CHAPTER I.
THE DUKE OF KENT AS GRANDFATHER KNEW HIM--DISCIPLINE AND THE LASH IN THE BRAVE DAYS OF OLD--TONAL'S DILEMMA, AND HOW HE GOT OUT OF IT.
A beautiful village on the eastern shores of Kent, a village that partly and chiefly went straggling up a little cosy dingle or dell, and partly rested on two high cliffs that--one especially--descended sheer down towards the dark and heaving ocean, which in stormy weather spent its fury against its sides: such was Ramsgate in the early part of this century.
There were churches on the cliffs and in the hollow; there was also a naval outlook or coastguard station; and there were barracks for soldiers. A bracing town then as now. Perhaps even more so, for it was hardly in those days a sea-side watering-place. There were no noisy trains, no factories worth the name, few vessels in the harbour save those of fisher-folks, and far less bustle and stir. In fact a kind of Sabbath-calm rested here eternally. To be sure, the coming and going of the soldiers occasioned a little excitement, so did the arrival of a man-o'-war, especially if she stayed long enough to give the sailors a spell on shore. Then, indeed, the peace was broken in more ways than one. For Jack and Tommy Atkins might be seen linking arm in arm along the street, or streets, singing together, drinking together, and, alas! often fighting together. In this latter upshot the Jacks generally, if not invariably, had the best of it.
I do not mean to say that a sailor is, on the whole, braver than a soldier, but in times of peace he probably is, for then Tommy Atkins rests at home--languishes in barracks, let us say--while Jack is ever facing danger and death afloat on the ocean wave.
It was in the autumn of 1801 that my grandfather, with his regiment, or a portion of it, lay here, and just about this time his Royal Highness the Duke of Kent took the command of the Royals, _vice_ Lord Adam Gordon, D.D.*
* "D.D." in this case does not mean Doctor of Divinity, but Discharged Dead.
The Duke was, it must be remembered, the father of our good and illustrious Queen Victoria.
It was here at Ramsgate that my grand-dad first had the honour of coming under his Royal Highness's notice, and was taken on his staff.
In those days the pay of a company passed through the captain thereof, but this had fallen into my grandfather's hands in the following way: He was possessed of a little money, and this, or a portion of it, he had lent to his captain. He never got it back, for the officer was impecunious, but he had the pay of the company turned over to him, and in those days in foreign lands the men were paid in the coin of the country in which they served. A captain therefore, in paying his men, had usually some pickings left for himself, as English coin was more valuable than foreign.
It was--I may say it. I trust, without appearing boastful--my grandfather's smartness, sobriety, strict attention to duty and discipline, and his love of order and cleanliness, that first attracted the notice of the Duke, and that his Grace was pleased with him goes without saying.
From my grand-dad's account of him, the Duke was a noble-looking man, a capital soldier, and a most rigid disciplinarian, but withal most humane and kindly, not only to every officer and man under him, but to every animal as well.
The Duke was never known to tread upon a worm; this is not figurative, but simply the truth.
Drake and O'Reilly used to go shooting sea-birds, and brought home the spoils of sport--as they facetiously called the beautiful dead.
"How came it here? Who so cruel as shoot it?" The speaker was the Duke. He had picked up a lovely gull, its feathers dyed in blood, its breast still warm.
"I'm afraid I did, sorr," said O'Reilly, walking up and saluting his Royal Highness.
"Sir, this is not sport--it is murder!"
The Duke turned on his heel and walked away.
There were no more gulls killed on the cliffs by the officers of the Royals.
* * * * *
The following anecdote of the Duke's kind-heartedness was believed in the sergeants' mess. It is possibly true; I cannot say farther.
However, as the story goes, the Duke of Kent one day called a sergeant towards him, while walking on the square or parade.
"Sergeant," he said, "I have several times noticed lights in the men's quarters, even at midnight. What is the meaning of it?"
"I beg your pardon, your Royal Highness, but the men occasionally light a clip to hunt for fleas."
"What are they, Sergeant?"
"Little animals, sir, that haunt the rooms, and bite."
"Not--eh--bats, Sergeant?"
"No, sir."
"Bring me one to look at."
Unfortunately a _pulex irritans_ was not difficult to find, for the little blood-sucker was a plague in the barracks.
