"I"ve heard of that too, sirrah," replied the king, again laughing; "and it is for the good service thou didst me there, that I now feel disposed not to hang you."
"That"s an ugly word, sir."
"Go to, go to, you knave!" said the good-humoured monarch, smiling; and, at the same time, drawing forth a well-filled purse from beneath his outer garment, and thereafter throwing it towards Willie--"There, sirrah, take that, and get thee gone; but mark me, my royal brother, see thou dost not try this prank again, else your quarrel and mine may be a more serious one than it has been on this occasion."
Glad to get off on such favourable terms, Willie sneaked out of the apartment without making any further remarks and next day set out on his return to his native district, forswearing kingcraft and the kingdom of Fife for ever.
BILL WHYTE.
I had occasion, about three years ago, to visit the ancient burgh of Fortrose. It was early in winter, the days were brief though pleasant, and the nights long and dark; and, as there is much in Fortrose which the curious traveller deems interesting, I had lingered amid its burying-grounds and its broken and mouldering tenements, till the twilight had fairly set in. I had explored the dilapidated ruins of the Chanonry of Ross; seen the tomb of old Abbot Boniface, and the bell blessed by the pope; run over the complicated tracery of the Runic obelisk which had been dug up, about sixteen years before, from under the foundations of the old parish church; and visited the low, long house, with its upper windows buried in the thatch, in which the far-famed Sir James Mackintosh had received the first rudiments of his education. And, in all this, I had been accompanied by a benevolent old man of the place, a mighty chronicler of the past, who, when a boy, had sat on the same form with Sir James, and who, on this occasion, had seemed quite as delighted in meeting with a patient and interested listener, as I had been in finding so intelligent and enthusiastic a storiest. There was little wonder, then, that twilight should have overtaken me in such a place, and in such company.
There are two roads which run between Cromarty and Fortrose; the one, the king"s highway; the other, a narrow footpath that goes winding for several miles under the immense wall of cliffs which overhangs the northern sh.o.r.es of the Moray Frith, and then ascends to the top, by narrow and doubtful traverses along the face of an immense precipice, termed the Scarf"s Crag. The latter route is by far the more direct and more pleasant of the two to the day traveller; but the man should think twice who proposes taking it by night. The Scarf"s Crag has been a scene of frightful accidents for the last two centuries. It is not yet more than twelve years since a young and very active man was precipitated from one of its higher ledges to the very beach--a sheer descent of nearly two hundred feet; and a mult.i.tude of little cairns which mottle the sandy platform below, bear witness to the no unfrequent occurrence of such casualties in the remote past. With the knowledge of all this, however, I had determined on taking the more perilous road: it is fully two miles shorter than the other; and besides, in a life of undisturbed security, a slight admixture of that feeling which the sense of danger awakens, is a luxury which I have always deemed worth one"s while running some little risk to procure. The night fell thick and dark while I was yet hurrying along the footway which leads under the cliffs, and, on reaching the Scarf"s Crag, I could no longer distinguish the path, nor even catch the huge outline of the precipice between me and the sky.
I knew that the moon rose a little after nine; but it was still early in the evening, and, deeming it too long to wait its rising, I set myself to grope for the path, when, on turning an abrupt angle, I was dazzled by a sudden blaze of light from an opening in the rock. A large fire of furze and brushwood blazed merrily from the interior of a low-browed but s.p.a.cious cave, bronzing with dusky yellow the huge volume of smoke, which went rolling outwards along the roof, and falling red and strong on the face and hands of a thickset, determined-looking man, well nigh in his sixtieth year, who was seated before it on a block of stone. I knew him at once, as an intelligent, and, in the main, rather respectable gipsy, whom I had once met with, about ten years before, and who had seen some service as a soldier, it was said, in the first British expedition to Egypt. The sight of his fire determined me at once. I resolved on pa.s.sing the evening with him till the rising of the moon; and, after a brief explanation, and a blunt, though by no means unkind invitation to a place beside his fire, I took my seat, fronting him, on a block of granite, which had been rolled from the neighbouring beach. In less than half-an-hour, we were on as easy terms as if we had been comrades for years, and, after beating over fifty different topics, he told me the story of his life, and found an attentive and interested auditor.
