ship, the
sea was pouring into her, and we knew that unless the artificial
leaks were discovered and plugged she must surely go down.
'Thank heaven, the breeze is freshening!' exclaimed Joe, as we
regained our unfortunate ship, and hoisted in the quarter boat; and,
weak and faint as we all were from wounds, soon Joe himself made sail
on her. During all the hours of that eventful morning we struggled
to trim the ship, to coil up and clear away the loose ropes and
running rigging; to throw overboard the dead men of the lorcha, which
was now settling down fast by the stern in the light of the waning
moon, and every moment her bow and bowsprit seemed to tilt up higher
in the air.
At last, just as day began to break, a great commotion seemed
suddenly to take place on board. Cries and shouts floated towards us
on the freshening breeze, and we could see Macaomen, Chinamen, and
Caffres rushing wildly to and fro, looking evidently for their
vanished boat; and then their united yells rent the sky, as the
lorcha gave a great lurch to port and anon went down with every man
on board of her. Many swam about for a time, but all sank in
succession, for the land was far distant, and we were standing off
north and by east before a pleasant breeze.
Next morning we fell in with a native fishing-boat with a crew of
three men, who agreed, for the sum of five British sovereigns, to
pilot us into Hong Kong, where we duly arrived, and came safely to
anchor in the famous 'Red Harbour,' after a voyage that none of us
are likely to forget.
We had some strange adventures on the way home, and with these I
shall close my story.
Of our crew, after the encounter with Long Kiang, only seven, with
the boatswain, Joe Rudderford, and myself, remained with the ship.
We got a new captain, and made up our number again to thirty-eight
hands, all told, from the company of a bark that had been cast away
in the East Lamma Channel, and after they were shipped an interesting
event occurred.
Among them was a miserable-looking young fellow who had been wrecked
years before on the coast of China, and been kept as a kind of slave
in a village near Tonquin. Joe Rudderford, observing the assiduity
with which this young seaman--in gratitude for finding himself once
more under the Union Jack--did his work, asked him what was his
native place.
'Stonehaven,' said he; 'I am a Scotsman.'
'Stonehaven! I am from there myself. What is your name?'
'William Rudderford.'
'Had you ever a brother?' asked the boatswain, with sudden agitation.
'Yes,' replied the other; 'but it is many a year since he last saw
me, in our mother's cottage beside the Cowie water. Poor Joe! I
wonder if he is alive now!'
'I am Joe--your brother Joe, Willie!' exclaimed the boatswain; and
now for several minutes their feelings so overpowered them that they
could neither of them speak till relief was given by tears; and each
had to tell the other a long story, which lies apart from mine.
We left Hong Kong for New Zealand, with a mixed cargo, and dropped
down the Lamma Channel into the China Sea, and after leaving the port
for which we were destined, gladly trimmed our course for London,
thinking by this time we had seen a good deal of the world of waters;
but after leaving the harbour of Otago, and working to windward of a
headland named the Nuggets, we stood away for the Southern Pacific.
From that time the people in Dunedin, which we had left, and in
London, for which we were bound, heard of us no more.
No homeward-bound craft reported having seen or spoken with the good
ship _Bon Accord_, of Aberdeen; no message concerning her came from
the antipodes; and, to torture the minds of our friends at home, the
newspapers circulated all kinds of rumours--that bits of wreck had
been seen, that we had among our cargo thirty tons of gunpowder,
together with 'no end' of petroleum and turpentine, commodities
certainly calculated to produce the direst effects if ignited.
Month after month rolled on, and not even the most slender tidings
came of the beautiful ship, and apprehension of a terrible fate
deepened into certainty, in the loving hearts of all who had friends
on board.
Meanwhile, where were we?
In about the 50th degree of southern latitude we had for weeks
pleasant gales and prosperous weather, so that we scarcely required
to lift tack or sheet, but bore on merrily. Joe Rudderford and his
newly-recovered brother Willie were inseparable, and the memory of
little Charlie Newcome often came back to me sadly, especially in the
night-watches, which he and I had so often shared together, for the
ship and her surroundings were all the same in many respects as when
he sailed in her. But we had not been long at sea before we
discovered that our new captain was a bad seaman and a bully.
Every order was given with an oath. Myself and the other apprentices
he called 'young whelps,' and even respectable old Joe Rudderford was
often greeted with taunts which he received in silence, remembering
'the least said, the soonest mended.'
'He is a coward,' said Joe to me one day.
'What makes you think so?' I asked.
'Because he is a tyrant, and tyrants are always cowards. We'll never
have a captain again so good as brave old Archibald.'
In that latitude a curious incident occurred to us. On a fine
morning, when running on a splendid breeze, with our port tacks on
board and royals and top-gallants set, Willie Rudderford, who had the
watch, reported a sail on the weather-bow--a large ship, full-rigged,
with most of her canvas set, but all in confusion, and some of it
thrown slack. Her top-hamper suggested perfect disorder, and not a
soul was to be seen on board, or responded to our hailing, after we
edged close down to her.
We hove to, threw the mainyard in the wind, and Joe Rudderford, the
first mate, and two hands, of whom I was one, boarded her in the
dingy.
I shall never forget the nervous, anxious, exciting and yet eerie
emotions felt, as we clambered up the side of that silent ship.
She proved to be a new one of some 800 tons burden, laden with silk
and indigo, to the value of £150,000, as her papers showed, bound
from Calcutta to the Cape; but how she came to be in these southern
waters surpassed our comprehension. The oddest thing of all was that
there seemed to have been a panic on board, for the deck and cabins
were strewed with the clothes of ladies and children; jewel-cases,
jewels, and Indian shawls lay everywhere; but the chief part of the
baggage had been taken away. Still more extraordinary was it to find
that she had been scuttled in every compartment, evidently for the
purpose of sinking her. Private letters, that we had no time to
examine, lay strewed about, and cloaks and coats, bonnets and caps,
yet hung on the hooks in the cabin. But what was her story, or the
fate of those who had abandoned her, or why they had done so, we were
fated never to know; for though our captain was in the highest glee
at picking up so valuable a derelict, and proposed to put a few of
the crew on board, and sail in company, a heavy gale came on after
sunset, with thick clouds, and when day broke she was nowhere to be
seen, and must have gone down in the night.
And now I come to the mystery of our disappearance.
Our voyage had been an exceedingly prosperous one till we reached the
vicinity of the Crozet Islands, in the South Pacific.
This solitary group, 'placed far amid the melancholy main,'
comprising the Marion Rocks and the Twelve Apostles, lies midway
between Prince Edward's Island and the Island of Kerguelen, the abode
only of seals and sea swallows, and twenty-two degrees west of the
equally solitary St. Paul's, whereon H.M.S. _Megara_ was cast away.
The Crozet Islands are all of volcanic origin--wild, rugged, and
horrid in aspect, and nearly inaccessible. Their mountains rise in
conical peaks to an elevation of from four to five thousand feet, and
are covered by perpetual snow, while dense fogs frequently envelop
their bases.
Before we came to this dangerous vicinity we had encountered a gale;
but it had spent its fury, and was subsiding. The prospect, however,
of the winter evening sea (for though the month was July, it was the
season of midwinter there) was cheerless--a darkening sky, and
nothing living in view but a seabird or two, swimming and skimming
over the white tops of the grey waves.
It had become evident to all on board that the captain's work as
navigator disagreed with that of the mate and Joe Rudderford. He was
'out of his reckoning,' but was wroth with anyone who dared to hint
that he was so; and, to allay his chagrin, drank large quantities of
spirits.
With night dense fogs came down upon the sea; the captain walked the
deck excitedly, keeping a glass of spirits standing near him on the
binnacle-head. He often looked aloft, and talked to himself. At one
of these times, a little dog he had ran between his legs and nearly
capsized him. With a fierce oath he took the poor animal up by the
neck, and threw it into the sea.
On this, the sailors looked darkly in each other's faces, and felt
sure that mischief was soon to follow.
The mate and Joe Rudderford now suggested respectfully, that, as the
fog was deepening and the wind freshening, some of the canvas should
be taken off the ship; but, in a gust of fury, the captain, instead
of adopting their advice, had her trimmed before the wind, the yards
squared, and the fore and main studding-sails hoisted to port and
starboard. Willie Rudderford was at the wheel.
The seamen grew pale, and muttered under their breath as they obeyed
the rash orders, and belayed the tackle.
'What do you think of all this, Joe?' I whispered.
Joe answered only by a grunt, whatever that might mean; but on board,
it always seemed that a grunt from old Joe had more weight than a
whole speech from any other man.
'I think we should take some of the canvas off her,' said he to me,
after a pause, loud enough for the captain to hear.
On this, the skipper turned round furiously; but before he could say
anything, there went up a cry through all the ship from stem to
stern--I think I hear it still.
'May the Lord have mercy on us!' was the fervent prayer uttered by
more than one brave fellow, as death seemed suddenly inevitable, when
the ship went bump ashore with a frightful crash, and a horrible
grinding sound followed.
'All is lost! Let every man shift for himself!' cried the helpless
man who commanded us.
The three topmasts crashed off at the tops, with the fury of the
shock, and with the yards and hamper fell heavily down over the yet
inflated canvas, to port and starboard. Aloft we were a total wreck
in a moment, and already going to pieces below.
Our new captain--a very different man from the gallant Archibald, who
was killed in the fight off the coast of Swatow--was the first to
perish, overwhelmed, apparently, amid the boiling surf in the dingy,
in which he and the first mate tried to effect their escape.
Amid the gloom, I saw Joe and Willie Rudderford grasp each other's
hard hands for a moment, as their minds, like mine, were doubtless
filled with a thousand hurrying thoughts of home and distant
friends--remembering, perhaps, former happiness, and contrasting it
with the present danger and misery.
Horror had succeeded the first consternation and alarm into which the
entire crew were thrown by this sudden and unexpected catastrophe.
The afterpart of the hull was covered with water, but the bows were
jammed hard and fast upon the rocks, where the boiling sea made clean
breaches over them, washing away those who crouched there. By one of
these seas I was swept overboard, and in a few moments I rose to the
surface, feeling battered and bruised, with the salt water gurgling
in my throat and whizzing in my ears.
I was washed towards some rocks, into the seaweed of which I dug my
hands and clung to it, even with my teeth. For a moment the sea
seemed to leave me, and I felt suspended above it. Then it rose
again with tremendous force, and took me from my hold. I forgot all
about the ship, and those who were perishing there; I thought only of
myself, of self-preservation, and the dread of death. In that
supreme moment of terror and agony I seemed to live a lifetime!
Again I rose to the surface on the summit of the wave, which washed
me along the slippery face of the rocks, and ere it descended I
caught some seaweed again, above the point where I had been before,
and again the water left me, suspended in air, and gasping for life.
Sea after sea rose again, but none reached me now, and the waves only
hissed and burst against the rocks below me, as if infuriated at
having lost their prey.
Once more I began to respire more freely, and hope grew in my
heart--the hope that I might yet live.
Then the dread that I might be sucked down by some wave more powerful
than the rest caused me to make an effort, which then seemed to me
super-human, to gain a footing; and slowly and laboriously I climbed
upward to where even the highest spray fell far short of me; and in
my heart I thanked God that I was safe, though where, or on what
isle, I knew not.
In the mist and darkness I ascended some fifty feet to a species of
dry plateau ere I ventured to stop and rest, and then I heard what,
amid my own trouble and terror, had partly escaped my ear: the roar
of the breakers below, with the shrill shrieks of our perishing crew.
'For pity's sake help me, whoever you are!' cried a voice a little
below me; and, extending a hand to one of our people who had reached
a shelf of rock, I assisted him upward, and he proved to be Willie
Rudderford, sorely battered and bruised, having been dashed
repeatedly against the cliffs; and now we began to ascend higher
together.
I asked for Joe, the boatswain; but Willie only knew that they had
been torn asunder by the waves that had swept him overboard, and he
had not seen him again.
Panting and often breathless, drenched and sodden, clinging to the
rocks, we continued to ascend, so far that even the booming of the
sea began to sound faint; and then we lay down together, worn out,
yet past all thoughts of sleep, to await the coming day and whatever
might betide us.
The cold was beyond all description, and, but for the shelter an
elevation of the rocks afforded us, we must have perished, as we lay
there huddled close together for mutual warmth, while ever and anon
Willie Rudderford lamented sorrowfully the too probable loss of his
brother.
Slowly the grey dawn stole in, and the mist that enveloped the land
melted away; and, to make my story brief, we found by degrees that
seventeen of the ship's company, including Joe Rudderford and our two
selves, had survived the catastrophe, and that we were shipwrecked on
the Crozets--those horrible isles that lie in the Southern Pacific,
out of the track of all vessels!
We could scarcely congratulate ourselves upon our escape, and some
there were among us who bitterly regretted that they had not perished
with the rest.
Out of the fore-part of the wreck we contrived to get some tins of
preserved meat and a cask of gunpowder, after which she heeled over
into deep water and disappeared; and a sigh escaped my lips as we saw
the last of our floating home--the good old _Bon Accord_.
No island in the world could be more desolate than the one on which
we found ourselves. Lashed by tempests, and surrounded by an
ever-boiling sea, never visited save by some adventurous whaler, that
solitary archipelago, the Crozets, does not possess one human being!
Under Joe Rudderford, to whom we all turned now, we began the dreary
work of exploration, and found that we were on a long, gaunt, and
naked isle a few miles in extent, without trees or verdure, and
exposed to surf and the bitter blasts of the Southern Arctic winter.
Our boats had all been swamped or dashed to pieces, so that we had no
chance or means of crossing to any of the larger islands which were
visible, and on this miserable reef we must remain and exist as best
we might.
Joe discovered a spring of pure water. 'Thus,' said he, 'we are sure
of the one great necessity of life.'
