THE VOYAGE.
"Colonel De la Fosse, I bid you welcome to her Majesty's ship
_Blenheim_," said Chesters, presenting his hand, which, however, the
Frenchman did not take, but contented himself with another bow and a
very perceptible elevation of his black eyebrows. "I have also to
congratulate you on promotion since----"
"Since when, monsieur?"
"We last met."
"Ah!" said the other a little contemptuously, "I thank you. I have
just been in time to reach your vessel; the telegram left London this
forenoon, about the same time I quitted it by rail; and here I am."
"So we are to have the pleasure of voyaging together so far as Varna."
"So far--yes," replied the Frenchman, shrugging his shoulders, and
causing the bullion of his epaulettes to glitter, whilst his face
said so plainly that he saw little pleasure in the companionship that
Elton laughed behind his forage cap.
"Will you eat anything; the messman will bring you partridge pie and
_pâtés de foie gras_."
"No thank you."
"The wine is here," said Chesters; "shall I assist you?"
"Thanks; I shall help myself. What is this? St. Julien!--très bon!"
and the Colonel took a bumper of wine, without according a smile or a
glance to Chesters, who felt far from comfortable, as several
officers had left the deck, all anxious to converse with the
stranger, and be attentive to him. But after seeing to his berth on
board, and having his baggage arranged by a Fusileer, who was to act
as his servant during the voyage, he lit a cigar and went on deck
without bestowing the faintest bow on Chesters, who bit his lip, and
muttered something under his breath.
The _Blenheim_ was under full steam now; the wind was fair for her
down channel; her top-sails and topgallant-sails were sheeted home;
the Isle of Sheppey was sinking fast upon her starboard quarter, and
the bugles having ere this sounded the tattoo, save by the watch
under a subaltern officer the main deck was deserted.
The French colonel was of course the centre of attraction, and a
group gathered round him. The stiffness and restraint, even hauteur
of manner he exhibited in the cabin, passed away completely now, and
he chatted gaily and freely on the chances of the war, and spoke with
a Frenchman's hereditary hate of Russia and the Russians, for the
Gaul has never forgiven Moscow. He expatiated on the sufferings
undergone by the armies at Varna, and denounced as criminal the
conduct of our Ministry in waiting only for winter to begin the
campaign.
He spoke lightly of his own past military experience, but would seem
to have seen some sharp service in Algeria in the regiment of General
Bazaine; he had been side by side with Canrobert in the breach at
Constantine, and had served as a volunteer with the 3rd Chasseurs à
Pied in the terrible conflict at the Pass of Djerma, where the Arabs
were totally routed and their principal sheiks captured.
"Monsieur le Major, who commands you," said he during a pause, "has
_he_ seen much of the world?"
"I should say a deuced deal too much--for my taste at least," replied
Ponsonby, caressing his whiskers.
"Ah--but in the way of military service, I mean?"
"A little in India," said Horace Ramornie. "I don't think you seem
to like him much."
"Sacre Dieu! no. I should think not," replied De la Fosse, tipping
the ashes off his cigar.
"To me it is like a dream that I have heard of you and him having met
in Scotland."
"In Scotland," repeated the Frenchman, who spoke English very fairly;
"you are but a youth--from whom did you hear of that?"
"From my uncle, Sir John Wedderburn, of Willowdean."
"What do I hear--you a relation of Sir Wedderburn, who was so very
kind to me?"
"I am his nephew."
"Mon Dieu!" The Frenchman shook the hand of Horace with great
cordiality, and drew him a little way aside.
"And Madame Wedderburn--how is she?"
"Well--I thank you."
"I was a captain then, at the time you refer to--home after the
expedition to Morocco--travelling in Scotland, of which the Walter
Scottish novels had made me enthusiastic. (Horace smiled at the
compound word.) I met this Monsieur Chesters, who pressed me to have
a little shooting in Berwickshire. I went there--no shooting at all;
it was all one humbugs! play, play, play: écarté, hazard, vingt-un,
and so on, till I was left without a centime, and but for your kind
uncle, to whom my case became known, I should never have reached
France again, never have seen my regiment, never have been now, as I
am, Colonel of the 34th Infanterie de Ligne; for even my watch and
rings I had staked at his table and lost, among them a valuable onyx,
that belonged to one of my ancestors, and which I see he has the bad
taste now to wear; consequently, I have no particular favour for M.