Who of all my readers is unacquainted with Goldsmith"s admirable stories of the sailor with the wooden leg, and the poor half-starved Merry-Andrew! Independently of the exquisite humour of the writer, they are suited to interest us from the sort of cross vistas which they open into scenes of life, where every thought, and aim, and incident, has at once all the freshness of novelty and all the truth of nature to recommend it. And I felt nearly the same kind of interest in listening to the narrative of the gipsy. It was much longer than either of Goldsmith"s stories, and perhaps less characteristic; but it presented a rather curious picture of a superior nature rising to its proper level through circ.u.mstances the most adverse; and, in the main, pleased me so well, that I think I cannot do better than present it to the reader.
"I was born, master," said the gipsy, "in this very cave, some sixty years ago, and so am a Scotchman like yourself. My mother, however, belonged to the Debatable-land, my father was an Englishman, and of my five sisters, one first saw the light in Jersey, another in Guernsey, a third in Wales, a fourth in Ireland, and the fifth in the Isle of Man.
But this is a trifle, master, to what occurs in some families. It can"t be now much less than fifty years since my mother left us, one bright sunny day, on the English side of Kelso and staid away about a week. We thought we had lost her altogether; but back she came at last, and, when she did come, she brought with her a small sprig of a lad, of about three summers or thereby. Father grumbled a little--we had got small fry enough already, he said, and bare enough and hungry enough they were at times; but mother shewed him a pouch of yellow pieces, and there was no more grumbling. And so we called the little fellow, Bill Whyte, as if he had been one of ourselves, and he grew up among us, as pretty a fellow as e"er the sun looked upon. I was a few years his senior; but he soon contrived to get half a foot a-head of me; and, when we quarrelled, as boys will at times, master, I always came off second best. I never knew a fellow of a higher spirit; he would rather starve than beg, a hundred times over, and never stole in his life; but then for gin-setting, and deer-stalking, and black-fishing, not a poacher in the country got beyond him; and when there was a smuggler in the Solway, who more active than Bill? He was barely nineteen, poor fellow, when he made the country too hot to hold him. I remember the night as well as if it were yesterday. The Catmaran lugger was in the Frith, d"ye see, a little below Carlaverock; and father and Bill, and some half dozen more of our men, were busy in b.u.mping the kegs ash.o.r.e, and hiding them in the sand.
It was a thick smuggy night; we could hardly see fifty yards round us; and, on our last trip, master, when we were down in the water to the gunwale, who should come upon us, in the turning of a handspike, but the revenue lads from Kirkcudbright! They hailed us to strike in the devil"s name. Bill swore he wouldn"t. Flash went a musket, and the ball whistled through his bonnet. Well, he called on them to row up, and up they came; but no sooner were they within half-oar"s length, than taking up a keg, and raising it just as he used to do the putting-stone, he made it spin through their bottom, as if the planks were of window gla.s.s; and down went their cutter in half a jiffy. They had wet powder that night, and fired no more bullets. Well, when they were gathering themselves up as they best could--and, goodness be praised! there were no drownings amongst them--we b.u.mped our kegs ash.o.r.e, hiding them with the others, and then fled up the country. We knew there would be news of our night"s work; and so there was; for, before next evening, there were advertis.e.m.e.nts on every post for the apprehension of Bill, with an offered reward of twenty pounds. Bill was a bit of a scholar--so am I for that matter--and the papers stared him on every side.
"Jack," he said to me, "Jack Whyte, this will never do, the law"s too strong for us now; and, if I dont make away with myself, they"ll either have me tucked up, or sent over seas to slave for life. I"ll tell you what I"ll do. I stand six feet ion my stocking soles, and good men were never more wanted than at present. I"ll cross the country this very night, and away to Edinburgh, where there are troops raising for foreign service. Better a musket than the gallows!"
"Well, Bill," I said, "I dont care though I go with you. I"m a good enough man for my inches, though I aint so tall as you, and I"m woundily tired of spoon-making."
And so off we set across the country that very minute, travelling by night only, and pa.s.sing our days in any hiding hole we could find, till we reached Edinburgh, and there took the bounty. Bill made as pretty a soldier as one could have seen in a regiment; and, men being scarce, I wasn"t rejected neither; and, after just three weeks" drilling--and plaguy weeks they were--we were shipped off, fully finished, for the south. Bonaparty had gone to Egypt, and we were sent after him to ferret him out; though we weren"t told so at the time. And it was our good luck, master, to be put aboard of the same transport.
