One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
Regiment perished--and poor Beverley, with her dead body, fell into the
hands of the Afghans.
"When we last went out to India," said he, "that was when I was but a
cornet of sixteen, and several years before you joined us, we relieved
the 8th Royal Irish, who had been there long--I know not how many years,
but time enough to gain on their colours _Pristinae virtutis memores_,
with 'Leswaree,' and 'Hindostan'--honours which they shared with the old
25th Light Dragoons,[*] for five-and-twenty years was then the common
term of Indian expatriation.
[*] A corps disbanded in 1818; and formerly the 29th Light Dragoons,
were raised in 1795.
"The 8th had been at the storming of Kalunga, where their old and
beloved colonel--then General Sir Robert Rollo Gillespie--was killed at
their head, and fell with that splendid sword, inscribed 'The gift of
the Royal Irish,' clenched in his hand. His horse was a remarkably
noble animal, which had been foaled of an Irish mare at the Cape of Good
Hope; but he had the beautiful Arabian head, the finely-arched neck,
long oblique shoulders, ample quarters, well-bent legs, and long elastic
pastern of his sire--a splendid Godolphin barb. Black Bob was indeed a
beauty!
"After the affair at Kalunga he was put up for sale, with his saddle and
housings still spotted with the blood of the gallant Gillespie, who was
so greatly beloved by the brave Irish fellows of the 8th that they
resolved to keep his horse as a memorial of him; but, unfortunately, the
upset price was three hundred guineas.
"Two officers of the 25th Light Dragoons raised it speedily to a hundred
more. But not to be baffled, the poor fellows subscribed among
themselves, and actually raised five hundred guineas, for which the
beautiful black horse, with his housings, was sold to them.
"Black Bob thus became their property, and always preceded the regiment
on the march. He knew the trumpets of the 8th better than those of any
other regiment. The men were wont to affirm that he had a taste for the
Irish brogue, too, and that he pricked his ears always highest at
'Garryowen,' in regard that his mother was a mare from the Wicklow
Hills.
"Bob was fed, caressed, petted, and stroked as no horse ever had been
before; and always when in barracks, as the corps proceeded from station
to station where he had been with his old rider, he took the accustomed
position at the saluting base when the troops marched past, just as if
old Rollo Gillespie was still in the saddle, watching the squadrons or
companies defile in succession, and was not lying in his grave, far away
beneath the ramparts of Kalunga, among the Himalaya mountains in Nepaul.
"Well, as I have said, at last we came to relieve the 8th, who were
dismounted, and had their horses turned over to us. They were to go
home, as we had come out, by sea. The funds of the hussars were low
now; pay was spent and prize-money gone. They were in despair at the
prospect of losing their pet horse; but no such passengers ever went
round the Cape, so they had to part with Bob at last.
"A civilian at Cawnpore bought him, and the hussars gave him back more
than half the price, on receiving a solemn promise that Bob was to have
a good stable and snug paddock wherein he was to pass the remainder of
his days in comfort; and this pledge the new proprietor kept faithfully.
But Bob had only been three days in his new quarters, when he heard the
trumpets of the 8th waking the echoes of the compound, as they marched,
dismounted, before daybreak, to embark on the _Ganges_, for Calcutta.
"It was the old air of the regiment, 'Garryowen.' Then Bob became
frantic. He bit and tore his manger to pieces; he lashed out with his
hoofs and kicked the heel-posts and treviss boards to pieces. He
destroyed his whole stall, and sunk among the straw, bleeding, cut, and
half strangled in his stall collar.
"After a time, when day by day passed, and he saw no more the once
familiar uniforms, and heard no more the voices or the trumpets of his
old friends, he pined away, refused his corn, and even the most tempting
mashes, totally declining all food. So he was turned into the paddock;
but then he leaped the bamboo fence, and with all his remaining speed
rushed direct to the barracks at Cawnpore.
"There he made straight for the cantonment of the European cavalry, and
came whinneying up to the saluting post, where he had so often borne old
Gillespie and seen the squadrons of the 8th defiling past, and there, on
that very spot, the horse fell down and died!"[*]
[*] There was another pet of the 8th Hussars, which met with a different
fate. The jet-black horse, on whose back their colonel, T. P.
Vandeleur, was killed at the battle of Leswaree "long kept his place
with the regiment, and afterwards became the property of Cornet
Burrowes, who took great care of him until the corps left India, when he
was shot, that he might not fall into unworthy hands."--_Narrative of
Leswaree_. By Dr. Ore.
"I have often heard similar stories of dogs--but never such a yarn of a
horse," said Captain Binnacle, who was greatly impressed by this
anecdote, and smoked a long time thoughtfully and in silence after it.
"Fact though!" said Beverley, curtly, and rather haughtily, as he tipped
the ashes off his cigar.
"That horse had the heart of a man. But I could spin you a yarn,
colonel, of a man that had the heart of a beast--ay, of a wild wolf; and
it all occurred under my own eye--for I had to shed human blood in the
matter; though I doubt not God above will acquit me therefor, seeing as
how my own conscience acquits me."
The impressive manner so suddenly adopted by our worthy little skipper
attracted the attention of Beverley, Studhome, and M'Goldrick, and all
the listening group.