Chesters. And now that we have met again, I would call him out," he
added through his clenched teeth, while a fierce gleam came into his
black eyes; "yes! and force him to fight me on the first land we see;
but then, mal-peste! I know that Marshal St. Arnaud would resent on
me severely a quarrel with any British officer at the present
juncture; so I must dissemble, if I can, till I find him among that
rabble the Turkish Contingent, when I may shoot him, begar! with a
safe conscience, under pretended belief that he was a Turk!"
The first few days of the voyage passed pleasantly enough; the
weather was fine, and when the few duties incident to a troop-ship,
such as the parade of the men in their canvas frocks and of the
quarter-guard for bayonet duty, on the poop, forecastle, and
scuttle-butt, were over, idling, smoking, single-stick, revolver
practice at the passing birds, or at a bottle slung from a yard arm,
and too often gambling, became the mode of passing the time.
Gaming is strictly prohibited in transports as in camp or quarters;
but the evil example of Chesters speedily infected the younger
officers, who as they all belonged to different corps, and would be
separated on landing, had little interest in each other personally;
so if the tedious monotony of the voyage was partially dispelled by
the excitement of gaming, they cared nothing for the monetary risk
they ran, and kept up a cross-fire of IOU's, that would rather have
astonished their parents and guardians; and were all the more free
with these from the knowledge that ere long they must be before the
enemy, and a bullet might pay off the heaviest score. Thus every
evening, after the mess-table was cleared, cards and dice made their
appearance regularly, and large sums were staked and lost or won, to
the manifest deterioration of discipline and good-feeling; and all
this was caused solely by Chesters, whose special office and duty it
was to have repressed the practice at once, instead of becoming a
leader in it: but this cosmopolitan Scot was "a gambler for gain:
that foul amalgam of the miser and the knave."
This state of matters continued to increase until the evening after
the transport entered the Mediterranean, when a very unpleasant
fracas took place.
The weekly parade of all the troops on board in full dress and in
heavy marching order had just occurred, and the soldiers had been
dismissed to rack their arms and resume their free and easy canvas
frocks, when the Bay of Gibraltar, glittering under a clear and
brilliant sunshine opened on the port bow of the _Blenheim_, as she
steamed onward between lovely Andalusia on one side, and the black
mountains of arid Tetuan on the other, gliding past the shores of
Europe and Africa into one of the greatest water-highways of the
world.
In outline a couchant lion, starting there to the height of fifteen
hundred feet from the pale blue ocean, that seemed to ripple in gold
and silver against its base, the Rock of immortal memories,
terminated in the ruin known as O'Hara's Tower, on which the British
flag was flying in the distance diminished to a speck. The
_Blenheim_ did not run close in, but steamed steadily onward into the
Mediterranean, and as the vast citadel began to lessen on her quarter
it seemed to all as if they had seen but a glimpse, and a passing
vision it certainly was--of gardens of brilliant green; terraced
houses of dazzling whiteness, with sunshaded windows; batteries
bristling with uncounted guns, and dotted by redcoats whose bayonets
glittered like stars; cliffs honeycombed into galleries and
perforated by round holes, through which grim cannon peered, and,
below all, the bay full of shipping, where the variegated flags of
all the nations of the maritime world were fluttering in the breeze
of a pleasant August afternoon.
There were special orders that unless stores were required she was
not to touch at Gibraltar, so, to the disappointment of many, the
_Blenheim_ held on her course. Horace experienced this in
particular; but several officers on board had been quartered there
before, and cared less about it.
"Were you ever stationed in old Gib?" asked Elton of Ponsonby.
"No; never. And shouldn't care much to be cooped up between the bay
and the Spanish lines."
"Old Gib is not without its amusements, and I have twice had a run
with the Calpe hounds," said Chesters, who was well up in all kinds
of field sports. "The meet always takes place at San Roque, six
miles from the Rock on the Andalusian side."
"You could scarcely have it six miles from the Rock on the _other_
side," said Colonel De la Fosse, twirling his moustaches.