Nothing like seeing the world for making a man smart. We had all sort of people in our regiment--from the broken-down gentleman to the broken-down lamp lighter; and Bill was catching, from the best of them all he could. He knew he wasn"t a gipsy, and had always an eye to getting on in the world; and, as the voyage was a woundy long one, and we had the regimental schoolmaster aboard, Bill was a smarter fellow at the end of it than he had been at the beginning. Well, we reached Aboukir Bay at last. You have never been in Egypt, master; but, just look across the Moray Frith here, on a sunshiny day, and you will see a picture of it, if you but strike off the blue Highland hills that rise behind, from the long range of low sandy hillocks that stretches away along the coast, between Findhorn and Nairn. I don"t think it was worth all the trouble it cost us; but the king surely knew best. Bill and I were in the first detachment, and we had to clear the way for the rest.
The French were drawn up on the sh.o.r.e, as thick as flies on a dead snake, and the bullets rattled round us like a shower of May-hail. It was a glorious sight, master, for a bold heart! The entire line of sandy coast seemed one unbroken streak of fire and smoke; and we could see the old tower of Aboukir, rising like a fiery dragon at the one end, and the straggling village of Rosetta, half cloud, half flame, stretching away on the other. There was a line of launches and gun-boats behind us, that kept up an incessant fire on the enemy, and shot and sh.e.l.l went booming over our heads. We rowed sh.o.r.ewards, under a canopy of smoke and flame; the water was broken by ten thousand oars; and, never, master, have you heard such cheering; it drowned the roar of the very cannon. Bill and I pulled at the same oar; but he bade me cheer, and leave the pulling to him.
"Cheer, Jack," he said, "Cheer!--I am strong enough to pull ten oars, and your cheering does my heart good."
I could see, in the smoke and the confusion, that there was a boat stove by a sh.e.l.l just beside us, and the man immediately behind me was shot through the head. But we just cheered and pulled all the harder; and the moment our keel touched the sh.o.r.e, we leaped out into the water, middle deep, and, after one well directed volley, charged up the beach with our bayonets fixed. I missed footing in the hurry, just as we closed, and a big whiskered fellow in blue, would have pinned me to the sand, had not Bill struck him through the wind-pipe, and down he fell above me; but when I strove to rise from under him, he grappled with me in his death agony, and the blood and breath came rushing through his wound in my face. Ere I had thrown him off, my comrades had broken the enemy, and were charging up the side of a sand hill, where there were two field-pieces stationed that had sadly annoyed us in the landing. There came a shower of grape shot, whistling round me, that carried away my canteen, and turned me half round; and when I looked up, I saw, through the smoke, that half my comrades were swept away by the discharge, and that the survivors were fighting desperately over the two guns, hand to hand with the enemy. Ere I got up to them, however--and trust me, master, I did"nt linger--the guns were our own. Bill stood beside one of them, all grim and b.l.o.o.d.y, with his bayonet dripping like an eaves-spout in a shower. He had struck down five of the French, besides the one he had levelled over me; and now, all of his own accord--for our sergeant had been killed--he had shotted the two pieces, and turned them on the enemy. They all scampered down the hill, master, on the first discharge--all save one brave, obstinate fellow, who stood firing upon us, not fifty yards away, half under cover of a sandbank. I saw him load thrice ere I could hit him, and one of his b.a.l.l.s whisked through my hat; but I catched him at last, and down he fell--my bullet went right through his forehead. We had no more fighting that day. The French fell back on Alexandria, and our troops advanced about three miles into the country, over a dreary waste of sand, and then lay for the night on their arms.
In the morning, when we were engaged in cooking our breakfasts, master, making what fires we could with the withered leaves of the date-tree, our colonel and two officers came up to us. The colonel was an Englishman--as brave a gentleman as ever lived--ay, and as kind an officer, too. He was a fine-looking old man, as tall as Bill, and as well built, too; but his health was much broken; it was said he had entered the army out of break-heart on losing his wife. Well, he came up to us, and shook Bill by the hand, as cordially as if he had been a colonel like himself. He was a brave, good soldier, he said, and, to show him how much he valued good men, he had come to make him a sergeant, in room of the one we had lost. He had heard he was a scholar, he said, and he trusted his conduct would not disgrace the halberd.
