MISS CHEYNE OF ESSILMONT
BY
JAMES GRANT
AUTHOR OF
"THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE CAMERONIANS,"
"THE SCOTTISH CAVALIER,"
ETC., ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1883.
_All rights reserved._
Contents
Chap.
I. The Battle of Amoaful
II. The Scarabœus
III. The Lost One
IV. A Year of Joy
V. In Hampshire Again
VI. Thoughts that often lie too deep for tears
VII. 'Oh, for a Horse with Wings!'
VIII. A Birthday Gift
IX. Cadbury Redivivus
X. At Cape Coast
XI. The Old Warning
XII. 'Ashes to Ashes'
XIII. Events Progress
XIV. Bella's Dot
XV. In Bayswater
XVI. The Four-in-Hand Club
XVII. Humiliation
XVIII. Miss De Jobbyns' Admirer
XIX. The Foreclosure Effected
XX. Homeless
XXI. Conclusion
MISS CHEYNE OF ESSILMONT.
CHAPTER I.
THE BATTLE OF AMOAFUL.
The firing proved a mistake--the result of a false alarm--so the
night passed without any other _alerte_ or disturbance, and all
remained quiet during the temporary halt at Prahsu; but the troops
heard of many strange things as occurring at Coomassie, all deemed by
the natives portentous of its coming fate.
In its market-place--that scene of daily blood and murder--where the
predecessor of King Koffee devoted three thousand victims 'to water
the grave' of his mother--an aërolite fell, to the terror of the
people; but there came still a greater prodigy. A child was born
which instantly began to converse, and, to prevent it having
intercourse with supernatural visitors, it was placed alone in a room
under guards, who in the morning found that it had vanished, and that
nothing lay in its place but a bundle of withered bones; and on this
the fetish men argued 'that Coomassie itself would pass away, and
nothing remain thereof but dead leaves;' and on the same day and hour
that Lieutenant Grant of the 6th--the first white man--crossed the
Prah, there sprang up a mighty tornado, that levelled the great tree
under which the king used to sit, surrounded by his warriors. This
caused a profound sensation among the Ashantees, who gathered by
thousands around it in the market-place, which at that time was
described by one who saw it as 'a den of reeking corpses, shrieking
and tortured victims--men and women butchered by hundreds--where
skulls and human bones lay about as oyster-shells do at home!'
By order of the king's fetishmen two prisoners had knives run through
their cheeks, and were tied up in the woods to die, as a test of
whether our invasion would be successful. The idea of the fetishmen
was that, if the victims died soon, all would be well with Ashantee;
but they lived, one for four and the other for nine days--so the
nation gave itself over for lost.
On the 6th of January--the day the fetish-tree fell--we shed the
first blood in that land of horrors, when Lord Gifford, at the head
of fifty men, captured a village occupied by an Ashantee outpost, and
killed many of its defenders.
And so, till the forward movement began, the troops were impatient
during the halt at Prahsu, the soldiers making wry faces at their
daily doses of quinine, and still more so at their weak ration of
grog--only half a gill per man, or a gallon of rum to sixty-four
men--and the officers missing sorely the pleasures of the long,
glittering, flower-laden mess-table, and the charms of the girls they
had left behind them, and of whom they were reminded by Du Maurier in
some old stray numbers of our friend Mr. _Punch_.
After the troops advanced, the 25th of January saw our posts pushed
as far forward as the Bahrien river, and a slight brush which they
had there with the Ashantees showed that they were making vigorous
efforts to concentrate their forces for a fierce resistance; and on
the 31st was fought the battle of Amoaful, which took place in the
morning, and by eight o'clock the white smoke of the musketry and the
red flashes of the latter, were spouting in every direction, amid the
dark green and wondrous leafy luxuriance of the bushy jungles.
The Rifles were in the reserve, 580 strong, under Colonel Warren.
Thus Dalton, Jerry, and others were for a time almost spectators
while the fight went on, and the leading column--consisting of the
Black Watch, eighty of the Welsh Fusiliers, and two rifled guns, led
by Sir Archibald Alison (son of the historian), extending as it
advanced with loud cheers at a quick run--attacked, before the rest
of the troops came up, the village of Egginassie, upon the slope of
the hill that rises to Amoaful.
Prominent amid the greenery could be seen the red tufts on their
tropical helmets, then the representation of their famous historical
scarlet plumes.