Chesters frowned, but resumed:
"People don't usually course in the sea, Colonel. The last time I
rode yonder, after we had a dose of milk-punch at the nearest posada,
the fox broke cover at the end of the Malaga Garden, and away we went
powdering along at a rasping pace. We had a devil of a run over the
most awful ground in the world--the Stony Road they name it there,
and by Jove, it _is_ stony with a vengeance, being a slope at the
angle of forty-five degrees, covered with thousands of cart loads of
rocks, boulders and loose _débris_ that have fallen from the mountain
above; but across it we went with a whoop and a cheer, some eighty
riders or more, all in red, for no true born Briton can either hunt
or fight comfortably in any other colour; and if any of the 12th
fellows were there, you might be sure to hear them shouting '_Montis
Insignia Calpe!_' because that motto is on their colours with the
castle and key. I can almost make out the coursing ground from here
with my glass, though the old Rock is sinking fast astern. I had I
remember a strange bet there, with Bob Riversdale, a staff
surgeon----"
"And you won it?" asked De la Fosse drily.
"Yes."
"Aha, begar, I thought so--I'm sorry for Monsieur Bob," said the
Frenchman, whose manner made the speaker colour with anger, while
Horace turned away wearily, for he was heartily tired of Chesters'
everlasting topics, horses and gambling, dice and cards; so he
followed the Frenchman, who proceeded to the taffrail; there a few
officers were leaning over it, smoking and keeping their eyes fixed
on the fast receding pillars of Hercules, which were defined in dark
outline against the sky, and melting into the evening sea, which was
all aflame with the amber and crimson tints of the setting sun.
A young officer in a shell jacket with bright yellow facings,
politely touched his cap, and made way for the French Colonel.
"Thanks, Monsieur,--do not allow me to disturb you," said the latter;
"ah--pardon," he added, as he took a button of the other's uniform
between his fingers; "you belong to the 34th of the Line--my own
Number!"
"Yes, Monsieur le Colonel," said the young Ensign, proudly; "ours is
the Cumberland Regiment, and was raised in 1702."
"'Albuhera,' 'Arroya del Molinos,'" continued the Colonel, reading
the motto on the button. "I could tell you a good story about your
Regiment and mine, when my father, the Marquis De la Fosse, commanded
the latter in that very battle of Arroya del Molinos in Spanish
Estremadura, in the brave old war of the Peninsula, that we are
forgetting all about now.
"In that little village, which is situated in a plain that was then
quite covered with wild laurels and mignonette, and at the base of a
ridge of rocks that start abruptly up in the form of a crescent, the
whole Regiments comprising the division of Marshal Gerard, when
getting under arms amid the rain and mist of a dark morning, were
suddenly surrounded and attacked by the troops of Sir Rowland Hill,
who had made a forced march for that purpose from Alcuesca. To be
brief, they were nearly all taken to a man by your people, and my
father fell from his horse severely wounded. The French had formed
two squares and begun to retreat, when suddenly there was a shout of--
"'Voilà les baionettes Ecossais!' and one square was entirely cut off
by a Regiment of Highlanders, who dashed at it out of the mist. The
other, which was chiefly composed of the 34th of the Line, under the
Chef de Bataillon, my father--now sorely wounded and afoot--was
surrounded by the British 34th," and he told me that in the grey
light of the breaking day each Regiment simultaneously recognised the
other's number on their shakos, and the French officers as they
tendered their swords to those of your corps, exclaimed--
"'Voilà, messieurs--nous sommes des frères, nous sommes du
trente-quatrième régiment tous deux! Les Anglais se battent toujours
avec loyauté, et traitent bien leurs prisonniers!"
"The sword of my father was returned to him by the commander of your
regiment, who politely said something about 'les malheurs de la
Guerre,' and the fighting ended."
"It is quite true, Monsieur le Colonel," replied Hunton, the young
officer, smiling; "for at the Head quarters of our regiment, we still
possess the brass drums, and the drum-major's staff of the French
34th, and if I ever have, as I hope, the pleasure of presenting you
to our mess, you shall see them under more pleasant auspices than the
Marquis your father last saw them.* But now that we are allies, are
not such memories better forgotten?"
* This military coincidence is a historical fact.
And now we have to record the less agreeable portion of our story,
already referred to.