Of food we had certainly one great source--the sea-birds frequenting
the spot. An incredible number of albatrosses, frigate-birds, and
gulls were resident on the isle; their eggs were found everywhere,
and they and their young, being all unused to man, became an easy
prey, as we could capture them by the hand or knock them over by a
stick.
'Thank Heaven,' said Joe, 'we have food and drink provided, and it
will go hard if our self-help and sagacity as British sailors don't
do the rest for us.'
Everything that was cast in from the wreck was carefully brought on
shore and stored up. By Joe's orders, we placed a spare topmast on
an eminence, with a blanket, as a flag, attached thereto, and a
regular watch was told off beside it, to signal any passing vessel.
Rude shelters of stones were set up for weak or ailing men among us;
Joe divided us into messes, and made arrangements for the
distribution of the birds, the eggs, and all else that was in our
general stock.
We required a moving and ruling spirit, and Joe took that place.
By his orders we utilised the preserved meat-tins as cooking vessels,
and by partaking of certain coarse herbs and wild grasses, boiled
therein, we averted all danger of scurvy.
For fuel we had at first the broken driftwood that came from the
wreck; but this was soon, with all our care, expended, and the cold
would perhaps have destroyed us, had not the indefatigable Joe
discovered that we could make fires of the bones and skins of the
seafowl; and Joe, who was a well-read Scotsman, told us all how Dr.
Livingstone once fed the fires of his steam-boat on the Rovuma River
with elephants' ribs.
The success of our plan, to feed fires with the legs of albatrosses,
gulls, and kittiwakes, for the many months that we did, proves the
vast number we must have caught; but weary indeed were we of this
daily menu of eggs and oily sea-bird flesh, seasoned with salt
obtained from the surf where it dried on the rocks.
I shall never forget the great horror that fell on us, when one of
our little band died of a fatal gangrene, having injured his foot by
a fall; and as we buried him in the sea came the dread question, if
we were all fated to perish in succession, who among us would be the
_last_ and lonely man upon that rocky isle?
Save for the lucky accident that several among us had match-boxes in
their pockets when quitting the wreck, we could never have lighted a
fire! As the ship broke up, various things came ashore; among
others, a passenger's chest, wherein we found some blankets, knives,
and spoons.
So passed away August and September, and all this dreary time, a keen
look-out was kept from the first break of dawn to the last glimpse of
sunset for any passing sail, as life depended upon rescue. We often
marvelled whether any vessel ever passed in the night, as we had no
fiery beacon to attract attention.
Finding themselves preyed upon, the sea-birds became wilder, and food
grew scarce. It is easy to imagine the agony in which, with haggard
eyes and wildly beating hearts, we twice saw the sails of passing
ships; but they were 'hull down,' at a vast distance, and could not
see our despairing signals.
At length there came a day--oh, never, never shall I or any who were
with me then forget it!
The morning broke warm, fine, and sunny, and a shout came from the
watch at the beacon, that 'a ship was close in shore!'
We started up from the shelter where we were sleeping. We could
scarcely believe our eyes, as with prayerful hearts we stretched out
our hands simultaneously and in silence towards her.
Yes--yes! there she was, little more than a mile distant, a gallant
brig of considerable burden, with her courses, topsails, and
top-gallant-sails set, close hauled on the port tack, on a gentle
breeze.
We were incapable of shouting or cheering, so great was our emotion,
and many of us burst into tears when we saw the sheets let fly and
the fore-yard thrown in the wind, while, as an additional token that
we were seen and that succour was coming, the Stars and Stripes of
America were run up to the gaff-peak, and a boat was instantly
lowered and manned.
She proved to be the _President_, whaler, who, fishing in that lonely
sea, had by chance come near the isle, where her morning watch had at
dawn seen the fragment of our tattered blanket waving in the wind.
We were speedily taken off, after having spent--as a tally kept by
Joe Rudderford showed--exactly one hundred and fifty-nine days (a
little more than five months) on an isle of the Crozets; and, with
one accord, we all stood bareheaded, and thanked God for all His
goodness to us, when we found ourselves safe on the deck of the
American.
Her captain made us all welcome and comfortable; but as we were what
he called 'a tight fit' on board, with his own ample crew, he landed
us at the Cape of Good Hope. There I parted company with Joe
Rudderford and his brother, who shipped on board a Scotch clipper to
return to their own home, while I, with the rest of the survivors,
came back by a passenger steamer to London, and found that my people
had long since given me up as dead.
[Illustration: Chapter 6 headpiece]
A TALE
OF THE
RETREAT FROM CABUL
[Illustration: Chapter 6 tailpiece]
A TALE OF THE RETREAT FROM CABUL.
'In the month of October--I won't mention the year, it seems so long
ago--my then regiment, the gallant old 13th Light Infantry, with the
rest of Her Majesty's troops who had the ill-luck to accompany us,
were in the cantonments of Cabul.
'I can see them yet, in memory, on the plain in front of the mountain
city, enclosed by walls and hedges, and bordered by those pretty
villas which, in their perfect confidence in the people, among whom
we had come to replace Shah Sujah on his throne, our officers had
built for themselves and families; on one hand the hills of the Siah
Sung, on the other the haunted heights of Beymaroo, for it was
affirmed that a demon of some kind did haunt them, and in the
distance the city of Cabul, with its walls and streets of sun-dried
bricks, the towering outline of its Balahissar, and in the background
far away the summit of the Hindoo Kush, mantled with snows that never
melt.
'When not on duty, or when I could not hope to meet Mabel--Mabel
Berriedale, of whom more anon--I was fond of wandering about with my
gun among the Siah Sung hills, and even into the Khyber Pass, in
search of the _hill-chuckore_ or Greek partridge, wild ducks, and
quails, though frequently warned by Vassal Holland, a brother
officer, who chummed with me in the same bungalow--and once, to my
delight, by Mabel herself--that it was unsafe, because ugly rumours
were afloat, rumours of which she heard more than we did, as her
father was on the headquarter staff--that it was both unsafe and
unwise to do so, as a rising of the tribes against us was almost
daily expected.
'What took us there? you may ask. Well, the same interest that may
take us there again. With the view of frustrating the presumed
designs of Russia, and securing as far as practicable the integrity
of Afghanistan as a barrier against the aggressive attempts of that
ever-grasping power, the Indian government resolved on the
restoration of the Shah Sujah, a cruel and merciless old prince, who,
after blinding with his own dagger his kinsman Futteh Khan, had been
exiled. We replaced him on the throne with an army of 8,000 wild
Beloochees to guard it, under the Shah Zadah Timour and Colonel
Simpson of the Company's service; but he soon excited again universal
hatred and dislike among the fierce Afghan clans, who viewed us
resentfully as unbelieving intruders. Thus the slender British force
of 4,000 strong, which as allies occupied the cantonments I have
mentioned, was in a perilous predicament--a very trap as it were, for
between them and lower India lay savage passes, manned by hardy and
warlike tribes, and everywhere the coming storm grew darker as the
unwelcome Shah proceeded from one act of violence to another; while
his retention of a corps of Sikhs--the enemies by blood and religion
of the Afghans--as a body-guard, roused all their rancour against
him, and against us, whose commander was General Elphinstone, a
feeble, ailing, and incapable old man.
'Such was the state of matters when Holland warned me of my rashness,
and more than once declined to accompany me, and one day I certainly
had an adventure--not an exciting one--but one which I never forgot,
owing to subsequent events connected with it.
'Though October, the weather was fine and clear, for there, after
February, there is only hoar-frost in the mornings usually, till the
middle of March. Our band had been playing at the usual promenade in
the cantonments, but I had quitted early; Mabel, whom I loved very
dearly, but to whom I had, as yet, said nothing of that love, had, I
thought, treated me coldly, so I took my gun in a pet, and went forth
among the mountains, penetrating into one of the deep sheltered glens
that open off the Khyber Pass.
'Either the birds were shy, or I was preoccupied; I saw only here and
there a solitary crow and stork till I came to a little ravine, in
which stood a Khyber tent of black blanket, with a large stone at
each corner to prevent it being blown away. Its door, a mere mat of
reeds, was open, and there came forth a pretty young Afghan woman--a
wife, as I could see by her hair being braided and her trousers of
some dark stuff; and though evidently but the spouse of some wild
hill-man, she wore strings of Venetian sequins, and chains of gold
and silver. She was fair and handsome too, though her nose was very
aquiline, and her cheekbones rather prominent. As she proceeded to
feed a Cabul pony, from a gathered heap of juicy herbage, I was just
thinking what a pretty sketch the little tableau beneath me would
make, when it received one or two rather startling accessions.
'Out of a grove of wild mulberry-trees, all unseen by her, there came
creeping slowly, stealthily, with cat-like action, and velvety paws,
an enormous black wolf. I could, from the perch where I stood,
distinctly see the hungry gleam of its eyes, its scarlet mouth half
open, and the steam from its nostrils.
'At the same moment on the other side of the narrow ravine, there
appeared a Khyberee, as his yellow turban and shaggy robe of camel's
hair announced--a tall, strong and stately fellow, armed with his
long juzail or native rifle, the lighted match of which was smoking.
On his knee he took a steady aim at the wolf, but missed fire.
'A cry of rage and fury escaped him, but it mingled with the report
of my unfailing double-barrelled Purdey, and struck by two balls just
behind the ear, the wolf fell over on its back and pawed the air, in
the agonies of death, while the Khyberee woman fled into her tent,
and her husband, for such the stranger proved to be, came to me full
of gratitude.
'"Sahib, from my soul I thank you," said he in Afghani, of which I
had picked up a smattering. "You have saved my tent from a dreadful
calamity, enter it; from this moment you are the brother of Zemaun
Khan."
'For though but a poor hill-man he deemed himself a Khan, and in
evidence of his position in his clan, as being what a Scots
Highlander would call a _dunniewassal_, he carried a falcon on his
left wrist. He led me within his tent, where I was in turn
gratefully thanked by his pretty young wife, for though the Afghans
do not, like other Mohammedan races, universally shut up their women,
they are as open to jealousy as other orientals, and at Cabul
frequently resented the attention our fellows paid them--and this
added to those errors for which the army of Elphinstone had to atone
so terribly. A snowstorm came on, and thus I passed the night in the
tent of Zemaun Khan, who would by no means let me depart.
'"You are welcome," said he, as his wife placed before us food and a
jar of native wine, though neither would partake of it, "for in the
fashion you have come, a stranger is a holy name."
'"And yet," said I, smiling, "we Feringhees fear you like us little."
'"Little indeed!" said he, as his brow grew dark, "Sahib, I have seen
and known your people--seen them at their manly sports in the
cantonments yonder; seen the wonderful boat that Sinclair Sahib
launched upon the Lake of Istaliff, and the flying shoes he used
thereon when ice covered the standing water,' he continued, referring
to a boat which was built, and skates which were made by Willie
Sinclair, an ingenious "sub" of ours, to the great wonder of the
Afghans, who had never seen either before. "But what brought you
among our mountains? Individually you English are fine
fellows--noble fellows; but collectively we _hate_ you," he added,
while his eyes and his set teeth seemed to glisten. "Could it be
otherwise with us, who see that you are unbelievers who deem that
Allah is but a name? But you are my guest, let us not talk of these
things. We shall have our pipes of tobacco, and Nourmahal shall take
her saringa and sing us the 'Song of the Rose.'"
'She brought us cherry-stick pipes, obediently assumed her native
guitar, and sang to us, as her lord and master suggested. The night
passed pleasantly, for the tent was in a sheltered spot; and I got up
betimes to return to the cantonment, escorted part of the way by
Zemaun Khan, to whose wife I presented one of the pretty charms that
hung at my watch-chain.
'As we parted within a mile or so of the cantonment gate, he again
expressed his gratitude to me, but said to me impressively, and with
a low earnest voice:
'"If you can quit this place for Candahar or Jellalabad go at
once--go, and go quickly; in three days, perhaps, it may be too late!
The hills will then be alive with men."
'"You say either too much or too little," I exclaimed rather angrily.
'"I have said what I have said. The web of your existence has been
spun of the thread of sorrow, and the sword of the Afghan will rend
it asunder."
'"If a rising of the natives is attempted," said I, "we shall not
leave one stone of yonder Balahissar standing on another."
'"Be it so; but," he added, pointing to the stupendous mountains,
"you cannot destroy these--the fortresses given by God to the
hill-tribes of Afghanistan! And Ackbar Khan has sworn an oath that
your whole host shall perish save _one man_, who will be only spared
to tell the fate of his comrades!"
'I had already heard something of this before, and it had been a
source of laughter, but for a time only, in our mess-bungalow in
Cabul; and that evening, when Vassal Holland and I were discussing my
adventure, through the pleasant medium of brandy-pawnee and Chinsurah
cheroots, he laughed loudly at the threat, like a heedless and
handsome young fellow as he was, and stigmatised Zemaun Khan as "a
melodramatic old donkey! After traversing the Bolan Pass under
Willoughby Cotton, storming Ghuzni, and then taking Cabul, we won't
be so jolly green as to take fright at the Afghans;" adding, "and now
to talk of something else. I may mention that your absence during
the storm last night, and from parade this morning, caused much
speculation in the lines, and, if it is any gratification to you, not
a little in the villa of the Berriedales."
'And he lay back in his long arm-chair, and watched alternately the
rings of smoke from his cheroot as they ascended to the straw roof of
the bungalow, and the expression of my face.
'"Was Mabel indeed interested?" I asked, with heightened colour.
'"More than interested--agitated! but I don't wish to fan the flame,
for I fear it will be no joke to be the husband of such a girl as
Mabel Berriedale."
'"Joke--I should think not, Holland."
'"What then?"
'"A great joy! But to what do your remarks point?"
'"To begin with--her love of dress."
'"Pshaw! every pretty girl has that--and she is lovely!"
