Part 3

Like the other hangers-on of the Athlone barracks, poor Doubleworks subsisted, as we have said, upon the benevolence of his military patrons and friends; but, unlike the others, he was possessed of an accomplishment, not an elegant one, perhaps, or suitable for very refined society, but nevertheless one that brought him by its performance many an odd sixpence or shilling—he could hunt the badger! or was supposed to give a truthful representation of the ‘drawing’ of the above-named quadruped by a canine foe. This performance was vocal, and commenced by a series of whines, growls, and impatient barkings, mingled with grunts and low savage yelps, which we believe were meant for cries of rage and defiance from the badger; these, after lasting with variations for some time, gradually increased in intensity, at length culminating in an unearthly din, perfectly indescribable, but which was stated by the ‘fancy’ and capable authorities to be quite true to nature. For ourselves, not having had experience in such matters, we are unable to offer a personal opinion, and can only observe that the din was marvellous as the production of a single pair of human lungs, and once heard was not likely to be ever forgotten.

His performance was not confined to any particular part of the barracks; it might be heard at any hour of the day in the artillery square, the cavalry square, the infantry square, or amongst the barracks occupied by the scientific arm of the service, the Royal Engineers; but it took place most frequently at the officer’s guardroom; for in those days there used to be an officer’s guardroom and an officer in it at the main barrack gate, which led directly from the infantry square into the market-place of the town. This guardroom was in the centre of a small block of buildings to the left of the gate as you went out, having on its right the regimental orderly-room, where the colonel administered justice every morning, and where the orderly-room clerks smoked strong tobacco, and filled in forms and sketched caricatures of regimental and other authorities every day. The men’s guardroom adjoined that occupied by the officer, from which it, as well as the orderly-room, was separated by a partition wall, the end wall of the men’s guardroom being next the street. In front of these rooms was a small veranda, and beyond this the guardroom sentry paced his ‘lonely round.’ We are thus particular in describing the locality, as it pleases us to recall it after so many years, because it will give our readers a better idea of what is to follow.

The guardroom—we mean the officer’s—was in those days a kind of club or place of call for all officers going out of or coming in to barracks. It was considered incumbent on every passer-by to drop in on the officer of the guard and help him to while away the tedium of his confinement by retailing any news there might be going; while he on his part provided alleviation for any thirst accruing from dry narration. By night, the guardroom was generally pretty full until a late hour. A recent order of the Duke of Wellington, then commander-in-chief, and which procured for him the cognomen of ‘the Tobacco-stopper,’ prohibited the use of tobacco in the precincts of the mess; and though this order was afterwards so far modified as to permit smoking in the anteroom, it was confined to cigars; so those who preferred the luxury of a pipe had either to indulge the propensity in their own rooms or seek the shelter of the guardroom. Needless to say, the latter alternative was the one most generally followed, and the hospitality of the subaltern on guard was accepted as freely as it was offered. Altogether, the main-guard was not a disagreeable place to spend twenty-four hours, especially if it rained, which it can do in those parts, and we ourselves preferred it to the duties of regimental orderly-officer.

One day in the mid-winter of 1846, it came to my turn to mount this guard. The weather had been unusually severe—it had been snowing for a day or two, and the ground was covered to the depth of several inches, while a smart frost had served to make the snow hard as a brick; so that, as I marched my guard across the square to where the old guard was drawn up, waiting our arrival, the men’s tread made no more track than if we had been marching on the surface of the square itself. The preliminaries of relieving guard having been got over as quickly as possible, we paid the parting compliment to the old guard of presenting arms, as it moved off in slow time; and then dismissing our own, we visited the sentries, to ascertain if they had the orders of their respective posts correctly, and then gladly dived into our own den, and doffing our cloak, proceeded to make ourselves as comfortable in front of a huge peat-fire as it was possible to be, braced up in a high stiff stock and tightly fitting coatee and epaulets, as was then the regulation.