The firing here was tremendous, so much so that all sound of
individual reports was lost, and the din of the conflict became one
hoarse roar. The enemy used slugs, not bullets. Had it been
otherwise, not a man of the Black Watch--many of whom were severely
hit--would have remained to tell the tale. Major Macpherson (young
Cluny) was wounded in several places, but remained under fire,
propped upon a stick.
In five minutes a hundred and five Highlanders, nine being officers,
had blood pouring from their wounds; but 'Onward' was the cry, and as
the Rifles came up in support, amid the ceaseless clatter of the
breechloaders, 'for three hours after the Scottish and Welsh infantry
had carried the village,' says the _Daily Telegraph_, 'the contest
was obstinately maintained in the jungle, where it was difficult to
see or reach the enemy, and quite as hard for him to know how the
fight went upon other points. Assailed in their own wilderness,
followed up foot by foot, the Ashantees fought well, but never gave a
fair opportunity for the shock of a real charge.'
As the Rifles advanced through the jungle in extended order, over
ground which the fire of the 42nd had strewed with killed and wounded
Ashantees, one of the latter, a colossal black savage, clad only with
a middle cloth and string of beads, propping himself upon his elbow,
shot Jerry's servant O'Farrel, in the back and killed him on the
spot, as the ball passed through his heart.
It was, perhaps, the last effort of expiring nature; but Jerry
responded promptly with his revolver, and sent a bullet whistling
through the brain of the Ashantee, who, as he was a man of fine
proportions, was soon after eaten by the Kossos or wild cannibals of
Colonel Wood's regiment, who, as Jerry said, 'felt peckish' after the
fight.
A Highlander lost himself in the bush, and came suddenly upon a
cluster of retiring Ashantees, who shot him down by a volley and
instantly cut off his head, which they carried away, as no trophy is
more prized by this people than human heads, which formed the chief
ornaments of the king's palace, and even of his bed-chamber in
Coomassie.
In the first days of February the passage of the Ordah followed, and
on the night the troops bivouacked by its shore they were without
tents, and the rain fell in merciless torrents, as if the windows of
the sky had opened again, while thunder bellowed in the echoing
woods, and green forked lightning lit up incessantly the bosom of the
foaming river; yet more than ever were our troops anxious when day
broke to begin the weary march--to reach Coomassie and grapple with
the dusky enemy.
The first human blood Jerry Wilmot had ever shed was when he
pistolled the Ashantee who murdered--for murder it was--poor
O'Farrel. He had handled his revolver then promptly, if
mechanically, and thought afterwards--strange to say--with a little
sense of disgust over the episode, and the aspect of the dead negro,
his yellow eye-balls turned back within their sockets, his fallen
jaw, and oozing brain, had actually haunted him.
But since then, in skirmishing, both in the bush and open, Jerry had,
as he phrased it, 'potted three or four more of the beggars,' as
coolly as if they had been black-cocks on a Highland moor.
While the Naval Brigade halted at Ordashu, the Black Watch, with half
a battalion of the Rifles, pushed on towards Coomassie.
Soon tidings came from Sir Archibald Alison, saying briefly,
'We have taken all the villages, but the last, before entering
Coomassie; support me with the Rifles, and I hope to enter it
to-night.'
Fortunately he had been anticipated: the half battalion was close
upon his own, and with it were Dalton and Wilmot.
The slugs were coming out of the bush as thick as hail, and the
advance of the Highlanders and Rifles along the road that led to
Coomassie was in a form never before seen in war. Colonel M'Leod led
the former.
Along the well-ambushed road they proceeded quietly and steadily, as
if upon parade, but by two abreast in file, so narrow was the forest
path.
'Forty-Second, fire by successive companies--front rank to the right,
rear rank to the left,' shouted Colonel M'Leod.
'A company--front rank, present! rear rank, present!'
'So on,' says the correspondent of the _New York Herald_, 'and thus
vomiting bullets two score to the right and two score to the left,
the companies volleyed and thundered as they marched past the
ambuscades, the bag-pipes playing, the cheers rising from the throats
of the lusty Scots, till the forest rung again with the discordant
medley of musketry, bag-pipe music, and vocal sounds. Rait's
artillery now and then gave tongue with an emphasis and result which
must have recalled to the Ashantees memories of the bloody field of
Amoaful, where Captain Rait and his subalterns, Knox and Saunders,
signalised themselves so conspicuously. But it was the audacious
spirit and true military bearing on the part of the Highlanders, as
they moved down the road to Coomassie, which challenged admiration
this day.'