'"In her opinion, her father the Colonel--or any father--is only the
medium for supplying luxuries and pleasures, and to act as chaperon,
if nothing more attractive can be had. A husband would soon come to
be viewed in the same light."
'"Pleasures, luxuries!" I exclaimed; "there are deuced few of either
to be had at Cabul. But you, the fortunate, happy, and accepted of
her cousin Bella should not talk thus. You have surely been refused
by her!"
'"Refused?" exclaimed Holland, laughing.
'"Yes," said I angrily.
'"I never asked her, even before I saw Bella; yet many an afternoon I
have enjoyed her society very much."
'"I should think so; she would make a pleasant companion for a longer
period than any Afghan afternoon. You mistake the girl entirely, in
deeming her, as I know you do, vain, trivial, heartless, it may be."
Holland only continued to smoke in silence.
'"To-night at Lady Sale's, I shall put it to the issue, if I can,"
said I.
'"Both will be there."
'"Allow us then to don our war-paint."
'The claw-hammer coat, and waiter-like costume denominated "full
dress," was not then etiquette in India; thus, we both set out in
full uniform for Lady Sale's reception, which, though given so far
away from Western civilisation as the slopes of the Hindoo Kush, was
pretty much like any other. The drawing-room of her villa was made
up as like one at home as possible. The ladies of the garrison, and
of the C.S., had all becoming toilettes, and native servants, in
white turbans, were gliding about with silver salvers of coffee and
wines. A buzz of conversation pervaded the room, and though the band
of "ours," the 13th Light Infantry, discoursed "sweet music" in an
anteroom, the tenour of the conversation, in certain knots that
gathered around the manly and gentle-looking Sir Robert Sale, the
commander-in-chief, General Elphinstone, and the luckless envoy Sir
William Macnaghten, sad and thoughtful in aspect, was the reverse of
lively, for
'"Great events were on the gale,
And each hour told the varying tale."
Dost Mahommed Khan, late ruler of Cabul, was remaining a peaceful
prisoner of the British Government; but Ackbar Khan, the most brave
and reckless of his sons, had preferred a life of independence amid
the wilds of Loodiana, and now he was said to be among the Khyber
mountains, concerting means for the extermination of "the meddling
Feringhees," as he called the British, whom he had vowed to
exterminate, all save ONE MAN!
'All this I had heard so often for some months past, that it somewhat
palled upon my ear now, and I endeavoured to get near Mabel, who was
seated on a sofa immediately under a chandelier, which shed down a
flood of light upon her; and around her and her cousin were a crowd
of gay fellows in all manner of uniforms, cavalry, artillery, and
infantry; thus, I could barely touch her hand, and answer some
questions concerning my adventure in the pass last night, questions
which I saw she asked with dilated eyes, and considerable concern,
when I had to give place to some one else, with whom she plunged at
once into an animated conversation, as if to hide the momentary
interest she had shown in me. This deeply piqued me, all the more as
Vassal, in all the happy confidence of an accepted lover, was
stooping over the pretty head and snowy shoulders of Bella, and
eyeing me from time to time with a provoking smile. Mabel and I were
on awkward terms. Her lover she knew me to be, though I had never
declared myself, for two or three reasons, among the most weighty of
which were monetary expectations from home; thus we had piques and
little jealousies, even fits of coldness, that made our almost daily
intercourse in the limited circle of the Cabul cantonments perilous
work truly.
'Her face was indeed a sweet and winsome one, and once or twice, as a
mass of her golden-brown hair, which her ayah had failed to adjust
properly? fell suddenly about her neck, she gave a petulant shrug of
her white shoulders, while her beautiful hands were upraised to
confine the coils, showing thereby the taper form of her arms and the
contour of her bust and waist, while many a "sub" looked fondly and
admiringly on. Other handsome girls were present, and it was really
something wonderful to see so much fair English beauty there in
Afghanistan, at the very back of the world as it were!
'Her cousin Bella was a soft, yet sparkling little brunette, whose
father had fallen at the storming of Ghuzni; since when she had lived
under the wing and care of her aunt, Mrs. Berriedale.
'To simply eye her admiringly from a distance was not the _rôle_ I
had intended to adopt; but I resolved to wait my opportunity, when
there might be some break in the circle around her, and was passing
into the inner drawing-room, which was nearly empty, when I trod upon
a pocket-book. It was a bijou affair--tiny, scarlet morocco, and
gilt--a lady's evidently. To whom could it belong? I looked round
for Lady Sale, but she had left the room. The owner's name would
doubtless be inside; ere I could think of opening it, the book opened
of itself, where a leaf was turned down, and where I saw--_my own
name_, written more than once, with another added thereto: "Mabel
Clinton--Mrs. Robert Clinton."
'I trembled with astonishment and joy. She had been wondering how
the name would look _written_, and written it was, in her hand, with
which notes of invitation had made me perfectly familiar. I heard
the hum of voices in the next room, the sounds of laughter, and the
crash of the band in the antechamber beyond, as one in a dream, for
the discovery now made was rather a bewildering one.
'That I had a place in her heart, that she was more than interested
in me, and that she linked the idea of me with herself, I would not
doubt, despite her occasional coldness and coquetries with others;
but how was I to use the knowledge so suddenly, so unexpectedly won?
It was alike dangerous to keep or to return the book, though surely
she would never dream that I had opened and read it, but the hand of
Fate had done the former for me; and if thrown aside, it would be
found by others, and become a source of secret joking in the
cantonments, so I source of secret joking in the cantonments, so I
placed it in the breast of my uniform, and seeing her left almost
alone for a moment, hastened to capture her, and offer her my arm,
which she accepted at once, and we proceeded slowly to promenade the
rooms.
'"You have not been near me to-night," said she, fanning herself,
though the air was cool enough.
'"It is so difficult to get near you; you are always the centre of a
circle in whose unmeaning gaiety I have not the heart to join."
'"You scarcely compliment me in saying this," said she, colouring a
little; "I was fond of gaiety, fun, what you will, when in Central
India, and down at Calcutta, but here we have been _triste_ enough.
Cabul is simply horrible!"
'"And I wish, for your sake, and the sake of many others, that we
were well out of it; but it was not of this everyday topic I desired
to speak with you."
'"Of what, then?" she asked in a low voice, though we had now reached
the lower end of the outer drawing-room, where the windows were open
to the floor, and gave access to a veranda filled with flowers, and
the green jalousies enclosing which rendered it a species of corridor.
'My heart beat lightly, and I was on the point of saying something, I
know not what--pretty pointed, however, when, in an evil moment, I
drew forth her pocket-book, and said:
'"Does not this belong to you, Miss Berriedale? your initials are
gilded on the cover."
'"It _is_ mine!" she exclaimed, while blushing deeply, and then
growing deadly pale, as she remembered what she feared I might have
seen, and more, perhaps, that I had not seen; "where did you find
it?" she added with some sharpness of tone.
'"Lying on the floor, yonder, in the other drawing-room."
'"And how long have you had it?" she continued, with an increased
hardness of tone which chilled me.
'"But a few minutes; young ladies should be careful----"
'"Of what?" she inquired haughtily.
'"Miss Berriedale," said I, in agitated voice, and endeavouring to
take her hand; but she eluded me, and even withdrew her arm, saying,
"I must rejoin mamma."
'She rejoined the large group near the chandelier, with her whole
manner and bearing totally changed, while I followed her completely
crestfallen, with the eyes of Vassal Holland upon me, as if inquiring
whether I _had_ put my fate to the issue, and what had come of it.
'A vague sense of having incurred her displeasure at the very moment
when I was about to declare my passionate love for her, oppressed me;
yet, when the time for departure came, and the carriages and palkees
were announced, I hastened to cloak her, but she submitted in grim
silence.
'"Will you pardon me if I have offended you?" I whispered.
'"I have nothing to pardon."
'"Forgive me, then?"
'"I have nothing to forgive."
'"Good-night."
'"Good-night, Mr. Clinton."
'She did not even take my hand, and we parted.
'"What's up, old fellow?" asked Vassal Holland, as we strolled away
to our bungalow in the lines.
'"By Jove, I can't tell you."
'"You've not made your innings, any way?"
'"No," said I sadly and savagely; yet I could have enlightened him as
to the situation, had I chosen, but unless I could have ensured his
silence with regard to Bella, to do so might have made matters worse.
'She loved me, I could not doubt it, But she feared I had _read_ the
secrets of her pocket-book--the dear, stupid words she had written
half in play; and all her maidenly modesty was up in arms, lest I
should take advantage of what I had learned,--that she had given her
heart to a man ere he asked for it, and that if I wooed her now, it
might only be out of compassion or pity, melting into love.
'I could not doubt that, but for the unlucky advent of the
pocket-book, she would have permitted me to love her, and have fully
accepted me, with her uncle's consent; and now--now for days she
avoided me, and began, that was patent to all in the cantonment, a
very deliberate flirtation with my friend Jack Villars, of the Horse
Artillery, a handsome but heedless fellow, whom she had never
distinguished before; and, though I knew not quite why, the life of
us _both_ was embittered. I was indignant that she should think so
meanly of me as to believe me capable of deliberately opening her
pocket-book and prying into her secrets, while she was exasperated at
her own folly in writing what she had written. Had I seen it?
doubtless she asked of herself, and might have remembered that I had
spoken of her "initials;" and perhaps, had I made the most solemn
assertion that the wretched little book had opened of itself, she
might have failed to believe me.
'At last the route came for our regiment, with the rest of Sale's
brigade, to begin the march towards the province of Jellalabad; and I
shall never forget the morning of our departure. We were armed with
old and unserviceable muskets, because our final destination was
Britain, and General Elphinstone, a useless, obstinate, and incapable
old man, said there was no use in taking new arms home. Our men were
to march with their knapsacks, a new feature in Indian warfare; and
the officers reduced their baggage to a minimum, for rumour said the
passes were beset, and the odds were heavy that not a man of us might
live to reach the lower end of them.
'On the cold, dull, cloudy morning of the 10th of October our drums
beat, and all in the cantonments at Cabul turned out to see us
depart. Among other spectators on horseback were Bella and Mabel
Berriedale, with the now inevitable Villars in attendance upon the
latter; and if aught could add to the sorrow, bitterness, and chagrin
of a parting that would be final--as she was to be left behind in
Cabul--it was to behold this!
'After forming my company I drew near her, and made some commonplace
remark, to which she replied in the same tone. I failed to catch the
expression of her face, as a thick Shetland veil was tied over it.
How little could I think that it was concealing tears! Suddenly
Sale's bugler sounded; the adjutant was about to tell off the
battalion. I pressed her hand; she returned the pressure firmly, and
her voice as she said "Good-bye" was utterly broken, and seemed to be
full of tears. I never, never forgot _that_; but this was no time
for explanation. I rushed to join my company, and all that followed
passed like a dream. The brigade was wheeled into line--it broke
into sections--the bands struck up, and the homeward march for
England, as all our fellows fondly hoped, began; and ere long, as we
penetrated into the dark recesses of the mountains, we saw the last
of Cabul and all our companions.
'I had but one thought--that Mabel Berriedale was there, and that I
should never see her again!
'Even the armed clans of Afghans that were seen hovering so
menacingly on the rocks that overhung the passes could not draw my
thoughts from Mabel, the pressure of her beloved hand, and her
tearful voice, when it was too late--all too late!
'The following night some wounded fugitives brought dreadful tidings
to Cabul. Sale's brigade, they asserted, had been attacked in the
passes and literally cut to pieces; how Sale himself and Colonel
Dennie had been wounded, and Lieutenant Clinton of the 13th had been
cut off, with a whole line of skirmishers, by the Khyberees under
Zemaun Khan.
'My poor Mabel fell fainting on Bella's breast when she heard of all
this, and she now for the first time knew, what I knew not, and never
might know, how really dear I was to her. The startling tidings
brought to Cabul were not without some grains of truth.
'Hardy and trained, the 13th, or Prince Albert's Own, marched
speedily and splendidly, setting an example to the rest of the
brigade, and their chorusing merrily woke the echoes of the impending
rocks; but no actual hostility was displayed by the warlike denizens
of these until the troops were fairly entangled in the deepest,
steepest, and most perilous parts of the passes.
'_Then_ the cliffs above us seemed to become suddenly alive with men,
chiefly yellow-turbaned Khyberees, who opened a storm of fire upon us
that told with dreadful effect, strewing the whole tortuous path from
front to rear with killed and wounded. So skilful too were these
Afghans in the art of skirmishing, that save for the red flash of
their matchlocks streaking the gloom, it was impossible to detect
where the marksmen lay. Rocks and simple stones--some not larger
than a 13-inch shell, sufficed to shelter the lurking juzailchee, who
squatted down, showing, if anything, only the long barrel of his
deadly weapon, and the tip of his turban. Then might be seen the
hardihood, and the majesty, with which a British soldier fights!
'Cheerily rang out the bugles of the 13th, for "the leading companies
to extend," and away the skirmishers swept over the precipices,
scouring the terrible hills on the right and left, using the bayonet
wherever an opportunity served; and driving back the wild
mountaineers, till, just as night was closing in, we came in sight of
a mighty barricade of earth, stones and turf, built right across the
narrow pass, for the purpose of cutting off all further passage or
progress.
'Sale, who was suffering acutely from a ball in his leg, gave the
order to storm it, and just as, with a loud cheer, the leading
companies assailed it with a headlong rush, a ball struck me in the
left ankle, and my shako flew off; an invocation to heaven escaped
me, I fell heavily, my head came in contact with the rocks, and
insensibility rendered me oblivious alike of peril and agony, as our
men swept over me to storm the barrier, which they did brilliantly,
fairly opening up a passage to Boothak, and carrying off all their
wounded save me. I had fallen unseen, and in the dark was left
behind, while the flashing and reports of the musketry died out in
the distance.
