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OLIVER ELLIS;
OR,
The Fusiliers.
BY
JAMES GRANT, ESQ.
(_Late 62nd Regiment_),
AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "THE AIDE-DE-CAMP,"
"SECOND TO NONE," ETC. ETC.
A New Edition
LONDON:
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL;
NEW YORK: 129, GRAND STREET.
1865.
PREFACE.
"In regard to prefaces," says the author of "Curiosities of
Literature,"--"ladies consider them so much space for a love story
lost, though the Italians call them _la salsa del libra_,--the spice
of the book."
Be this as it may, I must mention that many of the men whose names
occur in these pages, bore the part ascribed to them during the
operations of Sir Charles Grey's army in the Antilles.
A duel, nearly similar to that which is described as having taken
place on board of the _Adder_ frigate, actually occurred on the deck
of one of H.M.'s ships-of-war when lying in a South-American port, in
1821.
The situation of the wreck in the Isle of Tortoises was suggested to
me by the discovery of a mysterious vessel in a cavern of the island
of Baccalieu, when I was at Fort Townsend in Newfoundland, where it
excited much speculation.
As a few Mexican dollars were found on the rocks near, she was
supposed to be Spanish; and such rumours were circulated of the vast
treasure she contained, that H.M.S. _Comus_ was despatched from
Halifax to investigate the matter; but the hull contained a few dead
bodies alone.
That the marvellous might not be wanting, there was told a story of a
gigantic anchor being thrown by the sea on the desert shore near her.
There it lay for a time, till a party came to remove it; but it had
vanished, like the treasure,--by no mortal agency, of course!
26, DANUBE STREET, EDINBURGH.
_May_, 1861.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
1.--BOYHOOD
2.--THE MINISTER
3.--MESSRS. HARPY, QUIRKY, AND MACFARISEE
4.--APPLEWOOD
5.--THE WILL
6.--AMY LEE
7.--TWO YOUNG HEARTS
8.--FROM POETRY TO PROSE AGAIN
9.--SEQUEL TO THE STORY OF THE WILL
10.--MAHOGANY _v._ LAW
11.--EDINBURGH IN 1792
12.--THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE
13.--THE PRESS-GANG
14.--MR. MACROCODILE
15.--THE PRESSING-TENDER
16.--THE WHITE-SLAVE SHIP
17.--JACK THE MARINE
18.--OVERBOARD!
19.--THE SANDRIDGE LIGHT
20.--DICK KNUCKLEDUSTER
21.--RETRIBUTION
22.--COMPTON RENNEL
23.--THE "MAID AND THE MAGPIE"
24.--SERGEANT DRUMBIRREL
25.--HEAD-QUARTERS
26.--THE ROUTE
27.--THE "ADDER" FRIGATE
28.--LAND!
29.--THE SNAKE
30.--THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT
31.--THE STORY OF EULALIE
32.--STORY OF EULALIE CONTINUED
33.--OUR ESTEEM PROGRESSES
34.--THE MANGROVE CREEK
35.--THE EMIGRANT PRIEST
36.--THE SPY
37.--ANXIETY
38.--A REVELATION
39.--A SEA OF FIRE
40.--THE LANDING
41.--LA CHAPELLE
42.--A PAIR OF COLOURS
43.--A HALT
44.--THE SKIRMISH AT LE MORNE ROUGE
45.--THE BLANK FUSILADE
46.--CAPTURE OF ST. PIERRE
47.--THE CONVENT OF ST. URSULE
48.--LA FLEUR D'EPÉE
49.--THE ASSAULT
50.--"SMITH" OF THE ROYALS
51.--THE HURRICANE
52.--THE DESERT ISLAND
53.--THE TREASURE-SHIP
54.--A SURPRISE
55.--WE VISIT THE "GALLEON"
56.--KNUCKLEDUSTER'S STORY
57.--A SAIL IN SIGHT
58.--SAVED!
59.--CAPTAIN CRANKY
60.--THE YELLOW FEVER
61.--I REJOIN THE REGIMENT
62.--THE DOS D'ÂNE
63.--THE WORSHIPPERS OF THE DEVIL
64.--SCIPIO
65.--CAPTURE OF POINT À PETRE
66.--THE OBEAH NEGRO
67.--M. DE THOISY
68.--A DISCOVERY
69.--GEORGETTE
70.--A CRISIS
71.--CONCLUSION
OLIVER ELLIS.
CHAPTER I.
BOYHOOD.