The sergeant rolled the specimen with a wetted finger to make it lie still for the Duke's inspection.
His Royal Highness turned it over once or twice with his finger, then--
"Poor little fellow! poor little fellow!" he said; "he is still alive. Put him up; put him up."
And the sergeant, accustomed to obey carefully, returned the flea to the soldier's bed.
* * * * *
Well, the Duke was a very strict disciplinarian, but I doubt if he was ever really cruel.
Discipline had to be strict in those old days, in the army as well as in the navy. The men were, as a rule, a rough and careless lot, and as they took almost every opportunity of drinking that they could find, it is no wonder that they needed careful handling at times. But when it is remembered that in drinking they were only taking example from the officers who led them, it will be admitted that the punishment for intoxication was sometimes cruel in the extreme.
An officer before whom a man might be brought up of a morning, charged with drunkenness, might not himself be sober. Yet he would order that man to the halberts to be flogged, then wend his way unsteadily to his mess.
The punishment was a fearful one. Three hundred lashes were sometimes given for insubordination, after which the unfortunate fellow would be handed over to the surgeon, more dead than alive. An offender would sometimes faint under the punishment. If the doctor advanced, the officer might say, "Stand back, Doctor, please. We'll flog the faint out of him."
It was not uncommon for a man to die after such brutal punishment--sometimes, I am sorry to add, by his own hand.
Even sergeants, at certain times, had power to order a man to be flogged.
Malingering, that is, pretending to be sick in order to procure a discharge from the service, was rife at this time.
Some strange stories could be told concerning this. A man, for example, pretended to be paralysed. The surgeon pronounced him a malingerer. The captain doubted the doctor's diagnosis.
"And I'll prove it to you, McLeod," said the officer.
"How, sir?"
"Well, that man is one of the finest swimmers in the regiment. We shall take him out to sea and drop him into deep water. He'll quickly strike out to save himself."
This was really done. The man perhaps preferred death to the punishment he knew he would receive if he moved a limb, which he did not. He sank like a stone, and it was with some difficulty that his life was saved.
He was discharged, and that same evening recovered the use of his limbs sufficiently to walk, or rather stagger about the streets, for he was not sober.
* * * * *
A man was brought before O'Reilly, charged with being a malingerer. He was apparently as deaf as a post, and Dr. McLeod only suspected, but could not swear he was shamming.
O'Reilly cleverly made assurance doubly sure. "How long have you been like this, my poor fellow?" he whispered by his ear.
"More than a fortnight, sir," said the man, completely taken off his guard.
"Then I'm glad you're better, poor fellow. Twelve dozen at the halberts and a week in the black-hole will complete the cure. Sergeant Robertson, see to this."
Just one other case. This was feigned paralysis of the right arm. Incredible as it may seem, the man was hoisted off his feet by the left hand, and flogged in this position, without even moving the right arm.
"That will stimulate the system," said O'Reilly, who was convinced the fellow was shamming. "Bring him up in ten days' time, Sergeant, if not better, and we will give him three hundred."
Next day this man came to my grandfather.
"See what I can do, Sergeant," he said, lifting the "paralysed arm" about a foot from his side.
He was sent to duty next day.
There was in another regiment, the 54th, if I remember rightly, a man flogged terribly for being intoxicated and riotous, although his character for ten years was all that could be desired. He was a strong, robust man, and bore his punishment well, though his back was slashed and bleeding.
The colonel* was considered by the men--and with some just cause, perhaps--to be tyrannical.
* Hay was, I think, the officer's name.
Anyhow, no sooner had this man been released, than he snatched up a large cannon-ball from a pyramid near by, and hurled it with fearful force at the colonel's head.
The escape was a narrow one, for the missile grazed his cheek.
"Your musket! Your musket!" cried the colonel, springing towards the sentry.
The sentry, out of humanity, dared to disobey. But without doubt, had he given the musket up, the colonel would have shot the culprit on the spot.
He cooled down almost immediately.
But, addressing the man as calmly as he could, "I'll send you where you'll never see England again," he said.
The man was banished to India, sent to what the soldiers called the Rogues' Regiment.
He was married and had two children, and the parting from those dear ones, whom he ne'er should see again, was said to be sad in the extreme.