The day passed like most others on guard; but, owing to the weather, the passers-by were fewer, and our after-mess visitors didn’t stay so late as usual; by eleven or half-past, all had taken their departure for their respective quarters; and about midnight we proceeded to go round the sentries. There was a bright moon, with a clear star-studded sky. It was not unpleasant walking over the hard frozen snow, and we were not long reaching the farthest-off and last of the sentries, who was posted at the hospital gate. Besides the usual orders, he had special directions to look after the dead-house, a small building situated close inside the hospital gate, to which the bodies of deceased men were conveyed until interment, and to allow no one to enter it unless passed in by the hospital-sergeant. The sentry, when giving up his orders, added that a man had died in the hospital late that evening, and that his corpse was now lying on the table in the dead-house. Accompanied by the corporal of the escort, we walked over to the window, and by the bright moonlight could see something extended on the table, as the man had said, covered with a sheet. After this, we came back across the square to the guardroom, and lighting a pipe, were soon deeply interested in a book that we were reading. Gradually we began to nod, and the book to slip from our hand, and the grand-rounds having already visited the guard, and there being but little danger of having to turn it out again before the morning’s reveille, we were about to go to sleep in earnest on the guardroom sofa, when we were startled from our semi-somnolent condition by hearing the loud challenge, ‘Who goes there?’ from the sentry who had been pacing up and down in front of the veranda. We could hear the rattle of his arms as he threw his firelock to the ‘port,’ and the rapid tread of some one running towards the guardroom and crunching the frozen snow. Presently the challenge was repeated in a quick peremptory tone, but, as in the former case, without obtaining any response; and then there came a kind of half-articulate gurgling cry, followed by the sound of a heavy fall, and the crash of arms and accoutrements, and the shout of, ‘Sergeant of the Guard!’

Fearing that something bad had happened, we jumped up and dashed out of the guardroom, and saw lying on the snow, close to the sentry, who was standing at the ‘charge,’ the figure of a soldier clad in his greatcoat and fully accoutred, and a little way from him his firelock with fixed bayonet lying on the snow, as it had escaped from his grasp in falling. The sergeant and all the men of the guard had rushed out at the same time as we had, and were now engaged lifting the prostrate figure, who at the moment we feared had been run through by the sentry for not replying to the challenge, and trying to run past him. Such, however, happily was not the case; the sentry hadn’t touched him, and said that the man had come rushing towards him from the far angle of the square, and instead of answering the challenge, had continued to approach, making the queer gurgling sound which we had heard, and falling as if shot when he came to where he now lay.

The sergeant of the guard now reported to me that the man was alive, though quite insensible and making a moaning noise, as if in a fit. He further stated that he was the sentry who had been posted at the gate of the hospital. We at once sent a man of the guard for one of the assistant-surgeons of the regiment whose quarters were close at hand, and had the insensible man carried into the guardroom and laid on the guard-bed, his stiff leather stock removed, coat, &c. unbuttoned, and water sprinkled on his face; but all, seemingly, to no purpose: he remained unconscious, and kept up the moaning noise, while now and then struggling hard with those about him. At last the doctor arrived; and having administered some restoratives, after a while the poor fellow became sensible, and sufficiently calm to inform us why he had committed the serious offence of deserting his post. He stated that he had continued to walk about on his beat at the hospital gate for some time after we had visited him, and that all was quiet, when suddenly sounds as if of chairs being upset and knocked about appeared to come from the dead-house; that he had gone up to the window, as we had a short time before, and looked in, and that he saw the corpse off the table, and standing up close inside the window, and that it, as he said, ‘jeered’ at him; that this fearful sight had so unmanned him, that without more ado he had taken to his heels, and had no recollection of anything else that happened until he returned to consciousness on the guard-bed. He was evidently suffering from a terrible shock to his nervous system; and it was only with the greatest difficulty that, mingled with heavy sobs and shudderings, we could manage to get the poor fellow to speak: he was driven nearly demented by the ghastly sight which he was persuaded that he had witnessed.

As soon as he could be left with safety to the care of the guard, who were directed not to pester him with questions, the surgeon and I with a corporal and file of men set off for the hospital; and as we crossed the square, strange noises began to reach us, the growling, snarling, and other sounds of canine conflict mingling with the unmistakable howls with which Doubleworks interlarded his performance.

‘Hillo!’ we said to the doctor; ‘do you hear that? What an hour for Doubleworks to be hunting the badger; we thought he was never allowed in barracks after tattoo.’

As we neared the hospital, the badger hunt, which had ceased for a few moments, broke out afresh, this time mingled with shouts of wild unearthly laughter, and proceeding unmistakably from the dead-house, in which the corpse of the dead soldier had been deposited. We roused up the hospital sergeant, who, good quiet man, snored serenely through it all, and got from him the key and a lantern, and opening the door, found that with the dead man the wretched Doubleworks had been locked up. How he got there unnoticed, no one could tell; he had not been observed by any one about the place; and the only conclusion that we could arrive at was, that he had slipped in when the body was being placed on the table, and had ensconced himself behind the door until it was pulled to and locked upon him.