"When is a man the arbiter of his own destiny? for he is like the
leaf which is torn from a tree, and which the wind of heaven blows
about."
This fate has been my own, as peculiarly as it has been that of other
military wanderers in life; for your soldier is a great traveller
both by sea and land, an errant and a restless spirit; yet his
travels and his restlessness are involuntary; for the moment he dons
the red coat he ceases to be the master of "his own proper person,"
or (like the leaf torn from the tree) to be the arbiter of his own
destiny; but must march, sail, or fight wheresoever he may be
ordered, _obedience_ being the first word in his vocabulary. He
becomes a machine in some sort, yet _not_ a machine according to the
degrading idea of his sapient majesty of Prussia; for the history of
mankind will prove that the most brilliant achievements in war, and
the most happy results in peace, like those efforts by which thrones
have been won and nations freed, had their origin in the influence of
the human heart, and in the mastery of the human passions, when hope,
religion, or love of country, fired the soldier's spirit! Who, then,
will dare to say that the poor private soldier who mounts a deadly
breach, or rushes on a hedge of steel, risking mutilation, wounds,
and death, without the hope of future fame if he falls, or the chance
of sharing in the glory of the victory his valour wins if he
survive,--is the mere automaton, the cold in blood and basely
utilitarian would have him to be?
Love of country, a noble sentiment, is ever strong in the heart of a
true soldier. When the 67th, or South Hampshire regiment, commanded
by Callender of Craigforth, landed at Portsmouth in 1772, after a
long career of dangerous foreign service, with one accord and impulse
the whole of the men threw themselves on the beach and kissed the
pebbles.
The reader will pardon the professional vanity, or _esprit de corps_,
which makes me thus prelude the plain unvarnished story of a
soldier's career,--a description of some of the adventures I have
passed through, the persons I have met, and the scenes I have
witnessed on my march through life.
I was born in the camp of Burgoyne's army when it was on the borders
of Lake Champlain: thus, the first sounds to which my infant ears
became accustomed were the rattle of the drum, the notes of the
Kentish bugle, the tread of marching feet, and the thoughtless
hilarity of my father's comrades.
I remember myself first as a little boy, the pet and plaything of the
soldiers, who made bats and balls, tops and toys for me; who allowed
me to ride on their backs, and to hold on by their queues, whenever I
had a mind to do so; who told me old stories of Wolfe's days, of the
siege of Belleisle, and of wild adventures in West Florida. I
remember of marches from town to town, from camp to barrack, and from
fort to fort--all of which seem like dreams to me now; while the
troops trod on, through clouds of summer dust or the deep snows of an
American winter, and I with other regimental imps, sat merrily and
cosily perched on the summit of a baggage-waggon, among trunks,
arm-chests, knapsacks, pots, kettles, and soldiers' wives, who
smoked, sung, and swore occasionally, and bantered the escort who
marched on each side, with bayonets fixed. A thousand childish
incidents of the soldiers' kindness to me when a boy (because they
loved my father well), are lingering in my memory, while many a more
important event of the days and years between that time and this, is
forgotten for ever.
My father was a captain in a Scottish regiment, which formed a
portion of Sir John Burgoyne's unfortunate army. He had received a
severe wound at the storming of a stockaded fort near Skenesborough,
and had to undergo the delicate operation of trepanning, which was
skilfully done with a silver plate, whereon he had fancifully
inscribed his name and the number of the regiment. He was afterwards
slain in a skirmish on the banks of the Hudson, and was hastily
buried on the field. The _last_ time I saw him, was when my mother,
with her eyes full of tears, held me up in her arms that the poor man
might kiss me, as he was buckling on his sword, while the troops went
hurriedly to the front. The livelong day the roar of the distant
musketry rung in the pale woman's ears and in her soul, as the din of
battle rose and fell upon the gusty wind. At sunset the troops came
back defeated and dispirited; but my father _not_ among them. He was
lying at the foot of a pine-tree, shot through the heart!
After this bereavement, my mother returned home with her two children
(my sister Lotty and myself), and, renting a small cottage, about a
mile from her native town, lived the quiet and secluded life that the
scanty pension of a captain's widow allotted her.
I was two years older than dear little Lotty, who was a pretty
black-eyed girl, with a fair skin, and great masses of dark-brown
hair.