'Bitter and terrible were my first emotions, when the falling dew
roused me in that savage place; bleeding, helpless, unable to stand
or crawl, a prey it might soon be to Afghan knives, or the teeth of
those wild animals which would soon scent the dead that lay around
me. I was not left long to reflect. I had just bandaged my wounded
limb with my handkerchief, when a party of Afghans passed. One
uttered a hoarse cry, and was about to decapitate me by one slash,
when another interposed, and I found myself the prisoner of Zemaun
Khan.
'"Death to the Feringhee!" cried the astonished Afghans.
'"Hold, I command you!" said Zemaun; "he is my brother."
'"Is he not one of those who would send our chiefs in chains to the
Queen of the Feringhees in London?"
'"He is my brother!"
'By his order I was conveyed, not unkindly, to a solitary round tower
among the mountains, where I remained a prisoner for longer than I
care to remember, with the terrible consciousness that I might be
murdered at any moment of caprice, or kept a life-long captive,
forgotten by all, while Mabel Berriedale became the wife of Jack
Villars, or some one else.
'My adventures after this were so numerous that they would crowd a
three volume novel.
'The ball in my ankle I contrived to snip out myself, nearly fainting
as I did so. I then bound up the wound, which grew well rapidly;
while that in my head was bathed and bandaged tenderly by the deft
little hand of the wife of Zemaun Khan, who was full of pity for, me,
with much of gratitude for the service I had done her, and thus I had
perhaps more of her society than the Khan might have relished; but he
had much wild work to do among the mountains, and it was from her
that I heard of what was doing at Cabul.
'"Sahib, your people will never escape; it will all be as Ackbar has
sworn," said she in her soft Afghani, as she drew near me and spoke
in a low cooing voice, lest others might overhear, in these rooms
that had only hangings and no doors. "Sixty thousand citizens in
Cabul, and all the mountain tribes around it are ripe for
insurrection, and wait but the voice of Ackbar."
'"But our soldiers are brave, and our envoy is wise."
'"Was, you mean, Sahib,"
'"How--is he dead?"
'"Yes," replied Nourmahal, shaking her head, while all the sequins
flashed and glittered among the coils of her splendid dark hair; "he
was lured into a conference with Ackbar, my husband Zemaun and other
Khans, by whom he was dragged away and beheaded, in the face of your
whole troops, who are now hemmed up in their lines, a prey to hunger
and despair, while the passes are full of snow, and all the country
up in arms."
'I scarcely believed all this at the time, but she never told me
aught save the strictest truth.
'Hunger, cold and peril! Poor Mabel! thought I. On how little will
a lover dwell with delight! The pressure of her gloved hand at
parting, her broken tearful voice, which said more than a thousand
words, and the remembered signature, all seemed to make her mine, and
yet I never might see her more. I must have been reported among the
killed, and as such wept for by poor Mabel, and in time to come would
be mourned by my dear old mother in England far away.
'Every item of intelligence that reached that lonely tower was
communicated to me by Nourmahal, but, I began to perceive, only when
the grim Zemaun, with his baggy breeches, black fur cap, and shawl
with its armoury of daggers and pistols, was absent. I began to
perceive, too, that she was enhancing her great natural grace and
beauty by a costume such as she had not worn in the tent, with a
white silk camise and pink silk trousers, and a thin veil of muslin
embroidered with gold, the use of which she managed with great
coquetry, especially when she idled over the strings of her saringa;
and she made wonderful _[oe]illades_ under her long dark eyelashes,
when singing the "Song of the Rose," and other ballads in her softest
Afghani.
'"Sahib," said she one day, coming to me with her dark eyes quite
dilated, "pardon and departure in peace has been offered to your
people, if they will leave all their women in the hands of the Afghan
chiefs; but they have refused, and only one cry is heard in their
camp."
'"And that cry is?"
'"'Let us fight our way down, sword in hand! A few of us at least
shall reach Jellalabad.' But they will never reach it," she added
sadly; "Aziz Khan and Zemaun Khan have beset their homeward path with
10,000 wild Kohistanees, and the Ghilzies--the fiercest of Afghan
warriors--hold the heights that overlook it."
'I started to my feet as I heard all this, as if I would be gone; but
I threw myself back on the camel's hair divan in a species of
despair, as I knew that the tower was guarded by men with loaded
juzailchees that would kill at 800 yards. She regarded me wistfully,
and drawing near nestled like a child by my side.
'"Has the Sahib a wife in yonder camp, that he looks so sad?" she
asked shyly.
'"No."
'"A sister, perhaps?"
'"I have none."
'"That is well; you will have none to weep for."
'"How?"
'"Because, whether given as hostages in peace, or taken as spoil in
war, the Feringhee women will become the gholaums--the slaves of the
Afghan chiefs."
'My blood ran cold and hot alternately as she spoke, and something
like an imprecation escaped me. She laid a hand upon my arm, and
drawing nearer, said in her most winning voice: "But what is all this
to you? If you have no wife, no sister, then what can the fate or
fortune of the rest matter?"
'The name of Mabel rose to my lips, but died there, for a new light
broke upon me with a knowledge of what my preoccupation of mind,
during all October and the subsequent weeks, had prevented me seeing;
that, influenced by pity, gratitude, and the singular respect with
which I, as a gentleman, treated her--a respect to which she was all
unaccustomed--the wife of Zemaun Khan actually loved me; and the
knowledge of this filled me with only confusion and dismay, for if he
discovered the fact our lives were forfeited, and already some of his
household might be suspiciously cognisant of it.
'"What is all this to you, I repeat?" she asked, her clasp on my arm
tightening.
'"More than I can tell you," said I, covering my face with my hands,
and striving to think.
'"Be comforted; in losing your friends, you have not lost all who may
love you--you have still _me_!" she added in a low voice, as she laid
her head in a nestling way on my shoulder.
'This was coming to the point with a vengeance, and adding
incalculably to the perils that surrounded me; and how was I to
temporise with this hot-blooded and impulsive little oriental, whose
sudden love might quite as rapidly change to bitter hate?
'"My God--could I but escape!" I exclaimed.
'"You can; but on one condition."
'"Oh, name it!"
'"Take Nourmahal with you!" said she imploringly; "she would die if
left behind."
'"And die she shall!" said the low, concentrated and terrible voice
of Zemaun Khan, with a grim and terrible expression of face, suddenly
appearing in the curtained doorway.
'A low wail escaped Nourmahal, who sank at his feet.
'"I have heard all!" said he sternly.
'"All?" I repeated mechanically, and thinking the word might be my
last.
'"Yes, all, Sahib, and blame not you."
'"Whom, then?" I asked.
'"Her!" he replied laconically.
'"She has done no wrong!" I urged; "I call Heaven to witness!"
'"Silence, Sahib! No actual wrong, but she is morally guilty," he
exclaimed, in a hoarse, fierce, broken voice, as he spurned her with
his heavy Afghan boot; and then, as she crept grovelling towards him
imploring pity, but silently, like a dumb animal, he added, "and thus
do I, her husband, punish her!"
'Then, quick as lightning, he drew, from among the bundle of weapons
in his shawl-girdle, a dagger, and plunging it in her bosom, killed
her on the spot. A crimson torrent flowed over her white camise,
while the horrible dagger remained in the wound. I say horrible, for
the weapon was constructed in such a manner, that after being thrust
into the body the blade, on touching a spring, separated into three,
thus rendering extraction impossible.
'This tragedy appalled me, and I looked wildly round for a weapon,
resolved to sell my life as dearly as possible. Zemaun Khan saw the
action, and smiled bitterly.
'"Your life is forfeited," said he; "but not while under my roof. I
swore to be your brother for saving the life I have just taken,
though I might have obeyed the fourth chapter of the Koran, and
immured her till death came; but such a process would be too slow for
me," he added, grinding his teeth. "You have eaten of my bread and
salt, and to that salt I shall be true till we meet among the
mountains; and then woe unto thee, Feringhee! Your people are
departing--go forth and join them; but their fate and yours is
sealed. Go--I have said."
'All that passed afterwards seemed like a dream to me then. I gladly
quitted that chamber of horror, where the poor girl-wife lay
weltering in her blood; a horse was given me, and a heavy tulwar or
native sword. A wave of the hand towards the hills was all the
farewell accorded me by Zemaun Khan, and turning my back upon the
solitary tower, I rode in the direction he indicated, which proved to
be the Khoord Cabul Pass.
'Night was closing in among these stupendous mountains, which were
then all covered with snow; but as I rode on partly at random,
thinking chiefly that I might be pursued and destroyed by Zemaun Khan
and some of his followers, the sound of firing in front began to
reach my ear. It became quickly louder and louder as I proceeded,
and ere long there opened before me the long dark vista of a
snow-covered gorge, on both sides and in the centre of which
thousands of muskets were flashing redly out amid the gloom, while
their reverberated reports mingled with a most horrible medley of
sound. The British troops were being attacked; I could not doubt it,
and I rode on madly and furiously to join my comrades.
'This was the night of the 8th of January, and, as I afterwards
learned, it was but two days before that our whole garrison in Cabul
had begun one of the most disastrous retreats ever recorded in the
annals of war!
'It had been finally arranged by Colonel Berriedale and the rest of
the staff that, on the payment of 1,400,000 rupees to Ackbar Khan,
Zemaun Khan, and the chiefs of the Kuzzilbashes and Ghilzies, that
our troops were to march unmolested; yet the first-named ruffian
again recorded his terrible vow, "that every Briton should be
exterminated save ONE, who was to have his hands and feet cut off,
and be placed thus at the mouth of the Khyber Pass, with a written
notice to deter all Feringhees from entering Cabul again."
'The helpless sick were left behind; the ladies and soldiers' wives
were all in dhooleys or on horseback; and the number of souls who
quitted the camp is estimated at 16,500 in all.
'As the troops marched on they were hemmed in and impeded by the
hordes of Afghan horse and juzailchees, who with yells and shouts
dashed recklessly through the ranks, in fierce and savage mockery at
the wailing of the Hindustani camp followers, who saw their wives and
children slaughtered before their eyes, or borne off, the prey of
mounted warriors. H.M.'s 44th, with horse and artillery, under
Brigadier Anquetil, formed the advanced guard; the 54th, with some
other horse and four guns, covered the rear, on which a fire of
musketry was opened from the captured cantonments. Soon the attack
was general on every hand, and the retreat became a disorganised
flight. Horse, foot, and artillery--men, women, children,
baggage-horses, and ponies, were all wedged together in the narrow
way, where the corpse-strewn snow soon became a bloody puddle, while
a storm of matchlock-balls poured down on the helpless column as
night closed in, and none could say who had escaped and who perished.
'The aged and dying Elphinstone, with the ruin of his army, halted
amid the falling snow, without tents and food, by the margin of the
Loghur stream, hoping on the morrow to clear the Khoord Cabul Pass;
but it was already in possession of Ackbar and Zemaun Khan! With
dawn the flight, for such it was, began again. Among the wounded was
Lady Sale, who had a ball in her arm; and as Mabel had her horse shot
under her, Colonel Berriedale mounted her on his own, and fought on
foot, till a ball, unknown to his daughter, laid him low. A flag of
truce was sent to Ackbar, who shot the bearer of it, the gallant
Captain Skinner.
'Pretending he had no longer any control over the people unless
hostages were given, Ackbar thus artfully got into his power, as
such, General Elphinstone, the _whole_ of the women of the army and
their families, including Ladies Sale and Macnaghten, who were
conveyed back to Cabul; while the army, thus degraded, continued its
flight through the deep snow in the dark and shadowy gorges, into
which the Khyberees and Ghilzies poured an incessant fire of rifles,
till the Tarechee Jungle, or Dark Pass, was reached, where the whole
54th perished to a man.
'There it was I contrived to join our 44th, or what remained of it,
for in one group 200 of it had fallen; and then I learned those
dreadful tidings, which made every heart in Britain throb, that the
women of the army, among them my Mabel and her cousin, had been
surrendered to the Afghans!
'"In all the world's history," said Jack Villars, "there will be no
retreat recorded like this! That from Moscow had its survivors; this
from Cabul will have _none_! But have a cheroot, old fellow; it is
all I have saved out of my baggage."
'The terrible march was continued, and on every side the rocks
re-echoed the cries of "Death to the Feringhees! Death to the
infidel dogs!" while the wounded were always stripped and horribly
mutilated. After a brief halt, at which some ponies were shot,
flayed, and eaten raw, on we struggled again, on and on, under a
shower of shot that decimated us at every step, until we reached a
place called Jugdulluck, by which time every officer of rank had
perished; and there, on a knoll, under Jack Villars, myself, and
another, the wretched survivors, men of all arms, made a last
despairing stand against the enemy.
'"Keep by me, Clinton!" cried Villars, brandishing his sword; "we can
die but once!" He had barely spoken ere he fell forward on his face,
choking and dying, with a ball in his chest.
'Cheering wildly, we stood shoulder to shoulder, as if to welcome
death; many of us faint and bloody with open wounds; but showers of
matchlock-balls rained on us, and the roll of death increased as the
men fell across each other in heaps.
'The sudden fury with which we resisted here checked even the ardour
of the hordes that assailed us, and we were permitted to struggle
down the pass, leaving the dead or the dying at every step, till the
13th of January, when _twenty_ officers and _sixty_ privates, the
sole survivors of Elphinstone's army, unable to proceed further, made
a halt on a knoll at Gundamuck, near a grove of cypress-trees.
'To all this violation of the laws of war, this terrible treachery
and lust of blood, was added a sense of deadly horror as to _what_
would be the fate of our gently nurtured European women at the mercy
of men so savage. Imagination ran riot, the heart grew still, and we
could but hope that ere this, death had put an end to the sufferings
of all.
