Chapter XIX · 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?"

And now we have to record the less agreeable portion of our story, already referred to.