Bill, you may be sure, thanked the colonel, and thanked him, master, very like a gentleman; and, that very day, he swaggered scarlet and a sword, as pretty a sergeant as the army could boast of--ay, and for that matter, though his experience was little, as fit for his place.
For the first fortnight, we didn"t eat the king"s biscuit for nothing.
We had terrible hard fighting on the 13th; and, had not our ammunition failed us, we would have beaten the enemy all to rags; but, for the last two hours, we hadn"t a shot, and stood just like so many targets set up to be fired at. I was never more vexed in my life, than when I saw my comrades falling round me; and all for nothing. Not only could I see them falling; but in the absence of every other noise--for we had ceased to cheer, and stood as silent and as hard as foxes--I could hear the dull, hollow sound of the shot, as it pierced them through. Sometimes the bullets struck the sand, and then rose and went rolling over the level, raising clouds of dust at every skip. At times, we could see them coming through the air like little clouds, and singing all the way as they came. But it was the frightful smoking shot that annoyed us most; these horrid sh.e.l.ls. Sometimes, they broke over our heads in the air, as if a cannon charged with grape had been fired at us from out the clouds; at times, they sank into the sand at our feet, and then burst up like so many Vesuviuses, giving at once death and burial to hundreds. But we stood our ground, and the day pa.s.sed. I remember we got, towards evening, into a snug hollow between two sandhills, where the shot skimmed over us, not two feet above our heads; but two feet is just as good as twenty, master; and I began to think, for the first time, that I hadn"t got a smoke all day. I snapped my musket, and lighted my pipe, and Bill, whom I hadn"t seen since the day after the landing, came up to share with me.
"Bad day"s work, Jack," he said; "But we have at least taught the enemy what British soldiers can endure, and, ere long, we shall teach them something more. But here comes a sh.e.l.l! Nay, do not move," he said; "it will fall just ten yards short." And down it came, roaring like a tempest, sure enough, about ten yards away, and sank into the sand.
"There now, fairly lodged," said Bill; "lie down, lads, lie down." We threw ourselves flat on our faces--the earth heaved under us, like a wave of the sea, and in a moment, Bill and I were covered with half a ton of sand. But the pieces whizzed over us; and, save that the man who was across me had an ammunition bag carried away, not one of us more than heard them. On getting ourselves disinterred, and our pipes relighted, Bill, with a twitch on the elbow--so--said he wished to speak with me apart; and we went out together, into a hollow, in front.
"You will think it strange, Jack," he said, "that, all this day, when the enemy"s bullets were hopping around us like hail, there was but just one idea that filled my mind, and I could find room for no other. Ever since I saw Colonel Westhope it has been forced upon me, through a newly-awakened dream-like recollection, that he is the gentleman with whom I lived ere I was taken away by your people; for, taken away I must have been. Your mother used to tell me, that my father was a c.u.mberland gipsy, who met with some bad accident from the law; but I am now convinced she must have deceived me, and that my father was no such sort of man. You will think it strange; but, when putting on my coat this morning, my eye caught the silver bar on the sleeve, and there leaped into my mind a vivid recollection of having worn a scarlet dress before--scarlet bound with silver; and that it was in the house of a gentleman and lady, whom I had just learned to call papa and mamma. And every time I see the colonel, as I say, I am reminded of the gentleman.
Now, for heaven"s sake, Jack, tell me all you know about me. You are a few years my senior, and must remember better than I can myself, under what circ.u.mstances I joined your tribe."
"Why Bill," I said, "I know little of the matter, and, "twere no great wonder though these bullets should confuse me somewhat in recalling what I do know. Most certainly we never thought you a gipsy like ourselves; but then I am sure mother never stole you; she had family enough of her own, and, besides, she brought with her, for your board, she said, a purse with more gold in it than I have seen at one time, either before or since. I remember it kept us all comfortably in the _creature_ for a whole twelvemonth; and it wasn"t a trifle, Bill, that could do that. You were at first like to die among us. You hadn"t been accustomed to sleeping out, or to food such as ours. And, dear me! how the rags you were dressed in used to annoy you; but you soon got over all, Bill, and became the hardiest little fellow among us. I once heard my mother say that you were a _love-begot_, and that your father, who was an English gentleman, had to part from both you and your mother on taking a wife.