'"My poor Mabel!" I could but gasp, rather than sigh, at the thought
of her.
'Our ammunition was gone, we were too weak to resist with the
bayonet, and, led by Zemaun Khan, the enemy burst in among us--a
sanguinary mob--and with the knife alone slew every man there but
myself and two other officers, who, being mounted, broke through,
sword in hand, though all more or less wounded, and escaped by the
speed of our horses; yet close at our heels came a score of mounted
Afghans, Zemaun among the number.
'They fired repeatedly at us, but their matchlocks were useless on
horseback, till some dismounted and fired, taking deliberate aim over
their saddles; thus my two companions fell, and were instantly
decapitated; while I rode wildly, blindly on, with the blood pouring
from three wounds, and fast and fiercely behind me came the pursuers,
one outriding all the rest--Zemaun Khan.
'Already the last of the pass had been left behind, already the
country was becoming more flat and open, as I entered upon the plain,
or rather valley, where before me lay my only haven, Jellalabad, with
its minarets, domes, and those walls and bastions of brick which had
for months been held by the soldiers of Sale's brigade.
'Could I but rid myself of Zemaun, I might reach it. I checked my
horse, and taking a Parthian aim at my chief pursuer with the last
shot in my pistol, saw him fall from his saddle and dragged away
rearward in the stirrups by his terrified horse. The act gave the
others time to near me, and I must have perished within sight of the
city but for a few cavalry who were sent out to succour me. I had
been seen by Colonel Dennie of ours, who made that remark which is
now historical.
'"Ackbar Khan has sworn that but one man shall escape alive, and, by
heaven, yonder _he_ comes!"
'In Jellalabad my wounds were dressed. I had food, succour, and rest
for the body, but not of the mind, for almost the first tidings that
Vassal Holland had for me concerned our lost ones. The ruffian
Ackbar had despatched the hostages, as they were named--Lady Sale,
Lady Macnaghten, and their fair companions--towards Toorkistan, to be
there sold as slaves and bondwomen to the Usbec Tartars, greater
savages, if possible, than the Afghans themselves.
'By this time the general was dead. He had expired in the tower of
Zemaun Khan.
'I now remembered the words of Nourmahal, on that evening which
proved so fatal to her, that "whether given as hostages in peace, or
taken as spoil in war, the Feringhee women will become the
gholaums--the slaves of the Afghan chiefs."
'"So they still live, Vassal?" said I, with a groan.
'"Yes; but for what a fate--for what a fate! I would rather hear
that my poor Bella were dead!"
'Eight months passed after this--eight months of acute horror and
terrible anxiety to all who had, as we had, a tender interest in the
lost; and common humanity made all sympathise with such as Sir Robert
Sale, who had a wife and daughter in such butcherly hands.
'How these months were passed, and all we did, if detailed, would far
exceed the limits of my story; suffice it, that we joined the "Army
of Vengeance," as it was named--the army that again marched, but in
triumph, up those terrible passes which were literally paved with
whitening human remains and the bones of horses and other baggage
animals--the army which drove the Afghan tribes like chaff before the
wind, fought victoriously the battle of Tizeen, and raised a shout of
triumph when it came again in sight of Cabul, when the standard of
Ackbar Khan was trod in the bloody dust, and the flames of ruin
enveloped the great Balahissar.
'This was on the 12th of October, just about a year from that night
when I had seen Mabel Berriedale, in all her girlish beauty, at Lady
Sale's, and we had the unlucky adventure with the pocket-book. Ages
seemed to have elapsed since then!
'"I have news for you, gentlemen," said the white-haired Sir Robert
Sale (whose services dated back to the wars against Tippoo Sahib), as
he came hurriedly one morning into the place which we had improvised
as a mess-bungalow, in the now ruined cantonments--"most welcome
news," he added emphatically, as his voice broke and tears filled his
eyes, "and doubly so to a husband and father, like me. Thanks to the
courage, diplomacy, and daring of Sir Richmond Shakespeare, at the
head of 600 Kuzzilbash Lancers, the whole of the ladies have been
rescued, when _en route_ to Toorkistan, and are now on their way to
join us here."
'He fairly broke down as he said this, and covered his face with his
handkerchief. A half cheer rose from the group in the bungalow,
where there was not an eye unmoistened. Then Sir Robert looked up
and said:
'"In a few minutes we shall march to meet them! There go the bugles
of ours! See," he added, with a sparkling eye, "how the 13th are
rushing to the muster-place, actually belting themselves as they come
along!"
'Under Sir Robert's orders, in less than an hour we had left Cabul
behind us. With the 13th Light Infantry he had the 3rd Light
Dragoons (now Hussars), the first Bengal Cavalry, and a train of
mountain guns, to keep any wandering horde in awe.
'Light were the hearts of the soldiers as they marched along.
Cheerfully had they ever marched--to battle and siege, at Ghuzni,
Jellalabad, and Cabul, but more cheerfully did they now depart on
their errand of mercy and succour; and they marched with a rapidity I
have never seen equalled, save in the advance on Lucknow.
'Vassal Holland was more hopeful than I was. Dreadful doubts
suggested themselves to me from time to time. I might hear that
Mabel Berriedale had died months ago; that she might have been
abducted for the rarity of her beauty, and that an impenetrable veil
obscured her fate! Ackbar was said to have appropriated one of the
captives. Heavens, if it proved to be Mabel!
'Her figure came before me as I saw it last--the memory of her voice
choked in tears, and the tremulous pressure of her hand, while the
warning bugles blew, and it was too late to speak--too late to
explain!
'Ere long a dark group appeared advancing, with glittering spears,
out of a valley, as Sale's command attained the crest of a hill. It
was Sir Richmond, with the ladies and the Lancers!
'A shout burst from the soldiers, and actually breaking their ranks,
they rushed forward, and with loud cheers greeted all, but chiefly
Lady Sale and her widowed daughter.
'In another moment I had both Mabel and Bella in my arms, till Vassal
drew the latter from me. Many now met friends from whom they had
long been parted; as if in death. Wives threw themselves into the
arms of husbands, daughters embraced fathers, and the artillery fired
a salute that shook the hills of Jubeais.
'"Papa--I do not see papa!" said Mabel anxiously.
'"Lay your head on my breast, darling, and I will whisper all!"
'"He is dead, then; and poor mamma too is gone! I have no one in the
world----"
'"But me, darling!" said I, as I kissed her tears away and assisted
her to remount.
'Here ends my story. We were to have been married when we returned
to Old England had not events occurred which I cannot tell you now,
but the results of which are swiftly passing away, and I shall be
soon able to call her my own after long years of waiting, having had
enough and to spare of Afghanistan and the Khyber Mountains.'
[Illustration: Chapter 7 headpiece]
DICK STAPLES
OF
THE 'QUEEN'S OWN,'
[Illustration: Chapter 7 tailpiece]
DICK STAPLES OF THE 'QUEEN'S OWN.'
When I came back, boys, after my fighting in India was over, you
laughed at my old red coat (for I had no other)--a trifle tattered, I
dare say it was, as well it might be, after all I had gone through in
it latterly; but you never forgot, boys, that it was the old Red Rag,
that tells of England's glory!
The company to which I belonged--the Grenadiers of the 'Queen's Own'
(for Grenadiers were not abolished till soon after the time of the
Indian Mutiny)--was cantoned at Jubbulpore, in the month of July,
when all Bengal was seething with revolt, and murder and outrage were
occurring everywhere. All was quiet as yet in Jubbulpore, which I
may tell you is in Berar, on the tableland of the Deccan; but ugly
rumours came from time to time about the 50th and 52nd Bengal Sepoy
regiments, who were stationed at Nagode, the nearest post to us, and
which, of all the Bengal army, were eventually the last to revolt.
Neither tongue nor pen can describe what we--the handful of Europeans
among the millions of India--endured at that terrible time, when the
souls of fathers and mothers, of husbands and wives, daily grew sick
with anxiety, while the atrocities of Delhi and Cawnpore, and more
than a hundred other places, made our soldiers go mad in their
longing for revenge. But all that is history now.
In the same cantonments with us was a regiment of Punjaubees, who had
as yet remained quiet; but more could not be said of them, and we of
the Queen's Own watched them closely, for we were only one to ten of
them, and as no order for disarming them had come, we pretended to
trust them, and affected a frankness and faith in our bearing with
them we were far from feeling.
Thus, cantonment life went on pretty much the same as usual--the
parade after gunfire, the officers and ladies riding or driving on
the course, or the former idling in the verandas of the bungalows,
sipping iced drinks or brandy-pawnee, studying the last Bengal
_Hurkaru_ or the thermometer; and the pandies cooking their
food--rice and chillies, chupatties and ghee, under the glaring sun,
in their own lines, and careful that the baleful shadow of no
European passer should, during the process, fall across it. Our
chief fear was that the approach of some thousand natives and
deserters, led by Koer Sing, steeped in slaughter and flushed with
conquest and crime, might in an hour change the face of things, and
find us fighting for bare existence with the very men who shared the
garrison duty of the cantonment with us.
Captain Basil Heron, who commanded us--a handsome man, in the prime
of life, a great favourite with us all, and the leader in all manly
sports and schemes for our welfare--with Captain Dalton, who
commanded the Punjaubees, began to take quietly some measures to
render the Residency, the only brick edifice there, more defensible
than it was, a place wherein to place the European women and children
in case of emergency.
Captain Heron had a wife--a fair and delicate English girl--and one
little child, on whom they both doted; and when I saw the expression
of haggard anxiety their faces wore, and the faces of others who had
such charges to love and protect, I thanked Heaven that then and
there I had neither wife nor child to care for, nor aught to look
after but my old 'Brown Bess.'
Rumours that precautions were being taken spread like lightning
through the native lines, and Buktawur Sing, the Subadar-Major of the
Punjaubees, a grotesquely ferocious-looking fellow, with a large hook
nose, and black mustachios of such enormous length that they floated
over his shoulders, went to Captain Heron, and, with his base eyes
full of tears, besought him not to send the ladies and children out
of the cantonments, as the whole of his regiment had sworn on the
waters of the Ganges 'to be true to their salt.' Captain Heron heard
this promise doubtfully; but Mrs. Heron, who sat there with her baby
crowing in her lap, its fat fingers clutching at the golden curls
that clustered round her forehead, besought her husband to believe
him.
But although he salaamed and bowed very low indeed, my particular
chum and comrade, Bill Brierly, who had been more than twelve years
in India, expressed to me his firm belief that this was all acting,
and that 'the time was at hand when we might look out for squalls!'
And I was sure Bill was right, for I had been on duty as an orderly
in the veranda on the evening when Buktawur Sing quitted the
captain's bungalow, and there was no vestige of his crocodile's tears
as he passed me; but a broad grin spread over his brown face, and a
cruel leer came into his eyes as he paused for a few seconds, and
listened to the voice of Mrs. Heron, who was singing at the piano.
Despite the promises of Buktawur Sing, Captain Heron, as senior
officer, posted a picquet at some distance from the cantonments on
the road to Nagode, to cut off communication with the two regiments
there--at least, to prevent any concerted movement being arranged;
and all postal matters being then at a standstill, we knew little
about what was going on around us, but heard only vague and
terrifying rumours.
On a night early in July, I was detailed for the picquet on the
Nagode road, and Captain Heron resolved to accompany it, though it
was under Mr. Drayton of Ours, a middle-sized and handsome fellow,
with a delicate-looking face, and much of that self-esteem and
imperturbable confidence of character peculiar to many young
Englishmen. He had seen service, too, and had on his breast the
Crimean medals.
As we paraded in front of Captain Heron's bungalow, he came forth
with his sword and revolver, and his pretty young wife clinging to
his arm.
'Are you compelled to go, Basil?' she asked.
'No; yet somehow I feel impelled to-night; but retire, Rose.
Good-night, dear--you look tired; to bed, and pleasant dreams to you.'
'You have your flask and the sandwiches, and your great-coat?'
'Everything. How thoughtful you are! Good-night, and kiss baby for
me.'
We marched out through the lines; but Mrs. Heron, who had some sad
foreboding, watched the picquet as long as it was in sight. Heron
and Drayton chose their halting-place and threw out their advanced
sentinels a considerable distance in front of the picquet. Of these,
I was one, and my orders were, on the advance of any armed party, to
fall back softly and silently, and communicate the alarm. Alone on
my post there, keeping watch with the stars, and the whole sweep of
country before me, memory went back to the old, or rather the young,
days of my boyhood, even to yonder old mill, when I worked there; the
rabbits in the brake, the squirrels in the trees, the nuts and
berries in the hedgerows; till suddenly the galloping of a horse
roused me, and I cocked my musket. The sound came from the front!
Another moment and the rider was before me, and reined up. He
evidently had heard nothing of the picquet, and was enraged to find
me barring the way. By his uniform he was a subadar of the 50th B.N.
Infantry, and mounted on an officer's horse.
'The parole?' said I.
'How should I know it? I have just come from Nagode,' said he, in
broken English; adding, 'Stand back, Kafir!'
'Oh ho!' I exclaimed, as the epithet warned me at once of enmity; and
grasping his reins, 'What news have you from that quarter?' I asked.
'Only that the faithful have risen at last, and not one of the
accursed _Ghora Logue_ (_i.e._, white people) will be left alive--not
even the youngling at its mother's breast, and all in Jubbulpore
shall perish too!' he added through his clenched teeth, while his
eyes blazed with fury, and he attempted to draw his sword; but ere he
could do so, and as his horse rose on its haunches for an onward
bound, I jerked the powerful curb with such violence to the rear,
that ere the sword had left its scabbard, man and horse were
prostrate on the road--the former stunned and senseless. In a moment
more I was in his saddle and galloping back to report to Captain
Heron all I had heard from the envoy of the mutineers.
