HEAD-QUARTERS.
We joined the head-quarters of the regiment, then lying in the
barracks of Kingston-upon-Hull, and after being inspected and
approved of, by our lieutenant-colonel--the Earl of Kildonan--a fine
young soldier, who had served throughout the two campaigns of the War
of Independence in America, I was "turned over," as the phrase is, to
Captain Glendonwyn'a company, by Mr. Bolster, the adjutant, and
forthwith commenced my initiation into the mysteries of the
goose-step and other calisthenic exercises. I was passed rapidly
from squad to squad. Though my heart, yet, was far away at home, my
spirit went with the task that was set me; thus I was soon declared
fit for duty and was put on guard.
The strictness with which I conformed to every rule soon attracted
the attention of my captain and of the staff. I interfered with
none, and even the most officious corporal could not discover a
military fault in me. I soon ceased to be deemed a "new-come," or
stigmatized as a "Johnnyraw." I was often too generous with my
pittance of pay, for being unsuspicious, the artful fleeced me of it,
and thus I was often obliged to "box Harry" till pay-day came; but as
I was always on good terms with the pretty young Englishwoman (a
sergeant's wife), who messed me, I did not find this so difficult as
other spendthrifts, who were older, less favoured by nature, or less
suave than I; for my gentler breeding made me a favourite with all
the women in the barrack.
I remember my first guard well, for there was a grim incident
connected with it.
When I was on sentry at the mainguard-gate, about the hour of five,
on a cold, raw, misty morning, two of our officers passed quietly
out. They were muffled in their blue regimental cloaks, and seemed
pale, like men who had been all night awake. They were excited
too--though somewhat silent. In a few minutes _other two_,
accompanied by Dr. Splints, our assistant-surgeon, also passed out;
and then I surmised that their expedition was nothing less than a
hostile meeting, for such affairs were of every-day occurrence in
those hot times of high punctilio, and when in every corps there were
a few firebrands and fighting men, who made themselves the arbiters
of every petty quarrel, and urged that blood alone could wipe out the
most trivial or imaginary slight.
I was not wrong in my supposition. Being a young soldier, I was
pondering whether or not I should call the officer of the guard, when
I heard two shots fired simultaneously in a field not far from the
barracks; and in a few minutes, a terrified rustic came hurriedly to
the gate for a stretcher, on which two files of the guard, soon
after, bore in one of the four officers whom I had seen pass out--a
fine young lad, the lieutenant of our light company--who was shot
through the lungs and dying; and this mournful tragedy was the sequel
to the mere boyish joke of corking a pair of mustaches on the lip of
another, as he lay on the mess-room chairs asleep overnight.
The officers were soon likely to have more of this sharp work cut out
for them; for Lieutenant Rowland Haystone, of ours, a mere youth,
having dined at the mess of a hussar corps, they conveyed him, well
dosed with champagne, into the riding-school, and there carefully
covering him up to the nose in sawdust, left him, tucked in thus, to
his slumbers, which were undisturbed till the roughrider came with
his horses ard squad about seven next morning. The non-commissioned
officer, astonished to see a man's face among the sawdust and bark,
dragged out our unfortunate subaltern, who had some difficulty in
comprehending where he was; and he was brought home to his quarters
in such a plight, that he had a narrow escape from losing his
commission. To square accounts, he shot one of the hussars; but, as
the affair was considered an insult to the whole regiment, the
dragoons and fusiliers fought whenever they met in the streets and
taverns, for some time after this, and Mr. Haystone actually tabled
at mess a proposal for calling out the whole of the hussar officers
by turns; but they were despatched to join the Duke of York's
unfortunate army in Flanders, and so ended this feud and its follies.
Soon after this, I was detailed for a very unpleasant duty.
A number of men being required for the West India fleet, under
Admiral Jervis, there came a secret order for the press-gangs to
visit the docks and crimping-houses at Hull; and on the night
selected by the authorities, fifty men of the fusiliers, provided
each with twenty rounds of ball-cartridge, were paraded, about ten
o'clock, under the command of Lieutenant Haystone and Ensign Bruce,
and marched with great secrecy towards the principal dock, the gates
of which were by that time closed. We were in light-marching order,
with our forage-caps and great-coats.
At the gate, we were joined by fifty carefully-selected seamen, all
armed with cutlasses and pistols, and wearing short flushing jackets.
Among them, as I afterwards heard, were a number of the oldest
midshipmen, and the whole body was officered by second and third
lieutenants. They had already with them a few pressed men, whom they
had picked up at the grog-shops and ale-houses, as they came along
the quay, and these were easily discernible by their hands being
fettered and their sullen air.
Mr. Haystone now gave the commands to prime and load with ball, and
to fix bayonets; and on the gates being opened, he took possession of
the pressed men, and sent guards, under sergeants or corporals, to
keep the various avenues, with orders to defend them at the point of
the bayonet against all who might attempt to escape or resist; for
such was the aversion to the naval service, even at this time, when
Nelson's pennant was streaming from the _Victory_, that press-gangs
frequently met with the most desperate resistance: and at Hull, in
those days, there lived near the docks a certain enterprising son of
the Emerald Isle, who kept a large depôt of cudgels, and lent them
out, at "a penny a _row_," to all who required them.
All was still and dark in the docks, and I could see the forest of
masts and rigging standing in intricate masses against the cloudy
sky, which, fortunately for our expedition, was moonless, and the
month was October.