Even Jocelyn--a gay fellow, who had more _affaires de fantaisie_ than
_affaires de coeur_, and who never permitted the impulses of that useful
utensil, his heart, to go further than proved convenient or
comfortable--felt himself interested by the gloomy and stern expression
that came into the face of Captain Binnacle.
"Would you like to hear my yarn, gentlemen?" said the latter.
"With pleasure--certainly--by all means--if you please," said we,
alternately, and all together, for Binnacle was evidently anxious to
spin it.
He gave a glance aloft, and another at the sky. The evening was fine
and clear. The mate had charge of the deck, the ship was running under
her head-sails, courses, top-sails, and topgallant sails before a fine
strong breeze, which, as she rolled from side to side, made our horses
reel and oscillate in their padded stalls below. The watch of lancers
were all smoking or chatting on the port side; the sail-makers, squatted
under the break of the forecastle, were busy on a set of new
studding-sails; the carpenters were at work repairing the headrails
forward.
The result of Binnacle's glances was satisfactory; and, descending to
the cabin, whither we all followed, he ordered glasses and decanters,
with a case of four square bottles that held something stronger than
decanters usually do. We all betook us to brandy-and-water, except
Frank Jocelyn, who imbibed noyeau and lemonade, a decoction which
Binnacle viewed with sublime contempt; but Frank wore his hair, divided
in the middle, and invariably used _w_ for _r_, so we excused him, as
one might do a young lady.
After a few preliminary coughs and hems, Binnacle told us the following
story, which is so horrible that it fully requires--let us hope
deserves--an entire chapter to itself.
*CHAPTER XXVI.*
At length one whispered his companion, who
Whispered another, and thus it went round,
And then into a hoarser murmur grew,
An ominous, and wild, and desperate sound;
And when his comrade's thought each sufferer knew,
'Twas but his own, suppressed till now, he found,
And out they spoke of lots for flesh and blood,
And who should die to be his fellows' food.--BYRON.
"You must know, gentlemen, that five years ago, come December next, I
was first mate of the _Favourite_, a brig of London, registered at
Lloyd's as being two hundred tons burden, John Benson, master, with a
crew consisting only of nine men and a boy. We had run, late in the
year, to Newfoundland for a cargo of salted cod, and sailing later
still, lost a topmast, and had to run up Conception Bay to refit at the
town of Harbour Grace.
"Winter was close at hand now, so we lost no time in getting our gear
ready; but the field ice came down swiftly from the north, and for the
distance of two hundred miles from the mouth of the bay--that is, from
Baccalieu and Cape St. Francis--away towards the Great Bank of
Newfoundland, it covered all the sea, hard and fast, with hundreds of
icebergs wedged amid it; so there was nothing for us now but patience
and flannel, to strip the ship of her canvas and running rigging, to
stow away everything till the spring, to muffle ourselves to the nose,
and try to keep our blood from freezing by sitting close to wood-fires,
and drinking red Jamaica rum mixed with snow-water, or that of the
mineral springs on the hill of Lookout.
"A winter in Harbour Grace is not quite so lovely as one would be in
London, as it is a poor little wooden town, with a few thousand
miserable inhabitants, and a port that is difficult of entrance, though
safe enough when one is fairly in. Well, everything passes away in
time; so the winter passed, and the spring came; but, as usual in that
imaginary season there, the snow fell heavier, till it was fathoms deep
in the gulleys and flat places; the weather became more wintry than
ever, and though the fierce black frost relaxes a little, it will still
freeze half and half grog as hard as rock crystal.
"Some of our crew bemoaned this unlooked for detention bitterly,
especially the captain, Tom Dacres, and one or two married men, whose
wives, they feared, would deem them lost; but none were more impatient
than the boy I have named. We called him Scotch Willy, for his name was
William Ormiston, from the village of Gourock, on the Clyde. Well
educated, with a smattering of Latin and other things, a passion for
wild adventure, and chiefly for the sea--a passion fed by the perusal of
Robinson Crusoe and other romances--made him run from home and ship for
North America, where we picked him up; and often, in the watches of the
night, poor Willy confided to me his remorse and repentance, and wept
for his mother, whose heart he feared he had broken. Then he used to
show me an advertisement cut from a Glasgow paper, that fell into his
hands in New York:--
"Left his home, ten days ago, a boy fifteen years of age, named William
Ormiston; dressed in a blue jacket and trowsers, with a Glengarry
bonnet; has dark eyes and brown hair. Any information regarding him
will be most thankfully received by his widowed and afflicted mother, at
the Quayside, Gourock."
"'Such was the notice that caught my eye when I was more than two
thousand miles away from her--with my heart as full of remorse as my
pocket was empty,' Willy would say, in a voice broken by sobs; but he
hoped yet to get home and cast himself into her arms.
"In his tribulation Willy always thought his mother would be praying for
him, and that her prayers would be more efficacious than his own, and
this conviction always consoled and strengthened him. He was a handsome
boy, this Willy, with eyes so dark that he might have passed for a
grandson of 'Black-eyed Susan,' only that she was an English girl, and
our Willy was Scotch to the backbone--he was.
"In March we began to get ready for sea, as there is usually a partial