Flogging, on a very extensive scale indeed, was to have been carried out once upon a time. The weather was very hot, the regiment abroad. The company who disobeyed orders had been ordered to parade in heavy marching order. But they had cut their blankets, retaining only a small portion to protrude during inspection. The fraud was discovered at night, and so incensed was the colonel that he threatened to flog the whole company next morning.
But far too early for the punishment to be carried out the French attacked them.
At a most critical moment the company stopped and refused to advance.
"Three cheers for the colonel and the blankets," cried a voice in their midst.
The colonel rode back. He was pale as death.
"For Heaven's sake, my brave fellows, come on. You shall never hear about the blankets again."
Then there was a shout and a cheer of a different sort, and on they dashed with a vim and vigour that turned the scale of victory.
I think this proves that officers may easily be merciful as well as just.
* * * * *
Poor Dominie Freeschal, of the school on the Braes, might, if he were living in our time, set up a college for preparing young officers for the army. At least three of his pupils did well as soldiers, my dear grand-dad, honest Tom Grahame, and Touvil, the boy who assisted at that dark orgie in the Highland forest, when the dominie's tawse was committed to the flames.
He rose as he had hoped, and as he said he was determined to do, to the leadership of his regiment's band.
He was transferred into the Royals, on a vacancy occurring in the brigade to which my grandfather belonged, and glad indeed were the two old schoolfellows to meet again once more.
"Indeed, Ian," he said--"or is it John I must be calling you now?--I managed my own transferment. I'll tell you more about that same again, but it was all through my love and regard for my old schoolfellow, Ian Robertson."
From that day forward Tonal and John continued to be fast friends and companions.
It was about this time that the event occurred that led my grandfather ever after to say, and with truthfulness too, that the Queen's father had saved his life.
A detachment of the Royals was ordered abroad for foreign service--out west, to America, I think. The names of the officers and non-commissioned officers had to be previously submitted to the Duke of Kent, for his sanction.
As soon as his eye caught sight of my grand-dad's name, he drew his pen through it.
"No!" he said; "he is much too good a man to lose."
The vessel grandfather ought to have sailed in had not gone far before she encountered a terrible gale off the coast. She was driven on the rocks on a lee shore, stove, and sunk in a few minutes.
_Not a soldier or sailor was saved._
Tonal became a great favourite with all the officers, especially with those of the company to which my grandfather belonged.
He was an excellent piper, and though it was not his duty to play at all, he often did so at the mess, and this greatly delighted the Scottish element, especially the honest giant, Dr. McLeod.
Now Tonal was a strict "Auld Kirk," and if he did deign at times to enter the portals of an English church, it was only because he was obliged to.
One day a dignitary of the Church sent to beg assistance. The organ was out of order, and there would be no music for some weeks unless the band of the Royals could kindly condescend to conduct it.
Tonal was thunderstruck. He would have to rehearse for the occasion, and he would have to obey orders. He was in despair.
"Och!" he told McLeod mournfully, "it is only half-papists they are anyhow, and sure if my poor mother, rest her soul, knew I'd be playing to them, it's her ghost that would rise and come all the way from the old kirkyard of R---- to haunt me."
McLeod himself was a member of the Church of Scotland, so he felt sorry for Tonal.
He pondered over it, and he consulted some other members of the mess, and at last they got up a conspiracy.
I have no desire to defend the conspirators, reader; I but record _facts_.
Tonal was delighted when the plan was laid before him.
There were more people that first Sunday than usual. The band was a great attraction. Perhaps some of them would have stayed away had they known what was to transpire.
However, everything went well till the time of departure, when something soft and low ought to have been played as the people rose to leave the church.
Now I do not myself know a more emphatic, more merry, or blood-stirring strathspey to dance to than the old air called "The Miller o' Drone," if given with a good bass and a touch of the drum. In its very gleefulness you can hear in every bar the thud, thud, of the jolly old mill as the air runs merrily on.
My readers may judge of the consternation of the parson and people when the band struck up the grand old tune as they rose to go.
It was played with vim, and vigour too, to the very last note. For Tonal was on his mettle.
I need hardly tell you that the band was never again requested to officiate.
But Tonal was more a hero in the mess than ever.