The picquet had barely got under arms when a great hubbub was heard
coming on from the front, but no appearance of armed men, though the
moon had now shone forth. It was chiefly the rolling of wheels and
clatter of hoofs, and ere long there came up a wild and terrified
throng of European fugitives from Nagode--dishevelled women,
exasperated men, and wailing children. In a word, on the approach of
the rebels under Koer Sing, the 50th and 52nd had broken out into
open mutiny; but, by some merciful interposition of Providence, had
permitted their officers, with their families, to fly to Jubbulpore,
where they hoped for a time, at least, to find protection and safety.
Captain Heron was in the act of promising both, when a cry escaped
him, for a sound of scattered musket-shots was heard in our rear, and
flames were shooting up from every quarter of the cantonments of
Jubbulpore.
'The Punjaubees have revolted!' exclaimed everyone. The sentinels
were called in, and the picquet fell back at 'the double'--every
heart beating wildly. Upwards of thirty straw-roofed bungalows and
innumerable haystacks were blazing at once, casting a lurid glare on
the country for miles around; great pinnacles of wavering and
many-coloured flames, with huge volumes of smoke, rose into the air
of the sultry night, the roar of the conflagration mingling with the
yells of the rioters and the shrieks of the perishing.
Under Buktawur Sing, whom some other messenger had reached, the
Punjaubees had revolted, looted and destroyed the bungalows, and gone
off to Nagode, killing every European who failed to reach the
Residency, taking with them, 'as hostages,' Mrs. Heron, with her
baby, and a Lieutenant Macgregor. Wild wrath swelled up in all our
hearts, as we looked around us, and collected the dead--the gashed
bodies of brave men, of helpless women and children; and I shall
never forget the face of Captain Heron, as he clung to Mr. Drayton's
arm, and looked at the flaming bungalow to which he had brought his
bride last year.
'Henceforth,' said he, 'life will seem a blank behind me--worse than
all, a blank before me, with a memory floating through it--the memory
of her, and our poor little baby!' and he covered his face with his
hands. 'My poor little wife! that I should have been so near, and
yet utterly powerless to save her!'
'Hold up, bear up, for Heaven's sake, old fellow!' I heard Drayton
say; 'surely even these wretches will not have the heart to hurt a
hair of her head.'
But Basil Heron answered only with a groan, yet not a tear escaped
him. His grief and horror seemed too deep for even tears; every man
of the Queen's Own there, felt that he could face death or anything
to rescue her and make him happy; but too probably only unavailing
vengeance was left to us! However, we had no time for much
reflection. We took up our quarters in the Residency, all that were
left of us, resolved, if attacked, to sell our lives as dearly as
possible.
We entrenched and fortified it to the best of our means. The
verandas were bricked up, leaving only loopholes to fire through.
Sandbags were placed all round the roof, which was flat; we staked
the ground all about it to prevent a rushing attack, laid in grain
for three months, and got two field-pieces planted in front of the
house, to command the approach. We had in our care ten ladies, a
number of sergeants and writers' wives, and ever so many children.
In all we numbered now only about fifty fighting men, including
officers, to furnish guards night and day, as we were in hourly
expectation of an attack. Poor Captain Heron--the ghost of his
former self--superintended all this, but day by day went past without
tidings of his wife and child, and he would rather have known that
they were lying, where so many others lay, in the burial-pit close
by, in rest and peace, than endure the awful uncertainty that he did
as to their fate.
After a time we heard that the rebels and mutineers of that quarter
were all massed, and living riotously, under the ex-Subadar-Major
Buktawur Sing, in a place called Kuttingee, ten miles from
Jubbulpore. They numbered several thousands--too strong for us to
attack, and not even to save his wife dared Captain Heron risk the
lives of his soldiers. And now it was that my comrade, Bill Brierly,
came so manfully to the front. He was a queer fellow, Bill, and
early in life had been--so the Queen's said--a strolling player. He
was always merry and laughing, sang a good song, and was up to all
kinds of larks; so now he volunteered to go to Kuttingee disguised as
a _budmash_--one of the idle and rascally sort of irregular soldiers
who loaf about bazaars, and are up to all kinds of mischief--and as
such try to obtain some tidings of Mrs. Heron.
'Fifty guineas--aye, all I have in the world--are yours for any news
you bring me, Brierly; even if they be evil,' said the captain, in a
broken voice.
'Sir, I don't do this for money,' replied Bill; 'but for love of
yourself and the poor young lady, who was so kind to me when in
hospital--down with jungle fever. I risk my life daily for a
shilling; why should not I do so, once at least, for her?'
'God bless you, Brierly!' said the captain, wringing his hand. 'God
bless you!'
How I envied Bill, and would gladly have gone with him, but he--used
to acting, knowing the lingo and the ways of the country, and how to
comport himself--could alone perform the perilous task he undertook,
knowing well, too, the while, that if he fell into the enemy's hands
by being discovered, he would suffer a death as elaborately cruel as
these barbarians could devise. He attired himself in a blue silk
koortah, over a muslin shirt; a yellow-coloured chintz was wrapped
round his shoulders; he wore a green turban and white cummerbund, or
sash, in which he placed a brace of double-barrelled pistols
carefully loaded. His face and neck to the shoulders and his hands
to the wrists were coloured with lamp-black, the cork he used being
dipped in oil to cause the colour to adhere; and thus disguised, he
left the Residency, singing as he went--
'Sing hey, sing ho for the army O!
Sing hey for the fame of the army O!
A shilling a day is very fine pay,
Then buckle and away for the army O!'
And we watched him, as, after the heat of mid-day was past, he took,
alone, the road that led to Kuttingee.
Three days passed, and as there was no sign of poor Bill coming back,
we began to fear the worst--that 'the niggers' had discovered and
cruelly killed him.
After perils or risks that might be spun out into a volume, Bill got
past the outposts and sentries of the rebels and found himself in
Kuttingee--ostensibly a _budmash_--willing to serve, for money or
mischief, Buktawur Sing, or anyone else. Riot and disorder seemed to
prevail in every quarter, though for their own safety the rebel
Sepoys maintained a kind of discipline, and had guards and sentries
posted. On all hands were seen the plunder of villas and bungalows.
In the bazaar, three European heads were hung in a _bhoosa_ bag, or
forage-net, and Bill looked at them with anxiety lest one might prove
the head of her he had come to seek tidings of.
Three days were passed without progress being made; but on the third
he succeeded beyond his expectation.
When loitering near the gate of the fort, which overlooked the town
of Kuttingee, he jostled unexpectedly a Sepoy in the uniform of an
officer, all save a huge green turban, who was about to enter the
gate.
'_Chullo Sahib!_' (Come, sir!), the latter exclaimed angrily; 'what
in the name of Jehannum are you about?'
Bill's heart leaped on finding himself face to face with Buktawur
Sing, the commander of all the rascal multitude in the place!
'Who are you?' demanded the ex-Subadar-Major.
'Sookham Lall, a budmash, in want of a captain.'
'From whence?'
'Jubbulpore, last.'
'Jubbulpore! What are the cursed Kafirs doing there?'
Bill described in somewhat exaggerated terms the fortification and
garrison of the Residency.
'We may bring guns against it,' said Buktawur.
'They too have got guns,' replied Bill, though he knew that the
Residency could no more stand a bombardment than a house of cards.
'And now, what do you want here?' asked Buktawur, his black beady
eyes gleaming suspiciously.
'To kill your Christian prisoners, just to keep my hand in,' replied
Bill, grinding his teeth; 'you have twenty, I understand.'
'I have only two here--the Sahib Macgregor and the Mehm Sahib Heron
(her brat is not worth counting); there they are in the garden.'
Bill laid a hand on his tulwar.
'Not so fast, my friend,' said Buktawur, with a grin, 'for she is to
be my wife; and if matters go hard with me I may want the Sahib's
head.'
'So they live yet!' thought Bill, as he entered the garden of the
fort, but dared not approach them, though looking sharply at them,
and viewing the strong defences of the place, and the avenues that
led to it.
In a kind of alcove, excavated out of the solid rock of the fort,
Mrs. Heron--clad now partly like a native woman--was seated with her
baby in her lap, and near her Lieutenant Macgregor, as if for
companionship or the sympathy he dared scarcely to manifest. He was
in the rags of his uniform, and both looked haggard and wasted with
the anxieties and troubles they had undergone.
Bill drew near her, but at that moment a Sepoy came to Buktawur for
orders.
'Don't start, Mrs. Heron,' he whispered, 'or seem to see or hear
me--I'm Billy Brierly, of your husband's company. He is well and
unwounded, and counts every hour till he can rescue you.'
Bill then drew back, for now Buktawur Sing came hastily and
suspiciously forward. Mrs. Heron looked up. Astonishment, gratitude
and hope were expressed in her eyes by tears, but not a ray of joy
shone in them; and honest Bill Brierly felt his heart wrung as he
looked on the poor lady, and saw now that the baby she held in her
lap was dead!
He mentioned this to Buktawur Sing.
'_Kootch purwanni_' ('Never mind'), replied the latter, laughing to
see her bending over it in the depth of her misery, and playing with
his little white hands and flaxen curls.
'My little Basil--my little Basil!' she kept repeating; 'my little
sunbeam gone! But safe now--safe from peril and suffering--safe with
the Good Shepherd. And I am here!'
As if to show his weariness or contempt of this, the ferocious
Buktawur Sing snatched the child from her, and, with an imprecation,
cast it into the alligator tank in the centre of the garden. She
uttered a wild shriek and fell forward on her face senseless.
Macgregor started to her assistance, but was driven back by the sharp
bayonet of a Sepoy sentry; and Brierly, finding that he was powerless
to give any aid whatever, quitted the place, and with a sob for
vengeance in his throat, took the way back to Jubbulpore.
Bill mercifully remained silent as to the fate of the child; but poor
young Captain Heron was never weary of questioning him as to it and
the unhappy mother.
'It is a sore trial to me, Brierly,' said he, in a broken voice.
'Yes, sir,' he replied; 'but He who sends the trial sends the
strength to bear it too.'
'Bear it like a man,' urged Drayton.
'But I must also _feel_ it as a man,' replied poor Heron,
unconsciously quoting the words of Macduff.
And now came tidings that filled us all with grim and stern joy. The
movable column of the Madras troops, under General Miller, was on the
march from Dumoh to attack the rebels in Kuttingee, and drawing out
from the Residency every man fit for service, Captain Heron set off
to join him; and I can remember how, on the march, he kept near the
section where Brierly was, for the latter had seen and spoken with
the creature _he_ loved most on earth. A ghastly and haggard man
Heron looked now--the shadow of his former self.
Though it was only a ten-miles tramp, and, leaving knapsacks behind,
we had only our great-coats and blankets to carry, I shall never
forget that day's march to Kuttingee! It was one of thirst and toil,
with all our canteens and water-bottles empty. We pushed on under a
noonday sun, under which the parched earth seemed to pant like a
living creature. The streams were dried up, and all that was green
had become yellow and sickly in hue; the sky seemed a furnace--the
sun a globe of fire. Clouds of dust surrounded our line of march,
and sand-spouts rose at times; the ravens and kites gaped with
wide-open beaks by the wayside, and the alligators lay hidden to the
muzzle in their oozy tanks. Fissures gaped in the soil; the birds
were hushed, and insect-life stood still; the 'burra choop,' or Great
Silence, as the Hindoos call it, reigned around us, and we had three
cases of sunstroke; yet we pushed manfully on, and when evening drew
near found ourselves in front of Kuttingee.
The first shot might be the death-knell of Mrs. Heron and all other
Christian prisoners, so the emotions with which her husband surveyed
it as he marched the remains of his company into the assigned
position may be imagined.
The outworks of the fort were armed with cannon, which opened on our
columns as soon as they were within range, and to which ours were not
slow in replying, and making a considerable slaughter of the infantry
that lined the summit of the walls and towers, which their return
fire seemed to garland with flashes and smoke. We of the Queen's, as
a flank company, had the Minie rifle (which by force of habit we
still called Brown Bess), and in closing up we took cover under every
bush or stone, and picked off the rebels by steady pot-shots
delivered from the knee. We carried the outworks by a furious rush
at the point of the bayonet, and then slewed round a couple of the
heaviest guns, by which we blew in the gate of the keep, or central
fort. Beyond was a traverse, over which the rebels were firing; a
tempest of balls swept through the arch as the wind sweeps a tunnel,
and there fell many of ours, and among them poor Bill Brierly.
Our loud hurrahs replied to the yells of 'Deendeen!' ('Faith!') and
'Death to the Kafirs, the Feringhees, the Ghora Logue!' while
maddened by bhang, opium and churuis, the infuriated Sepoys met us
hand to hand, but only to go down on every side; for, with our bugles
sounding the 'advance,' we stormed the traverse at a rush, and spread
all over the garden within the square fort.
We fought our way desperately. 'Remember the ladies--remember the
babies!' were our cries. Near the alligator tank lay the bodies of a
European man and woman. They were those of Lieutenant Macgregor and
Mrs. Heron, before whom he had thrown himself twice, as she was cut
down by the tulwar of Buktawur Sing, and the blood was yet flowing
from her wound when we found her. As for the poor officer, he was
found, as the General reported, 'with a hole through the neck, both
arms broken, and his body perforated by upwards of thirty wounds.'
I was an old soldier even then. I had been in many battles, and seen
much of death and suffering, but I felt a choking in my throat as I
saw Basil Heron, kneeling, sword in hand, by the side of his wife for
a moment, ere he rushed away, intent on revenge.
Hemmed in a corner, amid a heap of dead and dying, he ere long found
Buktawur Sing, and, though I did not see it, close and terrible was
the combat that ensued between them.