However true this theory might have been, there was no means of verifying now, for, from whatever cause arising, it was but too evident that poor Doubleworks had become quite insane. He had removed the sheet from the body of the dead man, which lay there in its solemn stiffness before us, in strange contrast to the mad pranks of the lunatic, who, having, no doubt, wrapped himself in the sheet, had presented himself so disguised to the sentry, when he looked in at the window, thereby almost driving him as mad as he was himself.

Why he didn’t favour us with a similar exhibition when we went to look in at the window, we can’t imagine; perhaps he may have objected to the presence of more than one spectator, for he must have heard the steps of the corporal and file of men who were with us when going our rounds. At anyrate, he made no objection to leaving the dead-house now, though he seemed in no way in dread of the other occupant of it. He was next day made over to the civil authorities, and was afterwards transferred, we heard, to the district lunatic asylum; and what was his subsequent fate, we do not know. The sentry he had so horribly frightened, after several weeks in hospital, returned to his duty; but we don’t think he ever quite got over the shock, and he was discharged from the service within a twelvemonth after. Perhaps he may be still alive, and if so, we will bet a trifle he has not forgotten Doubleworks.

RUSSIAN PETROLEUM.

Mr Charles Marvin, who has already done much to familiarise English readers with the Russian petroleum industry and the extraordinarily prolific nature of the oil-wells at Baku, on the Caspian, has again returned to the subject in a pamphlet entitled _The Coming Deluge of Russian Petroleum_ (Anderson & Co., Cockspur Street, London). As these wells, when transport facilities are more perfect, may seriously affect the home and American oil-trade, the facts brought out in Mr Marvin’s pamphlet are worthy of attention.

We learn that of the five hundred petroleum wells at Baku, the majority are situated on the Balakhani Plateau, eight or nine miles to the north of the town. The latest ‘spouter’ of Tagieff’s is, however, in a different locality, being situated on a promontory three miles to the south of Baku. Here Gospodin Tagieff began boring about three years ago. At first, the oil was slow to come, and at its best had never yielded more than sixteen thousand gallons a day. On the 27th September last, having touched oil at seven hundred and fourteen feet, the well began to spout oil with extraordinary force. ‘From the town, the fountain had the appearance of a colossal pillar of smoke, from the crest of which clouds of oil-sand detached themselves and floated away a great distance without touching the ground. Owing to the prevalence of southerly winds, the oil was blown in the direction of Bailoff Point, covering hill and dale with sand and petroleum, and drenching the houses of Bailoff, a mile and a half away. Nothing could be done to stop the outflow.’ It seems that the whole district was covered with oil, the outflow being at the rate of thousands of tuns a day, which filled up cavities, formed a lake, and on the fifth day began to escape into the sea. The square in front of the town-hall of Baku was drenched with petroleum. On the eighth day, the outflow reached the highest ever known—a rate of eleven thousand tuns, or two and three-quarter million gallons a day. ‘Thus,’ says Mr Marvin, ‘from a single orifice ten inches wide there spouted daily more oil than was being produced throughout the whole world, including therein the twenty-five thousand wells of America, the thousands of wells in Galicia, Roumania, Burmah, and other countries, and the shale-oil distilleries of Scotland and New South Wales.’ By the fifteenth day, those in charge had got the outflow so far under control as to restrict it to one quarter million gallons a day. It was certainly a misfortune that of the ten million gallons of oil ejected from Tagieff’s well, most of it was at first lost for want of storage accommodation.

The yield of oil at Baku is thus much ahead of the greatest product of the American wells. Nobel Brothers’ No. 18 Well has yielded, from a depth of seventeen hundred and twenty-one feet, nearly thirty million gallons of oil; and their No. 9 Well, from a depth of six hundred and forty-two feet, forty million gallons. Some of these wells are kept closed while oil is being sold at so cheap a rate. Against the assertion that the product of these wells may dry up and will not last very long, Mr Marvin says that there is ample historical evidence that petroleum has been flowing from the Apsheron peninsula for two thousand five hundred years, and that there seems more likelihood of the American wells drying up than those of Baku. Besides, the petroleum region of the Black Sea has scarcely been touched, and there the oil seems as plentiful as in America.

Owing to this prodigious outflow without a ready market, oil was selling there, in the beginning of October last, at _one penny per sixteen gallons_. The best refined petroleum or lamp-oil is sold at three-farthings a gallon. The production of crude petroleum last year exceeded four hundred and twenty million gallons; there are now one hundred and twenty firms with oil-refineries at Baku, which last year turned out one hundred and twenty million gallons of refined petroleum. The production in 1878 was only one and a quarter million gallons. The bulk-system of transport, as distinguished from carrying in barrels, first adopted in 1879, has had a tendency to revolutionise the trade, and now there are one hundred oil steamers on the Caspian. Some of these steamers have a capacity of carrying eight hundred tuns of oil each trip.