Dividing into numerous small parties, the press-gang boarded several
large ships; and from the quay we could see the flashing of cutlass
blades, and the gleam of lanterns on the masts above and the slimy
water below, and on the pale and excited faces of the crews, as they
were turned up from their hammocks, and their skippers forced to
account for all their men, per list. Their papers were cursorily
examined, and the best men selected for service. On the slightest
resistance they were handcuffed, at the point of the cutlass and the
muzzle of the levelled pistol.
While posted as sentinel inside one of the gates, I saw a fugitive
seaman, who had dropped on the quay from the spritsail yard of a
large bark, run towards the barrier, and heedless of my command to
"fall back," he proceeded at once, and with desperate activity, to
climb up by the crossbars of the gate, for the purpose of escaping.
Remembering all I had endured on board the _Tartar_, I pitied the
poor fellow; but my orders were imperative; moreover, the eye of a
sergeant was upon me.
"Come back, sirrah!" I exclaimed, cocking my musket; "come back, or I
shall be compelled to shoot you."
"Shoot away, then," he replied, and still continued to climb.
I know not how I might have acted had not his foot slipped when near
the summit, and he fell heavily to the ground. Powerful and active,
he sprang up at once, and boldly confronted me as I charged my
bayonet; and perceiving that his intention was evidently to close
with me and wrest away my musket, I said, resolutely,--
"Stand!--stir not one step, or I shall shoot you down, in the king's
name!"
"Curse the king, and every slave who serves him!" he exclaimed, with
an oath, which, however dreadful, seemed not unfamiliar to me; and,
on drawing nearer, I recognized the mean and sinister visage of Dick
Knuckleduster, whom I had last seen in the burning beacon.
"You were one of the keepers of the Sandbridge lighthouse?" said I,
with some satisfaction; for, to tell the truth, the catastrophe of
the beacon sometimes haunted me unpleasantly. He scowled at me under
his shaggy eyebrows, and did not reply.
"Answer!" said I, threatening him with my bayonet.
"Well--what if I was?"
"You know that it was burned down?"
"Ay--pretty well," he growled, with a laugh and an imprecation.
"How did you escape?"
"By the water."
"Of course--but by what other means?"
"I swam."
"And Bill with the broken nose?"
"Was roasted like a crab, and like a buttered crab I heard him
sputtering on the burning beams above me--ugh!--d--n me--burned
alive!"
"And the wretched Jewess?"
"Mother Snatchblock?"
"Yes."
"Ha! ha! burned too; but who the devil are you, that you know all
this?" he added, savagely, while coming forward.
"Back--back!" I exclaimed, "or I shall run my bayonet into you; I am
Oliver Ellis, the boy whom you would have sold to the press-gang--do
you hear me, rascal?--to the press-gang, to whom I shall surrender
you in five minutes as a prisoner. Time about is fair play, Mr. Dick
Knuckleduster."
For a few seconds the fellow was silent; and while our eyes glared
into each other, we could hear the bustle on board the ships,--the
breaking open of hatches,--voices calling the rolls of crews,--the
scuffles, oaths, and plunging overboard of those who sought to escape
the gang by swimming to the quays, where they were captured by the
guards of fusiliers under Mr. Haystone. In muscular strength I was
but a child, when compared to a ruffian so brawny as Knuckleduster;
but my position as sentinel, and my loaded musket, gave me a power of
life and death over him. He felt this; his features contracted with
intense ferocity, and I could see his sinister eyes glaring like
those of a polecat in the dark.
"What--here's our powder-monkey that bolted become a full-blown
lobster!" he exclaimed, with an affected laugh; "but you'll shake
hands, won't you, Oliver?"
"Back!" I replied, keeping my charged bayonet at his breast; "back,
for my finger is on the trigger."
"You will let me past, won't you?"
"Not an inch."
"I was very kind to you in that ere beacon, I was," said the fellow,
in a whining voice; "Bill wanted to shy you into the water one night,
to save your grog and biscuits; but I thought it better----"
"To sell me----"
"To whom?"
"The press-gang, through Mother Snatchblock's respectable agency,
eh?--sell me like the emerald ring and jewels of the unfortunate man,
who was wrecked near the beacon, whom you foully murdered, and whose
body you sunk with an old kedge-anchor, eh?--Knuckleduster, the
wrecker, thief, and murderer!"
He uttered a growl like a bulldog, and literally writhed with fear
and baffled rage as I said this.
"You have no proof for what you say, and I defy you," replied he;
"but this I know, that I shall seize _you_ as a deserter--a boy run
from His Majesty's ship _Tartar_, and all your denials, or jawing
fore and aft, won't be worth a soldier's button. Besides, how do I
know that you didn't burn that ere beacon, as well as steal Mother
Snatchblock's boat, and so become guilty of murder as well as
robbery? Oh! I see jolly well you'll think better of it than let me
be taken to-night. A fine joke it would be, indeed, for Dick
Knuckleduster to be beaten at this time o' day by a sucking-turkey
like you!"
"Silence, dog, or I shall certainly bayonet you. I am no longer the
friendless boy you thought me, but one of the Royal Fusiliers, and I
defy alike your falsehoods and your malevolence."
The fellow again resorted to the most abject entreaties that I would
permit him to escape; but I stood resolutely then, pinning him
against the wall, until Mr. Stanley, a midshipman of the _Adder_
frigate, approached with a party of seamen, and pressed him into his
Majesty's sea service. Then, as they dragged him away, he poured
forth a torrent of imprecations upon me, mingled with threats of
future vengeance, which I heeded less than the chafing of the slimy
water upon the green and barnacled sides of the quay. At all this
the midshipman and the sailors only laughed, saying they had "a
boatswain, who would teach him better manners, on board the _Adder_."
However, this was not the _last_ I was fated to see of Master Richard
Knuckleduster.