So great was the roar of musketry in the echoing woods that, scared
by the terrible and unusual sound, the very birds of the air--and
brightly plumaged birds they were--grovelled in terror, with
outspread wings over the dying and the dead.
Many were borne rearward disfigured for life and frightfully wounded
by the missiles of their hidden antagonists; but the regiment never
halted--the Rifles following close--nor wavered, but moved steadily
on with its national music playing, until the Ashantees, conceiving
it to be useless to continue against men who advanced thus, heedless
of all ambuscades, rose from their coverts and fled in yelling hordes
towards Coomassie.
'The cool, calm commands of Colonel M'Leod,' says Mr. Stanley, whom
we cannot help quoting, 'had a marvellous effect on the Highland
battalion--so much so that the conduct of all other white regiments
pales before that of the 42nd.' Frequently during the hot and rapid
march to Coomassie the Highlanders saw emerging from the bushes
several scores of fugitives, who found their movements accelerated by
the volleys they received on such occasions. Village after village
along the road heard the disastrous tidings which the fugitives
conveyed, and long before the Highlanders approached the place where
the king remained during the battle, he had decamped because of these
reports.
King Koffee never for a moment anticipated a complete defeat, and
believed that he would only fall back in good order to give us battle
at the head of all his warriors in front of Coomassie itself, and
thus obtain a peace which would at least spare his palace--on which
he set a great store--from destruction.
When Sir Garnet Wolseley, with the main body, was drawing near that
place, he received another despatch from the front. Sir Archibald
Alison wrote to say that he had given some time to treat.
Thus a delay occurred in consequence, and of this delay the
circumstances are not very clear to the outer world. It does not
appear from some accounts to have been Sir Garnet's wish, yet it
undoubtedly took place, and put the troops to some inconvenience by
allowing night to fall before they entered the place.
'Coomassie at last!' exclaimed Dalton, as he threw himself, panting
with heat, among the luxuriant grass that bordered the now bloody and
corpse-strewn pathway. 'Let us but take it, lay it in ashes, and
then hey for home!' he added, hopefully. Yet he had had two narrow
escapes; one ball had knocked off his helmet, and another had scarred
his left cheek.
'Yes, hey for home,' said Jerry, proffering his cigar-case; but poor
Dalton little knew all that had to be dared and done before he saw
the last of Coomassie!
All knew that when the final attack was made there would be a fierce
resistance to encounter--a great slaughter pretty certain to
ensue--no quarter given or taken; and, like several others in the
corps, during the unexpected halt, Dalton and Jerry were writing what
might prove to each a last letter to those they loved at home; and as
the former wrote there came curiously and persistently to memory the
last verse of the song Laura was wont to sing to him of old:
'Then think of me! for withered lies
The dearest hope I nursed;
And I have seen, with bitter sighs,
My brightest dream dispersed.'
Is it strange that, after the peculiar manner of their parting,
Jerry's first and longest letter was not to his mother, but to Bella
Chevenix?
'Poor Bella!' said he, in a broken voice, almost to himself, as he
closed the epistle.
'You did not part on bad terms?' asked Dalton.
'No, thank God! What made you think so?'
'Something in your tone.'
'I am writing to her, though she gave me no hope.'
'No hope--_you_--why?'
'She quite misunderstands the real love I bear her, and evidently
suspects that I wish to secure her hand, not because I am the squire
of Wilmothurst, but because she is in reality the heiress of it.'
'She--what riddle is this?' asked Dalton, taking the cigar from his
lips, and eyeing his friend.
'Did I not make you understand all that before, old fellow?'
'Not quite.'
'Well, old Chevenix has no end of mortgages over my inheritance--it
is well nigh all his property now; I can't even pay the interest--the
mater cannot realise how heavily the old place is burdened, and what
a task my father had to keep it together--so times there are when I
don't care if I should be knocked on the head--bowled out here.'
'Don't talk that way, Jerry,' said the older man, reprehensively;
'death is too close to be lightly spoken of thus.'
Death was indeed closer than either perhaps thought.
'But there is your mother,' urged Dalton, after a pause.
'She! It wouldn't break her "noble" heart, even were it so with me,
and I were lying stiff, as hundreds are now, in yonder bush,' replied
Jerry, with an irrepressible gust of bitterness, as he snipped the
end off a cigar with his teeth, and, lighting it, proceeded to smoke,
silently and sorrowfully, while re-charging his revolver for the
coming attack; 'though, if we are to believe the newspapers, the
grief of the "upper ten," like that of royalty, is something
unfathomable as compared with that of any of the vulgar herd!'