THE TROOP-SHIP.
Among the letters and papers which reached our detachment at
Gibraltar, was a copy of the 'Morning Post,' which went 'the round'
of the officers--_i.e._--was perused by all in turn.
We were all seated jovially at the table, in the harbour of
Gibraltar; the bright sun was glistening on the waves which ran in
long and glassy ripples through the straits; the cabin-windows were
open; the cloth had been removed, and the decanters of sherry and
full-bodied old port were travelling round the well-polished mahogany
on their patent silver waggons. We were idling over nuts and
peaches, talking, laughing and making merry on the prospects of the
war, when, judge of my emotions, on Major Catanagh, who had
entrenched himself behind the open pages of the 'Morning Post,'
suddenly raising his head and his voice together--
'Poor Tom Clavering!' he exclaimed; 'he has come to an untimely end
at last.'
'How?' asked several, pausing in their conversation; 'Clavering of
the Guards--who dined with us at Dumbarton?'
'Brother of Bob Clavering of the 5th? Well?'
'He has come to an untimely end,' continued the major, and my heart
felt a pang as the captain's frank and handsome face came before me;
but I could neither analyse the major's expression of eye, or my own
emotions, as he added,--
'He has gone the way we must all go.'
'Dead!' I exclaimed, as hope mingled with my regret.
'No--married.'
'Married!' echoed several voices.
'As you will hear by this most magniloquent paragraph.'
'Read it, major--all news from home are welcome,' said Jack Belton.
'Married yesterday by the Lord Bishop of Edinburgh.--'
'Who the deuce is he?' asked some one; 'we don't know such
dignitaries in Scotland.'
'Never mind, my boy--the "Morning Post" does--Married yesterday, by
the Lord Bishop of Edinburgh, Captain Thomas Clavering, second son of
the late Sir Anthony Clavering, of Clavering-corbet and
Belgrave-square, to Laura, the only and accomplished daughter of Sir
Horace Everingham, Bart, and M.P., of Elton Hall, Yorkshire and Glen
Ora. The bride was most elegantly attired in white glacé silk,
covered with Brussels lace flounces, flowers and a magnificent
Brussels lace veil entwined with white roses and orange blossom. She
was attended by twelve charming bridesmaids richly arrayed--six in
pink and six in white, who unbound their bouquets and strewed the way
with flowers before the wedded pair, from the porch of St. John's
church to the steps of the carriage.'
'By Jove! there's a peal of bells for you!' said Belton.'
'Think of Tom Clavering having the way before him strewed with
flowers.'
'After the ceremony, Sir Horace gave a splendid _déjeuner_ at his
residence in Edinburgh, and at four o'clock the beautiful bride and
gallant bridegroom left town, _en route_ for London, from whence it
is said they will follow the Guards to the Crimea in the elegant
yacht of Augustus Frederick Snobleigh, Esq., or in the _Fairy Bell_,
the well-known yacht of Sir Horace.'
This pompous and inflated notice, which excited much merriment at the
mess-table, fell heavily and sorely on me. Every word of it was like
a death-knell--yet I loitered calmly and placidly, as old Duncan
Catanagh read it with a comical smile in his grey Highland eye, and
with a quizzical emphasis on certain portions of it. No one who saw
me sitting there, so quietly and so pale (I could perceive my face in
an opposite mirror), would have dreamed there was such a hell raging
in my heart.
But alas! this world is full of strange fancies and misplaced
affections.
Though I was fully prepared or this marriage, the notice of it, so
plainly and palpably _in print_, was a source of great agony to me;
but amid the noise and bustle of the transport, the constant change
of scene in the Mediterranean, and the reckless gaiety of those
around me--those brave and light hearts, who amid the mud and gore of
the rifle-pits were to find 'glory or the grave,' I had fortunately
little time left for reflection. Knowing my secret, and sympathising
with me, honest Jack Belton, left nothing unsaid or undone to draw me
from myself; to wean me as it were from my own thoughts, and to fix
my attention more on the events that lay before us than those which
were past and irremediable for Jack's maxim, like his favourite song,
was ever,--
'To be sad about trifles is trifling and folly,
For the true end of life is to live and be jolly.'
All day long, with our revolver pistols, we practised at bottles or
old hats slung from the mainyard arm; and in this feat none but
Callum Dhu could beat Jack Belton, who had been one of the most
successful pupils in our new school of musketry at Hythe. In the
evening we had the fine brass band of the Rifles, who gave us the
best airs from _Il Travatore_ and _La Traviata_; then we sang glees
on the poop, or danced to the bagpipes on the main-deck, leaving
nothing undone to beguile the tedium of a sea-voyage; for there _is_
a tedium even in the beautiful Mediterranean; and daily we exchanged
salutes and cheers with troop-ships and war-steamers, French,
British, and Sardinian, returning with sick and wounded men from the
land towards which we were hastening.
Many of these vessels were imperial transports, on their way to
Marseilles; and they had generally in tow a sailing-vessel, also
crowded by the miserable convalescents of Scutari and Sebastopol; and
hourly, while they were within sight, we saw the ensign half hoisted,
and the dead launched off to leeward--sans shroud or coffin or other
covering than their blood-stained uniform, their Zouave cloak, or
grey greatcoat, all tattered and torn by the mud of the rifle-pits
and toil of the trenches.
After bidding adieu to the Cape de Gata, that long ridge of rocks
which lie on the eastern limits of Almeria, and form the last point
of Spain, we sighted Tavolaro, a promontory at the southern extremity
of Sardinia. On that evening I had some trouble in saving my
irritable follower Callum Dhu from being put in irons, for beating a
rifleman who had been making fun of his Celtic peculiarities. On,
on, we sped, with the smoke from our funnel pouring a long and vapory
pennant astern.
We landed the Rifles at Malta, and took on board ten pieces of
battering-guns--forty-eight pounders--for the Crimea, and ere long
saw a gorgeous sunset deepening on the green Sicilian hills. In due
time we were among the countless isles of the Greek archipelago--the
Andælat Denhisa (or sea of islands, as it is named by the Turks),
with the stern and rocky shore of the Morca frowning on our lee from
the deep azure sky of the Levant.
The Ægean was covered with foam, and as we ran through the narrow
strait that divides the charming isle of Scio from the vast continent
of Asia, the sides of our steamer, the shrouds, our rough coats--even
our hair and moustaches, were encrusted with salt from the flying
spray, as we sped on past Milo, Hydra, and other isles of a thousand
old classic memories; and after passing and saluting the castles of
the Dardanelles, bore up for Gallipoli, at thirteen knots an hour,
with full steam, and every sail set that would draw fore and aft.
Let not my readers fear that I am about to afflict them with a
history either of the war or the siege of Sebastopol, or even with
the now-hackneyed description of Constantinople. Fortunately for
myself, I never saw either the Malakoff or the Redan, though my
regiment did, to its cost; and though quartered in its vicinity, duty
or destiny prevented me from seeing much of the far-famed city of
Stamboul. We have had enough and to spare of the East and Eastern
War of late; thus I mean to confine myself entirely to my own
adventures, which will prove more than enough to fill my volume,
without the introduction of any extraneous matter.