After extracting thirty per cent. of lamp-oil, and allowing ten per cent. for waste and dregs, the remaining sixty per cent., out of every hundred gallons, is used for lubricating and other purposes. Large quantities are imported by certain firms in London, for the manufacture of lubricating oils. Although thus exported, the supply of this waste or residue is so great that it has become the principal fuel in South-east Russia. Steamers purchase it at Baku at fourpence a tun, to be used as fuel. When sent by rail to Batoum, the price rises as high as one pound per tun, which is still cheaper than English coal. More than two hundred and fifty tank and many passenger steamers and locomotives now use this waste oil as fuel in place of coal. A tun of liquid fuel is said to do the work of two or three tons of coal: the chief advantage of its use consists in the fact that it can be turned off and on like gas; it is clean, and takes up very little bunker-space, a matter of great importance to steamers travelling to long distances. The Black Sea Steam Navigation Company, owning seventy-six steamers, intend to commence using this oil-refuse.

The chief outlets for the transport of Baku oil at present are by the Volga and the Transcaucasian Railway. A concession has been granted by the Russian government for laying down a petroleum pipe six hundred miles long for the carrying of the oil from Baku to a point on the Black Sea. The pipe must be large enough to carry one hundred and sixty millions of gallons of oil a year; and it is expected that three years will elapse before it is in working order. Meantime, the North Caucasus Railway will be completed in 1887, and it is expected that it will convey at least one hundred million gallons of oil to the port of Novorossisk, on the Black Sea. Thence it can be shipped in tank steamers to Europe.

We learn that a huge iron reservoir is being built at a remote spot in the outer harbour of Amsterdam for the storage of petroleum. It will be nearly thirty-three feet in diameter, and of the same depth, and is calculated to hold nearly one million seven hundred and forty thousand gallons. The petroleum will be brought direct from Russia in these tank steamers, and will be pumped out at Amsterdam into the tanks, thus saving the expense of filling and emptying casks, besides diminishing the risks of accidents.

Mr Marvin is of opinion that the world is consuming more oil yearly, and he calculates the daily consumption at two million gallons. Along with the cheapening of the oil have also come great improvements in the make of lamps, such as the Defries Safety-lamp, in which the receptacle for the oil is formed of brass. Mr Marvin makes the sensible suggestion, that as Russia is flooding the surrounding countries with oil, our manufacturers might supply the south-east of Europe with lamps, and thousands of cooking and warming stoves. It appears that there is not a country in Europe to which Baku oil is not now shipped, and the figures quoted show that American petroleum is being driven from the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Mr Marvin is of opinion that the shale-oil industry of Scotland already shows signs of yielding to the competition of America, ‘and unless special circumstances should arise, must eventually be crushed by the rivalry of Russian petroleum, when imported in bulk.’ And apparently he has written his pamphlet in order to rouse British ship-owners, manufacturers, and capitalists to secure a share in the expansion and development of the Baku oil-trade.

[We have on more than one occasion advocated the use of oil in calming _broken_ billows at sea, and thus saving a ship or boat which otherwise might succumb to the fury of the storm. Might it not, therefore, be worth while to make further experiments in the abandonment of costly coal, and fit up steamers with this comparatively cheap material, which, while driving the ship, might in a heavy seaway save her, if the oil be allowed to ooze from bags made fast to windward? The use of oil at sea during rough weather _cannot be overestimated_.—ED.]

TOBACCO-CULTURE IN SCOTLAND.

It is quite right for agriculturists to do what is possible in the direction of introducing new kinds of crop that may possibly turn out remunerative; and in this view, some interest is attached to recent experiments in the culture of tobacco. If the North Americans can compete with British farmers in the production of good beef and mutton, Britain may possibly maintain the equilibrium by cultivating the weed of which the New World has long had a monopoly. Potatoes were introduced into this country from America, and have proved to be a rich benefit. It is just possible that tobacco also may turn out to be a not less lucrative gift to the producer. More than a hundred years have elapsed since a trial was made in Scotland, principally, but not exclusively, in the south-eastern counties. It failed at that time, through the combined influences of a bad season, the interference of the government—believed to be at the instance of Glasgow merchants—and ultimately of a rapid fall in the price of imported tobacco, a combination of circumstances not likely to occur again.