And no more can I tell you, Bill, for the life of me."
We slept that night on the sand, master, and found, in the morning, that the enemy had fallen back some miles nearer Alexandria. Next evening there was a party of us dispatched on some secret service across the desert. Bill was with us; but the officer under whose special charge we were placed was a Captain Turpic, a nephew of Colonel Westhope, and his heir. But he heired few of his good qualities. He was the son of a pettifogging lawyer, and was as heartily hated by the soldiers as the colonel was beloved. Towards sunset, the party reached a hollow valley in the waste, and there rested, preparatory, as we all intended, for pa.s.sing the night. Some of us were engaged in erecting temporary huts of branches, some in providing the necessary materials, and we had just formed a snug little camp, and were preparing to light our fires for supper, when we heard a shot not two furlongs away. Bill, who was by far the most active among us, sprung up one of the tallest date-trees, to reconnoitre. But he soon came down again.
"We have lost our pains this time," he said; "there is a party of French, of fully five times our number, not half a mile away." The captain on the news, wasn"t slow, as you may think, in ordering us off; and, hastily gathering up our blankets, and the contents of our knapsacks, we struck across the sand just as the sun was setting. There is scarce any twilight in Egypt, master; it is pitch dark twenty minutes after sunset. The first part of the evening, too, is infinitely disagreeable. The days are burning hot, and not a cloud can be seen in the sky; but no sooner has the sun gone down, than there comes on a thick white fog, that covers the whole country, so that one can"t see fifty yards around; and so icy cold is it, that it strikes a chill to the very heart. It is with these fogs that the dews descend; and deadly things they are. Well, the mist and the darkness came upon us at once; we lost all reckoning; and, after floundering on for an hour or so, among the sandhills, our captain called a halt, and bade us burrow as we best might among the hollows. Hungry as we were, we were fain to leave our supper, to begin the morning with, and huddled all together into what seemed a deep, dry, ditch. We were at first surprised, master, to find an immense heap of stone under us; we couldn"t have lain harder had we lain on a Scotch cairn; and that, d"ye see, is unusual in Egypt, where all the sand has been blown by the hot winds from the desert, hundreds of miles away, and where, in the course of a few days" journey, one mayn"t see a pebble larger than a pigeon"s egg. There were hard, round, bullet-like ma.s.ses under us, and others of a more oblong shape, like pieces of wood that had been cut for fuel; and, tired as we were, their sharp points, protruding through the sand, kept most of us from sleep. But that was little, master, to what we felt afterwards. As we began to take heat together, there broke out among us a most disagreeable stench; bad, at first, and unlike anything I had ever felt before, but at last altogether overpowering. Some of us became dead sick, and some, to show how much bolder they were than the rest, began to sing. One half the party stole away one by one, and lay down outside; for my own part, master, I thought it was the plague that was breaking out upon us from below, and lay still, in despair of escaping it. I was wretchedly tired, too, and, despite of my fears and the stench, I fell asleep, and slept till daylight. But never before, master, did I see such a sight as when I awoke. We had been sleeping on the carcases of ten thousand Turks, whom Bonaparty had ma.s.sacred about a twelvemonth before. There were eyeless skulls grinning at us by hundreds from the side of the ditch, and black, withered hands and feet sticking out, with the white bones glittering between the shrunken sinews. The very sand, for roods around, had a brown iron-like tinge, and seemed baked into a half-solid ma.s.s, resembling clay. It was no place to loiter in; and you may trust me, master, we breakfasted elsewhere. Bill kept close to our captain all that morning; he didn"t much like him, even so early in their acquaintance as this--no one did, in fact; but he was anxious to learn from him all he could regarding the colonel. He told him, too, something about his own early recollections; but he would better have kept them to himself. From that hour, master, Captain Turpic never gave him a pleasant look, and sought every means to ruin him.
We joined the army again on the evening of the 20th March. You know, master, what awaited us next morning. I had been marching, on the day of our arrival, for twelve hours, under a very hot sun, and was fatigued enough to sleep soundly. But the dead might have awakened next morning.