'At last! at last I have him! God, I thank Thee!' he exclaimed, with
a fervour that mingled with just indignation; and he ordered Drayton
to stand back, and the soldiers, who were ready to shoot the reptile
down, to leave him to his own fate. Buktawur was armed with a
ponderous tulwar, edged like a razor; and Heron, fortunately for
himself, had not one of our regulation tailors' swords, but a
straight good-cutting blade that his father had used in Central
India. His teeth were set; he panted rather than breathed; his check
was pale--his eyes were blazing, and sparks of fire flew from their
swords at every stroke. But fate was against Buktawur Sing, he
received in his body a succession of cuts and thrusts that brought
him, with blood flowing from every vein, upon his knees, and when his
turban fell off, by one trenchant slash Basil Heron clove him from
the brain to the chin, and with his foot fiercely he spurned the
corpse as it sunk before him.
* * * * * *
'Where is she?' he gasped hoarsely of me and others, as he staggered
back to the side of the alligator tank, and found that his wife had
disappeared.
'Inside the fort. Calm yourself. We have laid her on a charpoy,
poor girl!' said Drayton.
'My poor Rose! my poor Rose!' moaned Heron, as he covered his face,
and the hot tears streamed through his fingers. Through a place
where 150 of the 52nd alone were lying dead, he was led into a
darkened room, where, after the roar of the storm and capture, all
seemed dreadfully still. On a charpoy, or native bed, lay Rose
Heron, and Sheikh Abdul Ali, a native doctor, was bathing and binding
up the wound; and, nerving himself for what he had to look upon, her
husband drew near, and with trembling hands drew back the
mosquito-curtains.
Was he dreaming? was it a mockery or a delusion that he saw Rose
there--not dead--not even dying; but with her eyes seeking for
him--blood already mantling in her pale cheek? And he learned that
the blow of the felon's tulwar had--though cutting her tender
forehead--only stunned her, for the hand of Macgregor had caused the
blade to turn in his grasp!
Some bright beams often fall from the gloomiest sky. So husband and
wife had met again, and--after all they had undergone--survived to
spend the coming Christmas at home in old England, and to hear the
merry chimes in their peaceful Kentish village ring out upon the
frosty air the message of Peace and Goodwill to All.
[Illustration: Chapter 8 headpiece]
THE STORY
OF
LIEUTENANT JAMES MOODY
OF
BARTON'S REGIMENT.
[Illustration: Chapter 8 tailpiece]
THE STORY
OF
LIEUTENANT JAMES MOODY
OF
BARTON'S REGIMENT.
The exploits of this adventurous but forgotten Scot, who nearly
perished miserably on an American scaffold, like Major André of the
Cameronians, surpassed in some respects even those of Captain
Colquhoun Grant, the famous scouting officer of Wellington, so
extolled by Napier in his 'History of the Peninsular War.'
During the progress of the strife with our revolted colonists in
America, he rendered himself famous by the skill and audacity with
which he intercepted many of their mails and brought them into New
York, then the British headquarters after the Battle of Long Island.
In May, 1780, when an ensign, with four trusty soldiers he penetrated
into New Jersey, for the purpose of surprising Governor Livingstone,
who cruelly oppressed the royalists, but failing to achieve his
capture, his next idea was to blow up the magazine at Suckasanna,
which also proved abortive, as he found it guarded by above one
hundred bayonets. On being joined by a few soldiers who had been
taken with Burgoyne at Saratoga, he entered the mountainous county of
Sussex, in the principal gaol of which, he learned, several prisoners
were confined for their loyalty, and among them a poor soldier of
Burgoyne's, who had been doomed to death; merely for being a
royalist. Moody determined on achieving the release of this man and
all the other prisoners.
Selecting six men he came to the gaol door late at night, and his
business was demanded by the keeper from an open window.
'I have here a prisoner to put into your custody,' he replied.
'Is he one of Moody's fellows?' asked the gaoler, at a venture.
'Yes, exactly so,' replied the ensign, giving the name of some noted
Tory in the neighbourhood, and desiring the keeper to come for him.
The latter declined, saying that 'Moody was about, and he had orders
to admit no man after sunset.'
'I am Ensign Moody,' said that officer sternly; 'I have a strong
party with me, and if you do not surrender your keys, I will blow the
place about your ears!'
His men now imitated the Indian war-whoop, and shouted, 'The
Indians--the Indians have come!'
On this the gaoler, his assistants, and even many of the townspeople,
fled to the woods. Moody then burst into the gaol through the
window, and found the condemned soldier in his cell fast asleep.
'There is no possibility,' says Moody's Narrative (now out of print),
'of describing the agony of this man when he saw before him a man in
arms, attended by persons he was utterly at a loss to recognise. The
first and only idea that occurred to him was, that, as many of the
friends of the government had been privately executed in prison, the
person he saw was his executioner!'
Moody released and carried off with him all the prisoners, including
the soldier, who, by a strange freak of fortune, was afterwards taken
again during the war, and hanged in the same prison, and in virtue of
the old sentence, though we are told that his only crime was 'an
unshaken allegiance to his sovereign.' This seems barely probable,
as another soldier, a Scotsman named Robert Maxwell, was executed at
the same time for robbery and plunder.
On the 6th of March, 1781, when Moody was still an ensign, the
Adjutant-General, Oliver de Lancy, of the 17th Light Dragoons,
successor in office to the ill-fated André, proposed 'an expedition
into the rebel country, for the purpose of intercepting the
despatches of Mr. Washington.' Moody instantly undertook the task,
and marching his party twenty-five miles that night, concealed them
in a morass; but the guide lost heart, which so enraged Moody that he
would have shot him, but for the sake of his wife and family, and was
compelled to return to New York. Colonel de Lancy was much
disappointed; the guide was made a prisoner, and on the 11th of the
same month Moody set forth again, and reached the Haverstraw
Mountains, which overlook the Hudson, amid a snow-storm, and by the
15th he captured the despatches and their bearer; but so great were
the hardships undergone that some of his men perished of cold and
hunger. For this, Moody, who had been one year a volunteer, and
three an ensign, was promoted to a lieutenancy.
About the middle of May the adjutant-general, being in want of
intelligence, suggested to Moody the capture of another 'rebel mail;'
and on the night of the 15th he set forth with four well-armed men,
and after proceeding many miles, he found himself beset on three
sides by a considerable number of the Colonial troops, who, having
secret intelligence of his movements from New York, were then in
ambush awaiting him.
On the fourth side lay a ridge of cliffs, so steep and rugged that to
escape by it seemed impossible. There was no alternative now but to
surrender and die, or leap down the cliffs, and in the dark. Calling
on his men to follow him, the daring Moody sprang down, and as the
soil was soft at the base, they were all unhurt, though seriously
shaken. They now crossed a swamp, only to find themselves before a
still stronger party of the enemy when day was breaking. To advance
was impossible, as there was no doubt that they had been betrayed.
They contrived to creep away unseen, and travelled till they gained
the North River within four miles of New York. Just when Moody
conceived they were out of all peril, a party of seventy men, under
arms, issued from a wayside house, and opened fire upon him. 'He
received one general discharge, and thought it a miracle he escaped
unwounded; the bullets fell like a storm of hail around him; his
clothes were shot through in several places; one ball pierced his
hat, another grazed his arm. Without at all slackening his pace, he
turned round, discharged his musket, and killed one of his pursuers;
still they kept up their fire, each man discharging his piece as fast
as he could load; but gaining an opportunity of soon doubling upon
them, he gave them the slip, and in due time arrived once more safe
in New York.'*
* 'Political Magazine,' vol. iv.
He departed again on the same perilous errand for Pompton, on the
18th May, conceiving that the foe would think they had sufficiently
scared him from further expeditions of the kind. With four resolute
fellows, he crossed the Hakinsack river by a canoe which he concealed
among the long, rank sedges, and soon fell in with an American
patrol, whose object was to prevent the conveyance of provisions to
the British headquarters. He was ordered to stand or be instantly
shot. With his four men, he fired, and then gave an order as if he
had a strong force in reserve, on which the patrol fled.
A four miles' march brought them to the Saddle river, which had
overflown its banks; the night was gloomy and tempestuous, and a body
of American regulars held the bridge. He was thus compelled to ford
the river, a task of great danger and difficulty. Rumour said that
'Moody was out,' and the mail instead of being sent as usual, by the
way of Pompton, was sent by another way under a guard. Selecting a
man whose voice, face, and tall figure resembled his own, he sent him
to a certain justice of the peace in another neighbourhood, who at
once fled to the woods, giving out everywhere that Moody was _there_.
To that quarter the Colonial troops were at once despatched, while
Moody captured the mail at another, and brought in all the despatches
relative to the important interview between General Washington and
Count Rochambeau in Connecticut. After this, Moody captured two more
bags of despatches, in one expedition being aided by his younger
brother, who must have been a mere lad, as he himself was then only
in his twenty-fourth year.
In October, 1781, Captain and Brevet-Major George Beckwith, of the
37th Regiment, then aide-de-camp to Lieutenant-General Baron
Knyphausen, informed Mr. Moody that a person named Addison had
suggested a project of great moment--to bring off all the books and
papers of the Congress! This Englishman had held some inferior
office under Thompson, the Secretary to the Congress, and, being a
prisoner of war, it was resolved that he should be released, return
to his old employment at Philadelphia, where Moody would visit
him--Major Beckwith vouching for his fidelity.
Moody undertook this perilous duty with the full knowledge that
Addison might deem him well worth betrayal; thus he stipulated that
the former was to be kept in ignorance that he had undertaken it.
Moody took with him only his brother John and another Scotsman, named
Marr, on whom he could rely, and a night--the 2nd of November--and
place were appointed where they were to meet the traitor Addison, in
the vicinity of Philadelphia.
They met him duly, but Lieutenant Moody kept a little in the
background lest his figure, which was a tall one, might be recognised
by Addison, who was at once accosted by his brother and Marr. The
former told them that everything was ready; that he had obtained
access to the most secret archives of the Senate House, and that next
evening he would deliver up all the books and papers they were in
quest of. Mutual assurances of fidelity were exchanged. They
crossed the river together in a boat for Philadelphia, unaccompanied
by Moody, whose first foreboding or suspicion was a right one, for
the perfidious Addison had already sold him and his companions to the
Congress!
Pretending that the precise time at which their plans could be
executed was dubious, Addison suggested that Lieutenant Moody should
remain at the ferryhouse opposite the city till they returned; and
before departing he told a keeper of it that the visitor was an
officer of the New Jersey Brigade, which the woman understood to be
the force of that name under Washington. To avoid notice, Moody
affected indisposition, and remained in a room upstairs, but with his
arms ready, awake and on the watch.
Next morning he overheard a man saying to another:
'There is the very devil to pay in Philadelphia! There has been a
plot to break into the Senate House, but one fellow has betrayed two
who are now taken, and a party of soldiers are coming to seize a
_third_, who is concealed somewhere hereabouts.'
On hearing this alarming intelligence, Moody took his pistols, rushed
downstairs, and escaped. He was not one hundred yards from the house
when he saw the soldiers enter it! He attempted to gain shelter in a
thicket by leaping a fence, but found the latter lined by cavalry,
and got concealment in a ditch, under the overhanging weeds and
shrubs. There he lay for some time with pistols cocked, and heard
the soldiers pass and repass within ten yards of him. From the ditch
they went all round an adjacent field, where he could see them
probing the stacks of Indian corn with their bayonets; and conceiving
rightly that they would not explore there again, when night fell he
sought shelter in one; and as his pursuers were still about, he
remained in an upright position in the stack, without food or drink,
for two days and nights, enduring excruciating torture. The stacks
were destitute of corn, being merely straw.
After a time he ventured, in the dark, to the bank of the Delaware,
and finding a small boat, while full of grief for the peril of his
brother and friend, pushed off and rowed up the river; and though
many times accosted by people on the water, he replied to them 'in
the rough phraseology of the gentlemen of the oar;' and escaping
unsuspected, after many adventures and circuitous marches, all
undergone in the night, in five days from the time of his landing, he
reached in safety the British headquarters at New York. There was
not the slightest hope that his brother would be pardoned, for the
treason of Arnold and many recent events had infused much rancour in
the minds of the contending parties. Tried by court-martial, the two
prisoners were sentenced to death and executed. John Moody was in
his twenty-third year, and on learning his fate, his father--an old
and deserving soldier--lost his reason. The American bulletin runs
thus in the papers of the time;
PHILADELPHIA, _November_ 14, 1781.
'On Thursday morning last, Lawrence Marr and John Moody, of Colonel
Barton's Tory Regiment, were apprehended on suspicion of being spies.
On the following day they were indulged with a candid hearing before
a board of officers, whereof the Hon. Major-General the Marquis de la
Fayette was president. It appears that their business was to steal
and carry off the Secret Journals of Congress to New York.... The
Board having reported to the Hon. Board of War, their opinion was
approved, and Marr and Moody were both sentenced to die, which
sentence was executed on Moody between the hours of eleven and
twelve; Marr is respited until the 23rd instant.... The enemy, who
at this period seem equal to no exploits superior to robbing mails
and stealing papers, may thank their beloved friend Benedict Arnold
for the untimely death of the young man, who was only in his
twenty-third year.'
Of the future career of the adventurous James Moody we unfortunately
know nothing.
[Illustration: Chapter 9 headpiece]
'OLD MINORCA;'
OR,
GENERAL MURRAY OF THE SCOTS FUSILIERS.
[Illustration: Chapter 9 tailpiece]
'OLD MINORCA;'
OR,
GENERAL MURRAY OF THE SCOTS FUSILIERS.
It is strange that the life of this old officer has found no place in
any biographical work; yet he was the successor of Wolfe at Quebec,
and as such completed the conquest of Canada. He defended Minorca,
and repelled with scorn De Crillon's offer of a million sterling to
betray that post; and who, when an old lieutenant-general, was
arraigned before a court-martial by the brilliant Sir William Draper,
whom he signally baffled.
