Chapter XXV: Head-Quarters

We joined the head-quarters of the regiment, then lying in the barracks of Kingston-upon-Hull, and after being inspected and approved of, by our lieutenant-colonel--the Earl of Kildonan--a fine young soldier, who had served throughout the two campaigns of the War of Independence in America, I was "turned over," as the phrase is, to Captain Glendonwyn'a company, by Mr. Bolster, the adjutant, and forthwith commenced my initiation into the mysteries of the goose-step and other calisthenic exercises. I was passed rapidly from squad to squad. Though my heart, yet, was far away at home, my spirit went with the task that was set me; thus I was soon declared fit for duty and was put on guard.

The strictness with which I conformed to every rule soon attracted the attention of my captain and of the staff. I interfered with none, and even the most officious corporal could not discover a military fault in me. I soon ceased to be deemed a "new-come," or stigmatized as a "Johnnyraw." I was often too generous with my pittance of pay, for being unsuspicious, the artful fleeced me of it, and thus I was often obliged to "box Harry" till pay-day came; but as I was always on good terms with the pretty young Englishwoman (a sergeant's wife), who messed me, I did not find this so difficult as other spendthrifts, who were older, less favoured by nature, or less suave than I; for my gentler breeding made me a favourite with all the women in the barrack.

I remember my first guard well, for there was a grim incident connected with it.

When I was on sentry at the mainguard-gate, about the hour of five, on a cold, raw, misty morning, two of our officers passed quietly out. They were muffled in their blue regimental cloaks, and seemed pale, like men who had been all night awake. They were excited too--though somewhat silent. In a few minutes _other two_, accompanied by Dr. Splints, our assistant-surgeon, also passed out; and then I surmised that their expedition was nothing less than a hostile meeting, for such affairs were of every-day occurrence in those hot times of high punctilio, and when in every corps there were a few firebrands and fighting men, who made themselves the arbiters of every petty quarrel, and urged that blood alone could wipe out the most trivial or imaginary slight.

I was not wrong in my supposition. Being a young soldier, I was pondering whether or not I should call the officer of the guard, when I heard two shots fired simultaneously in a field not far from the barracks; and in a few minutes, a terrified rustic came hurriedly to the gate for a stretcher, on which two files of the guard, soon after, bore in one of the four officers whom I had seen pass out--a fine young lad, the lieutenant of our light company--who was shot through the lungs and dying; and this mournful tragedy was the sequel to the mere boyish joke of corking a pair of mustaches on the lip of another, as he lay on the mess-room chairs asleep overnight.

The officers were soon likely to have more of this sharp work cut out for them; for Lieutenant Rowland Haystone, of ours, a mere youth, having dined at the mess of a hussar corps, they conveyed him, well dosed with champagne, into the riding-school, and there carefully covering him up to the nose in sawdust, left him, tucked in thus, to his slumbers, which were undisturbed till the roughrider came with his horses ard squad about seven next morning. The non-commissioned officer, astonished to see a man's face among the sawdust and bark, dragged out our unfortunate subaltern, who had some difficulty in comprehending where he was; and he was brought home to his quarters in such a plight, that he had a narrow escape from losing his commission. To square accounts, he shot one of the hussars; but, as the affair was considered an insult to the whole regiment, the dragoons and fusiliers fought whenever they met in the streets and taverns, for some time after this, and Mr. Haystone actually tabled at mess a proposal for calling out the whole of the hussar officers by turns; but they were despatched to join the Duke of York's unfortunate army in Flanders, and so ended this feud and its follies.

Soon after this, I was detailed for a very unpleasant duty.

A number of men being required for the West India fleet, under Admiral Jervis, there came a secret order for the press-gangs to visit the docks and crimping-houses at Hull; and on the night selected by the authorities, fifty men of the fusiliers, provided each with twenty rounds of ball-cartridge, were paraded, about ten o'clock, under the command of Lieutenant Haystone and Ensign Bruce, and marched with great secrecy towards the principal dock, the gates of which were by that time closed. We were in light-marching order, with our forage-caps and great-coats.

At the gate, we were joined by fifty carefully-selected seamen, all armed with cutlasses and pistols, and wearing short flushing jackets. Among them, as I afterwards heard, were a number of the oldest midshipmen, and the whole body was officered by second and third lieutenants. They had already with them a few pressed men, whom they had picked up at the grog-shops and ale-houses, as they came along the quay, and these were easily discernible by their hands being fettered and their sullen air.

Mr. Haystone now gave the commands to prime and load with ball, and to fix bayonets; and on the gates being opened, he took possession of the pressed men, and sent guards, under sergeants or corporals, to keep the various avenues, with orders to defend them at the point of the bayonet against all who might attempt to escape or resist; for such was the aversion to the naval service, even at this time, when Nelson's pennant was streaming from the _Victory_, that press-gangs frequently met with the most desperate resistance: and at Hull, in those days, there lived near the docks a certain enterprising son of the Emerald Isle, who kept a large depôt of cudgels, and lent them out, at "a penny a _row_," to all who required them.

All was still and dark in the docks, and I could see the forest of masts and rigging standing in intricate masses against the cloudy sky, which, fortunately for our expedition, was moonless, and the month was October.

Dividing into numerous small parties, the press-gang boarded several large ships; and from the quay we could see the flashing of cutlass blades, and the gleam of lanterns on the masts above and the slimy water below, and on the pale and excited faces of the crews, as they were turned up from their hammocks, and their skippers forced to account for all their men, per list. Their papers were cursorily examined, and the best men selected for service. On the slightest resistance they were handcuffed, at the point of the cutlass and the muzzle of the levelled pistol.