The enemy broke in upon us about three o"clock. It was pitch dark. I had been dreaming, at the moment, that I was busily engaged in the landing, fighting in the front rank beside Bill, and I awoke to hear the enemy, outside the tent, struggling in fierce conflict with such of my comrades as, half-naked and half-armed, had been roused by the first alarm, and had rushed out to oppose them. You will not think I was long in joining them, master, when I tell you that Bill himself was hardly two steps a-head of me. Colonel Westhope was everywhere at once that morning, bringing his men in the darkness and the confusion, into something like order; threatening, encouraging, applauding, issuing orders--all in a breath. Just as we got out, the French broke through, beside our tent, and we saw him struck down in the throng. Bill gave a tremendous cry of "Our colonel! our colonel!" and struck his pike up to the cross into the breast of the fellow who had given the blow. And, hardly had that one fallen, than he sent it crashing through the face of the next foremost, till it lay buried in the brain. The enemy gave back for a moment; and, as he was striking down a third, the colonel got up, badly wounded in the shoulder; but he kept the field all day. He knew Bill the moment he rose, and leant on him till he had somewhat recovered. "I shall not forget, Bill," he said, "that you have saved your colonel"s life." We had a fierce struggle, master, ere we beat out the French; but, broken and half-naked as we were, we did beat them out, and the battle became general.
At first, the flare of the artillery, as the batteries blazed out in the darkness, dazzled and blinded me; but I loaded and fired incessantly; and the thicker the bullets went whistling past me, the faster I loaded and fired. A spent shot, that had struck through a sandbank, came rolling on like a bowl, and, leaping up from a hillock in front, struck me on the breast. It was such a blow, master, as a man might have given with his fist; but it knocked me down; and, ere I got up, the company was a few paces in advance. The bonnet of the soldier who had taken my place, came rolling to my feet ere I could join them. But, alas! it was full of blood and brains; and I found that the spent shot had come just in time to save my life. Meanwhile, the battle raged with redoubled fury on the left, and we in the centre had a short respite. And some of us needed it. For my own part, I had fired about a hundred rounds; and my right shoulder was as blue as your waistcoat.
You will wonder, master, how I should notice such a thing in the heat of an engagement; but I remember nothing better than that there was a flock of little birds shrieking and fluttering over our heads for the greater part of the morning. The poor little things seemed as if robbed of their very instinct by the incessant discharges on every side of them; and, instead of pursuing a direct course, which would soon have carried them clear of us, they kept fluttering in helpless terror in one little spot.
About mid-day an _aide-de-camp_ went riding by us to the right.
"How goes it? how goes it?" asked one of our officers.
"It is just _who will_," replied the _aide-de-camp_, and pa.s.sed by like lightning. Another followed hard after him.
"How goes it now?" inquired the officer.
"Never better, boy!" said the second rider. "The Forty-Second have cut Bonaparty"s Invincibles to pieces, and all the rest of the enemy are falling back!"
We came more into action a little after. The enemy opened a heavy fire on us, and seemed advancing to the charge. I had felt so fatigued, master, during the previous pause, that I could scarcely raise my hand to my head; but, now that we were to be engaged again, all my fatigue left me, and I found myself grown fresh as ever. There were two field-pieces to our left that had done n.o.ble execution during the day; and Captain Turpic"s company, including Bill and me, were ordered to stand by them in the expected charge. They were wrought mostly by seamen from the vessels--brave, tight fellows, who, like Nelson, never saw fear; but they had been so busy that they had shot away most of their ammunition; and, as we came up to them, they were about despatching a party to the rear for more.
"Right," said Captain Turpic; "I don"t care though I lend you a hand, and go with you."
"On your peril, sir!" said Bill Whyte, "What! leave your company in the moment of the expected charge? I shall a.s.suredly report you for cowardice and desertion of quarters, if you do."
"And I shall have you broke for mutiny," said the captain. "How can these fellows know how to choose their ammunition without some one to direct them?"