At our mother's side, as children, we prattled and talked of the
regiment. It was the centre around which our thoughts revolved; the
feature upon which all our conversations and infant recollections
hinged, though its ranks were filling fast with new faces, and the
old had long since forgotten us; yet it was always "the
Regiment"--our once happy, movable home--that we spoke of, as of some
good friend that loved us, and was far away; and I loved the coarse
red uniform, with its pewter buttons and white braid, for its wearers
seemed a race of men apart from the cold and selfish society among
which my mother's diminished means and widowhood had cast her. She,
poor woman! seemed to feel something of this, too; for more than
once, on beholding a wayfaring soldier passing through our quiet
little village, I have seen her start, with her eyes full of tears,
as her thoughts reverted to _him_ who was sleeping far away in his
lonely grave by the shore of the mighty Hudson. Like that old
Scottish lady who is so beautifully portrayed in the "Lounger," "when
she spoke of a soldier, it was in a style above her usual simplicity;
there was a sort of swell in her language which sometimes a tear (for
her age had not lost the privilege of tears) made still more
eloquent. She kept her sorrows, like the devotions that solaced
them, sacred to herself; they threw nothing of gloom over her
deportment; a gentle shade only, like the fleckered clouds of summer,
that increase, not diminish, the benignity of the season."
The pretty village in which we resided lay at the bottom of a dell,
which, in shape, resembled a great natural basin. Its sloping sides
were clothed with luxuriant wood. Above the ancient trees, the old
grey belfry of the village church--a church in which Knox had
preached and the Covenant was signed--peeped forth from a mass of ivy
that clambered to its weathercock. Through the dell brawled a rapid
stream, which came foaming down from the mountains, and turned the
great mossy wheel of an ancient mill, which, with the blue-slated
manse, the quaint old kirk, and the ruined fragment of a haunted
tower, wherein, as legends averred, a spectre wandered and treasure
was buried, formed the four principal features in the valley.
The stream where the spotted trout lurked in the deeper holes, or
shot to and fro in the sunbeams, was crossed by a little bridge,
which, in my boyhood, I considered a great work of art, though, in
after-years, I was astonished to find it so diminutive. The rush of
the mill-race, as it poured in white foam over a wooden duct; the
voices of the children that played on the green before the village
school; the ceaseless clink of the hammer in the forge, which formed
the rendezvous of all the male gossips; the occasional note of a
blackbird or a cushat dove from the coppice,--were the only sounds
that were heard in our valley, save when the tolling of the church
bell announced the Sunday, when the air was hushed and still, "and
even the forest leaves seemed stirred with prayer."
Though little more than a mile from a large and populous city, our
hamlet was as secluded as if it had been twenty leagues distant. No
thought had we then of railroads, electric wires, or Atlantic cables;
and even the stage-coach passed far from our wooded locality.
Our cottage was neat and small: it was situated on a slope of the
dell which faced the south, and was buried among the woodbine,
clematis, and sweetbrier, which covered all its rustic porch, grew
around the windows, and clambered over the chimney-tops.
I can yet, in memory, see the little parlour in which we used to sit
in the long nights of winter, by the cheerful fire, above which hung
my father's sword and old gilt gorget, with two engravings of General
Wolfe and the Marquis of Cornwallis in full uniform, with white
breeches and kevenhuller hats; and where we spent the calm evenings
of summer, when the light lingered long in the blushing west, and the
perfume of the sweetbrier, the wild roses, the ripening fields, and
of the fragrant earth, on which the dew was descending, were borne
through the open windows; while my mother--her grey hair smoothly
banded under a spotless white cap, her black dress and meek sweet
face making her look so like a picture, her work-basket and knitting
apparatus at hand--read to Lotty and me, or spoke of scenes and
adventures she had seen when far away from our present quiet
locality, as she had an excellent memory for anecdotes and a refined
literary taste. Thus she became our sole preceptress.
Save old Dr. Twaddel, the minister, and the village doctor, we had no
neighbours, and consequently few visitors.
My mother spoke seldom of our father; but we could see by the current
of her thoughts that they rarely ran on aught else than his memory.
Hopes she had none, save those that were centred on us.
So, for seven years, the blameless tenor of our even life rolled on.
My mother's quiet gentleness and soft ladylike manner, together with
her kindness to the poor of the village, the sick and dying, among
whom she shared her widow's mite--the mite that in heaven shall
become a talent of price,--caused her to be tenderly loved by all;
and I repent me now, even after the long lapse of many stirring
years, that in her latter days, the tears that rolled over her pale
and fast-furrowing cheeks were caused by my errors, and it may be, my
selfish and resentful pride.