While posted as sentinel inside one of the gates, I saw a fugitive seaman, who had dropped on the quay from the spritsail yard of a large bark, run towards the barrier, and heedless of my command to "fall back," he proceeded at once, and with desperate activity, to climb up by the crossbars of the gate, for the purpose of escaping.

Remembering all I had endured on board the _Tartar_, I pitied the poor fellow; but my orders were imperative; moreover, the eye of a sergeant was upon me.

"Come back, sirrah!" I exclaimed, cocking my musket; "come back, or I shall be compelled to shoot you."

"Shoot away, then," he replied, and still continued to climb.

I know not how I might have acted had not his foot slipped when near the summit, and he fell heavily to the ground. Powerful and active, he sprang up at once, and boldly confronted me as I charged my bayonet; and perceiving that his intention was evidently to close with me and wrest away my musket, I said, resolutely,--

"Stand!--stir not one step, or I shall shoot you down, in the king's name!"

"Curse the king, and every slave who serves him!" he exclaimed, with an oath, which, however dreadful, seemed not unfamiliar to me; and, on drawing nearer, I recognized the mean and sinister visage of Dick Knuckleduster, whom I had last seen in the burning beacon.

"You were one of the keepers of the Sandbridge lighthouse?" said I, with some satisfaction; for, to tell the truth, the catastrophe of the beacon sometimes haunted me unpleasantly. He scowled at me under his shaggy eyebrows, and did not reply.

"Answer!" said I, threatening him with my bayonet.

"Well--what if I was?"

"You know that it was burned down?"

"Ay--pretty well," he growled, with a laugh and an imprecation.

"How did you escape?"

"By the water."

"Of course--but by what other means?"

"I swam."

"And Bill with the broken nose?"

"Was roasted like a crab, and like a buttered crab I heard him sputtering on the burning beams above me--ugh!--d--n me--burned alive!"

"And the wretched Jewess?"

"Mother Snatchblock?"

"Yes."

"Ha! ha! burned too; but who the devil are you, that you know all this?" he added, savagely, while coming forward.

"Back--back!" I exclaimed, "or I shall run my bayonet into you; I am Oliver Ellis, the boy whom you would have sold to the press-gang--do you hear me, rascal?--to the press-gang, to whom I shall surrender you in five minutes as a prisoner. Time about is fair play, Mr. Dick Knuckleduster."

For a few seconds the fellow was silent; and while our eyes glared into each other, we could hear the bustle on board the ships,--the breaking open of hatches,--voices calling the rolls of crews,--the scuffles, oaths, and plunging overboard of those who sought to escape the gang by swimming to the quays, where they were captured by the guards of fusiliers under Mr. Haystone. In muscular strength I was but a child, when compared to a ruffian so brawny as Knuckleduster; but my position as sentinel, and my loaded musket, gave me a power of life and death over him. He felt this; his features contracted with intense ferocity, and I could see his sinister eyes glaring like those of a polecat in the dark.

"What--here's our powder-monkey that bolted become a full-blown lobster!" he exclaimed, with an affected laugh; "but you'll shake hands, won't you, Oliver?"

"Back!" I replied, keeping my charged bayonet at his breast; "back, for my finger is on the trigger."

"You will let me past, won't you?"

"Not an inch."

"I was very kind to you in that ere beacon, I was," said the fellow, in a whining voice; "Bill wanted to shy you into the water one night, to save your grog and biscuits; but I thought it better----"

"To sell me----"

"To whom?"

"The press-gang, through Mother Snatchblock's respectable agency, eh?--sell me like the emerald ring and jewels of the unfortunate man, who was wrecked near the beacon, whom you foully murdered, and whose body you sunk with an old kedge-anchor, eh?--Knuckleduster, the wrecker, thief, and murderer!"

He uttered a growl like a bulldog, and literally writhed with fear and baffled rage as I said this.

"You have no proof for what you say, and I defy you," replied he; "but this I know, that I shall seize _you_ as a deserter--a boy run from His Majesty's ship _Tartar_, and all your denials, or jawing fore and aft, won't be worth a soldier's button. Besides, how do I know that you didn't burn that ere beacon, as well as steal Mother Snatchblock's boat, and so become guilty of murder as well as robbery? Oh! I see jolly well you'll think better of it than let me be taken to-night. A fine joke it would be, indeed, for Dick Knuckleduster to be beaten at this time o' day by a sucking-turkey like you!"

"Silence, dog, or I shall certainly bayonet you. I am no longer the friendless boy you thought me, but one of the Royal Fusiliers, and I defy alike your falsehoods and your malevolence."

The fellow again resorted to the most abject entreaties that I would permit him to escape; but I stood resolutely then, pinning him against the wall, until Mr. Stanley, a midshipman of the _Adder_ frigate, approached with a party of seamen, and pressed him into his Majesty's sea service. Then, as they dragged him away, he poured forth a torrent of imprecations upon me, mingled with threats of future vengeance, which I heeded less than the chafing of the slimy water upon the green and barnacled sides of the quay. At all this the midshipman and the sailors only laughed, saying they had "a boatswain, who would teach him better manners, on board the _Adder_."

However, this was not the _last_ I was fated to see of Master Richard Knuckleduster.