And so off he went to the rear, with the sailors; but, though they returned, poor fellows! in ten minutes or so, we saw no more of the captain till evening. On came the French in their last charge. Ere they could close with us, the sailors had fired their field-pieces thrice; and we could see wide avenues opened among them with each discharge. But on they came. Our bayonets crossed and clashed with theirs for one half minute; and, in the next, they were hurled headlong down the declivity, and we were fighting among them pell-mell. There are few troops superior to the French, master, in a first attack; but they want the bottom of the British; and, now that we had broken them in the moment of their onset, they had no chance with us, and we pitched our bayonets into them as if they were so many sheaves in harvest. They lay in some places three and four tier deep--for our blood was up, master,--just as they advanced on us, we had heard of the death of our general; and they neither asked for quarter nor got it. Ah, the good and gallant Sir Ralph! We all felt as if we had lost a father; but he died as the brave best love to die. The field was all our own; and not a Frenchman remained who was not dead or dying. That action, master, fairly broke the neck of their power in Egypt.
Our colonel was severely wounded, as I have told you, early in the morning; but, though often enough urged to retire, he had held out all day, and had issued his orders with all the coolness and decision for which he was so remarkable; but, now that the excitement of the fight was over, his strength failed him at once, and he had to be carried to his tent. He called for Bill, to a.s.sist in bearing him off. I believe it was merely that he might have an opportunity of speaking to him. He told him that, whether he died or lived, he would take care that he should be provided for. He gave Captain Turpic charge, too, that he should keep a warm side to Bill. I overheard our major say to the captain, as we left the tent--"Good heavens! did you ever see two men liker one another than the colonel and our new sergeant?" But the captain carelessly remarked, that the resemblance didn"t strike him.
We met, outside, with a comrade. He had had a cousin in the Forty-Second, he said, who had been killed that morning, and he was anxious to see the body decently burried, and wished us to go along with him. And so we both went. It is nothing, master, to see men struck down in warm blood, and when one"s own blood is up; but oh, "tis a grievous thing, after one has cooled down to one"s ordinary mood, to go out among the dead and the dying. We pa.s.sed through what had been the thick of the battle. The slain lay in hundreds and thousands--like the ware and tangle on the sh.o.r.e below us--horribly broken, some of them, by the shot; and blood and brains lay spattered on the sand. But it was a worse sight to see, when some poor wretch, who had no chance of living an hour longer, opened his eyes as we pa.s.sed, and cried out for water. We soon emptied our canteens, and then had to pa.s.s on. In no place did the dead lie thicker than where the Forty-Second had engaged the Invincibles, and never were there finer fellows. They lay piled in heaps--the best men of Scotland over the best men of France--and their wounds, and their number, and the postures in which they lay, showed how tremendous the struggle had been. I saw one gigantic corpse, with the head and neck cloven through the steel cab to the very brisket. It was that of a Frenchman; but the hand that had drawn the blow, lay cold and stiff, not a yard away, with the broadsword still firm in its grasp. A little farther on, we found the body we sought. It was that of a fair young man; the features were as composed as if he were asleep; there was even a smile on the lips; but a cruel cannon shot had torn the very heart out of the breast. Evening was falling. There was a little dog whining and whimpering over the body, aware, it would seem, that some great ill had befallen its master; but yet tugging, from time to time, at his clothes, that he might rise and come away.
"Ochon, ochon! poor Evan M"Donald!" exclaimed our comrade; "what would Christy Ross, or your good old mother, say to see you lying here!"
Bill burst out a-crying, as if he had been a child; and I couldn"t keep dry-eyed neither, master. But grief and pity are weaknesses of the bravest natures. We scooped out a hole in the sand with our bayonets and our hands, and, burying the body, came away.