James Murray was the fifth son of Alexander, fourth Lord Elibank, who
in 1698 married Elizabeth Stirling, daughter of a surgeon in
Edinburgh. Following the example of his elder brother Patrick, who
served as a colonel in the Carthagena Expedition under Lord Cathcart,
he betook him to a military life, and on the 5th January, 1750-51,
was lieutenant-colonel of the 15th Foot, then on the Irish
Establishment (Millans' Lists). During five years subsequently his
regiment was still serving in Ireland, and in 1757 he commanded in
Sir John Mordaunt's expedition to Rochefort. On this service ten
battalions of infantry sailed from the Isle of Wight on board
eighteen ships of the line, attended by frigates, fire-ships, and
bombketches, under Sir Edward Hawke and Admiral Knowles, on the 8th
September, 'attended,' says Smollett, 'with the prayers of every man
warmed with the love of his country and solicitous for her honour;'
but, like most of those buccaneering expeditions to the coast of
France which disgraced the reigns of the two first Georges, it proved
a failure.
The fortifications of Aix, an island at the mouth of the Charente,
and midway between Oleron and the mainland, were cannonaded, blown
up, and demolished, at the cost of a million of money; 'after which,'
says Smollett, 'the officers, in a council of war, took the final
resolution of returning to England, choosing rather to oppose the
frowns of an angry sovereign, the murmurs of an incensed nation, and
the contempt of mankind, than fight a handful of dastardly militia.'
Charged with disobedience of orders and instructions, Sir John
Mordaunt was arraigned at Whitehall before a court-martial, which sat
for six days, from the 14th to the 20th December, 1758. Among the
members were Lord Tyrawly, Brigadier Huske (who was engaged at
Falkirk), and Colonel William Kingsley, of Minden fame, the ancestor
of the author of 'Alton Locke.' Wolfe was a witness for the
prosecution, as was also 'Mr. Secretary William Pitt;' and among
those for the prisoner was Colonel Murray of the 15th, Cornwallis,
and the two admirals. By the court Mordaunt was unanimously
acquitted.
We next find James Murray at the capture of Louisbourg, in 1758.
('Records 21st Foot.')
Here the attacking force consisted of fourteen battalions of
infantry, with 600 provincials, and 300 artillery--13,094 men in all,
under Major-General Amherst. The place was taken by capitulation,
when the garrison, which consisted of 5,637 men (including the
battalions of Volontaires Etrangers, Cambize, Artois, and Burgundy),
under the Chevalier de Dracour, laid down their arms.
On the 24th of October, 1759, James Murray was made Colonel
Commandant of the 60th, or Royal Americans, and at the capture of
Quebec he served as brigadier in command of the left wing; and after
the fall of Wolfe and surrender of the city--the fortifications of
which were in tolerable order, though the houses were completely
demolished--he was left with a garrison of 5,000 men to defend it;
while the rest of the forces returned to Britain with the fleet,
which sailed soon, lest it should be locked up by ice in the River
St. Lawrence. ('Ramsay's Military Memoirs.')
In the spring of 1760, Monsieur de Levi, at the head of 13,000 men,
took the field and appeared on the Heights of Abraham, above Quebec,
when Murray, who had lost 1,000 men by scurvy, had but two courses
open to him--to march out and fight the enemy on the old
battle-ground, where the grave of Montcalm still lay, or stand a
siege within the ruins of the city. He chose the former, with equal
spirit and resolution, and coming out, with only 3,000 effective men
and twenty guns (says the 'Military Guide,' 1781), having to leave
the rest of his force to overawe the inhabitants.
His daring struck the enemy with surprise, when he came in sight of
them on the 28th of April, so vast was the disparity in force! He
found their first column advantageously posted on high ground covered
with trees, and their main body in line in its rear. He attacked the
first column with such fury and intrepidity that it was hurled in
disorder on the second which, however, stood firm, and received him
with a fire so close and well directed that his troops staggered
under it. The strength and weight of the French force were such that
his flank and even his rear were menaced, and after an obstinate
struggle, with the loss of 1,000 of all ranks, he was compelled to
fall back, but in good order, behind the walls of Quebec.
Undismayed, the ardour of his troops, who had only salt rations to
live upon, redoubled; and though the French began to invest the city
in regular form on the very evening of their victory, it was the 11th
of May before their guns opened. Murray had on the walls 132 pieces
of cannon, many of which he was unable to handle for want of men; and
with all his bravery he must have been compelled to surrender, had
not the arrival of Lord Colville's squadron in the St. Lawrence on
the 15th, and the destruction of the French fleet there by some of
his advanced frigates, so disheartened De Levi that he retired with
precipitation, abandoning all his provisions, stores, and artillery,
of which Murray instantly possessed himself.
Montreal was the only place of any consequence now held by France in
Canada. There General the Marquis de Vaudrieul, governor of the
province, commanded all that remained of the French army; and as a
portion of General Amherst's plan for its reduction, Colonel
Haviland, of the 45th Regiment, with the troops under his command,
took possession of an island in Lake Champlain, while General Murray,
at the head of all that could be spared from Quebec, came by water to
Montreal, which was attacked by 10,000 men, and capitulated in
September, 1760, after which the French lost all footing in America,
the operations in which were confined to Colonel Grant's expedition
against the Cherokees.
On the 10th July, 1762, Murray was gazetted major-general, and in the
following year was made Governor of Canada, the conquest of which he
completed and brought steadily under British sway. He was made a
lieutenant-general in May, 1772, in which year we find him Governor
of Minorca, with a salary of £730, and Sir William Draper, K.B.,
Lieutenant-Governor, with the same allowance. On the 10th February,
1783, he was made full general.
The British Government, anxious to have a naval station further up
the Mediterranean than Gibraltar, took possession of Minorca in 1708,
and it was confirmed to them by the Treaty of Utrecht, and remained
in possession of Britain till 1758, when it was taken by a French
fleet and army, after the failure of an attempt to relieve it, which
led to the tragic death of the unfortunate Admiral Byng. At the
peace of 1763 Minorca was restored to Britain, but in 1782 it was
retaken by the Spaniards, after a defence by General Murray which was
deemed one of the most brilliant military events of the age.
Long and narrow, it is thirty-two miles by eight in extent, with
Mount Toro in its centre, nearly 5,000 feet in height, and has two of
the finest harbours in the world, Fornella and Port Mahon, the latter
of which is defended by Fort St. Philip, on a rocky promontory of
difficult access from the land side.
Murray's garrison in Fort St. Philip consisted of only 2,692 men, of
which number, including the 51st Foot (under Colonel Pringle), only
2,016 were regulars, 200 seamen of the _Minorca_ sloop-of-war; and
400 of these were invalids--'worn-out soldiers,' as he states, sent
from Britain in 1775, and all were more or less unhealthy. 'The
officers of the four regular regiments,' says General Murray, in his
defence of himself, 'were in much better health than the privates.
This is easily accounted for, for all of them (viz., the British),
for _eleven_ years, lived on _salt_ provisions. The quantity of
vegetables they consumed and the wine they drank, though it prevented
the immediate efforts of scurvy, could not hinder it from tainting
the blood. The officers had, until we were invested, lived entirely
on fresh provisions, and even after, that we were confined to the
Fort, had wine and other refreshments bought at their own expense.
They likewise passed the day in the Castle Square, and were only at
night confined in the damp air of the _souterreins_; but even the
officers, with all these advantages, began to be infected.'
(_Political Magazine_, 1783.)
On Minorca being menaced by a siege, Murray sent his wife and family
to Leghorn, and, preparing for a vigorous defence, shut himself up in
Fort St. Philip, for hostilities had now begun with Spain (_Scottish
Register_, 1794). He scuttled and sank the _Minorca_ sloop-of-war at
the entrance of the harbour, to prevent the approach of the enemy's
ships, and on the 20th of August found himself blocked up by a French
and Spanish army, which landed in Minorca without opposition, to the
number of 16,000 men, under the Duc de Crillon, who took his title
from a village of that name in the Department of Vaucluse, and who
subsequently distinguished himself at the great siege of Gibraltar.
He was afterwards joined by six French battalions from Toulon, under
the Count de Falkenhagen.
So resolute was the defence made by General Murray, that the Duc de
Crillon soon began to despair of reducing the place, even with the
vast forces he had opposed to it, and secretly offered him (doubtless
by order of the King of France) the immense bribe of one million
sterling for the surrender of the fortress. Indignant at such an
insult, he addressed the following reply to the French commander:
FORT ST. PHILIP, _October_ 16, 1781.
'When your brave ancestor, so celebrated in the "Memoires" of Sully,
was desired by his sovereign to assassinate the Duc de Guise, he
returned the answer that you should have done when you were charged
to assassinate the character of a man whose birth is as illustrious
as your own, or that of the Duc de Guise. I can have no further
communication with you, but in arms. If you have any humanity, pray
send clothing for your unfortunate prisoners in my possession; leave
it at a distance to be taken for them, because I will admit of no
contact for the future, but such as is hostile to the most inveterate
degree.'
'Your letter,' replied the Duke, 'restores each of us to our place;
it confirms me in the high opinion I always had of you, and I accept
your last proposal with pleasure.'
As ammunition was becoming scarce, on the 15th of the same month the
general issued an order that cannon were not to be fired at single
men, for the younger officers of the garrison, becoming weary of
confinement, were wont to turn their guns 'at Bagats, or figures
dressed like men, which the enemy exhibited in ridicule of our
ineffectual firing,' and, curiously enough, this order was one of the
chief charges brought against him, by Sir William Draper, at a
subsequent time.
By the 5th of February Murray's garrison, by the ravages of
inveterate scurvy, was so reduced, that only 660 men were fit for
duty, and out of these 560 were tainted with the disease. 'No
words,' says Captain Schomberg, in his 'Naval Chronology,' 'can paint
the heroic valour and resolution of the brave troops of this
garrison, which had to capitulate.'
'Such was the uncommon spirit of the King's soldiers' (to quote the
Hon. James Murray's despatch), 'that they concealed their disorders
and inability, rather than go into hospital; several men died on
guard, after having stood sentry, their fate not being discovered
till called upon for the relief, when it became their turn to mount
again. Perhaps a more noble or more tragical scene was never
exhibited, than the march of the garrison of St. Philip through the
Spanish and French armies. It consisted of no more than 600 old and
decrepit soldiers, 200 seamen, 120 of the Royal Artillery, 20
Corsicans, and 25 Greeks, Turks, Moors, and Jews. The two armies
were drawn up in two lines, forming a way for us to march through;
they consisted of 14,000 men, and reached from the glacis to George
Town, where our battalion laid down their arms, declaring that they
had surrendered to GOD ALONE, having the satisfaction to know that
the victors could not plume themselves on taking a _hospital_. Such
were the distressing figures of our men, that many of the Spanish and
French troops are said to have shed tears as they passed them.'
His casualties were 108.
The Lieutenant-Governor of Minorca, Sir William Draper, K.C.B., a
famous officer in those days, the conqueror of Manilla (who erected
on Clifton Downs a beautiful cenotaph to the memory of the Old
English 79th Foot, disbanded in 1763), thought proper, on the return
of the garrison to Britain, to accuse General Murray of bad conduct
during the siege, of profusion and waste of money and stores, of
extortion, rapacity and cruelty. On these startling charges, the
general was brought before a court-martial at the Horse Guards, in
November, 1782, the proceedings of which were taken in shorthand by
Mr. Gurney. The President was Sir George Howard, K.B., and among the
members was Lieutenant-General Cyrus Trapaud, familiarly known as
'Old Trap,' the friend of Wolfe. 'In our attendance on this
court-martial,' says a print of the time, 'it struck us as an
uncommon circumstance, that although it was composed of very old
officers, and of long service, yet all appeared hale, vigorous, and
remarkably stout men, literally, to all appearance, fit to carry a
musket... General Murray appeared much broke, but had the remains of
a very stout man, he looked the old soldier! Sir William Draper
looked exceedingly well, and in the flower of his age. His star was
very conspicuous, and his left arm always so carefully disposed as
never to eclipse it.'
General Murray was fully and honourably acquitted of all the charges,
save two that were trivial, and for which he was sentenced to be
reprimanded, though he urged that his 'age and broken constitution,
worn out in the defence of Fort St. Philip,' were such that he
probably could serve his country no more. On the finding of the
Court being communicated to the King by the Judge Advocate, Sir
Charles Gould, he approved of 'the zeal, courage, and firmness with
which General Murray had conducted himself in the defence of Fort St.
Philip, as well as his former long and approved services,' and the
reprimand was dispensed with. His Majesty further expressed his
concern that such an officer as Sir William Draper should have
suffered his judgment to have become so perverted as to bring such
charges against a superior officer. The Court, apprehensive, from
some intemperate expressions made use of by the former to the latter
in a document, that the veterans would resort to their pistols,
prescribed a form of apology to be made use of by Sir William, and to
be acquiesced in by General Murray; but this affair, which in its day
made much noise in the military world and in London society, did not
quite end here, as the general was afterwards prosecuted by his
countryman, Mr. Sutherland, Judge Advocate of Minorca, for suspending
him in his office, and £5,000 damages were awarded him--a sum for
which he was reimbursed by the House of Commons.
On the 5th June, 1789, he was made colonel of 21st Royal Scots
Fusiliers; and died on the 18th of June, 1794, at Beaufort House,
near Bath, in Sussex, the seat of Sir James B. Burgess, Bart.,
Commissioner of Excise in Scotland. In military circles he was long
remembered as 'Old Minorca.'
He left an MS. diary of his defence of Quebec, which was in
possession of Mr. Robert Blackwood, publisher, of Edinburgh, in 1849,
but appears never to have been printed.
THE END.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD AND LONDON.
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