The battle of the 21st broke, as I have said, the strength of the French in Egypt; for, though they didn"t surrender to us until about five months after, they kept snug behind their walls, and we saw little more of them. Our colonel had gone aboard of the frigate, desperately ill of his wounds--so ill that it was several times reported he was dead; and most of our men were suffering sadly from sore eyes ash.o.r.e. But such of us as escaped, had little to do, and we contrived to wile away the time agreeably enough. Strange country, Egypt, master. You know, our people have come from there; but, trust me, I could find none of my cousins among either the Turks or the Arabs. The Arabs, master, are quite the gipsies of Egypt: and Bill and I--but he paid dearly for them afterwards, poor fellow--used frequently to visit such of their straggling tribes as came to the neighbourhood of our camp. You, and the like of you, master, are curious to see _our_ people, and how we get on--and no wonder; and we were just as curious to see the Arabs. Toward evening, they used to come in from the sh.o.r.e or the desert, in parties of ten or twelve; and wild-looking fellows they were; tall, but not very tall; thin, and skinny, and dark; and an amazing proportion of them blind of an eye--an effect, I suppose, of the disease from which our comrades were suffering so much. In a party of ten or twelve--and their parties rarely exceeded a dozen--we found that every one of them had some special office to perform. One carried a fishing net, like a herring have; one, perhaps, a basket of fish, newly caught; one a sheaf of wheat; one, a large copper basin, or rather platter; one, a bundle of the dead boughs and leaves of the date tree; one, the implements for lighting a fire; and so on. The first thing they always did, after squatting down in a circle, was to strike a light; the next, to dig a round pot-like hole in the sand, in which they kindle their fire. When the sand has become sufficiently hot, they throw out the embers, and, placing the fish, just as they had caught them, in the bottom of the hole, heaped the hot sand over them, and the fire over that. The sheaf of wheat was next untied, and each taking a handful, held it over the flame till it was sufficiently scorched, and then rubbed out the grain between their hands, into the copper plate. The fire was then drawn off a second time, and the fish dug out, and, after rubbing off the sand, and taking out the bowels, they sat down to supper. And such, master, was the ordinary economy of the poorer tribes, that seemed drawn to the camp merely by curiosity. Some of the others brought fruit and vegetables to our market, and were much encouraged by our officers; but a set of greater rascals never breathed. At first, several of our men got flogged through them. They had a trick of raising a hideous outcry in the market place for every trifle--certain, d"ye see, of attracting the notice of some of our officers, who were all sure to take part with them. The market, master, had to be encouraged, at all events; and it was some time ere the tricks of the rascals were understood in the proper quarter. But, to make short, Bill and I went out one morning to our walk. We had just heard--and heavy news it was to the whole regiment--that our colonel was despaired of, and had no chance of seeing out the day. Bill was in miserably low spirits. Captain Turpic had insulted him most grossly that morning. So long as the colonel had been expected to recover, he had shown him some degree of civility; but he now took every opportunity of picking a quarrel with him. There was no comparison in battle, master, between Bill and the captain; for the captain, I suspect, was little better than a coward; but, then, there was just as little on parade the other way; for Bill, you know, couldn"t know a great deal, and the captain was a perfect martinet. He had called him vagrant and beggar, master, for omitting some little piece of duty; now, he couldn"t help having been with _us_, you know; and, as for beggary, he had never begged in his life. Well, we had walked out towards the market, as I say.
"It"s all nonsense, Jack," says he, "to be so dull on the matter; I"ll e"en treat you to some fruit. I have a Sicilian dollar here. See that lazy fellow with the spade lying in front, and the burning mountain smoking behind him; we must see if he can"t dig out for us a few _prans"_ worth of dates.
Well, master, up he went to a tall, thin, rascally-looking Arab, with one eye, and bought as much fruit from him as might come to one-tenth of the dollar which he gave him, and then held out his hand for the change.
But there was no change forthcoming. Bill wasn"t a man to be done out of his cash in that silly way, and so he stormed at the rascal; but he, in turn, stormed as furiously, in his own lingo, at him, till at last Bill"s blood got up, and, seizing him by the breast, he twisted him over his knee, as one might a boy of ten years or so. The fellow raised a hideous outcry, as if Bill were robbing and murdering him. Two officers, who chanced to be in the market at the time, came running up at the noise; one of them was the scoundrel Turpic; and Bill was laid hold of, and sent off under guard to the camp. Poor fellow! he got scant justice there. Turpic had procured a man-of-war"s man, who swore, as he well might, indeed, that Bill was the smuggler who had swamped the Kirkcudbright custom-house boat. There was another brought forward, who swore that both of us were gipsies, and told a blasted rigmarole story, without one word of truth in it, about the stealing of a silver spoon.
The Arab had his story, too, in his own lingo; and they received every word of it; for my evidence went for nothing. I was of a race who never spoke the truth, they said--as if I weren"t as good as a Mahommedan Arab. To crown all, in came Turpic"s story, about what he called Bill"s mutinous spirit in the action of the 21st. You may guess the rest, master. The poor fellow was broke that morning, and told that, were it not in consideration of his bravery, he would have got a flogging into the bargain.