Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/217

. 14, 1863.] Kerse, a cantankerous old gentleman, whose very name was enough to spoil the appetite of any other sub, but whose sarcastic remarks, vehement denunciations, and awful threats had no effect on the cheerful countenance of his present victim.

“By Bow wow wow wow, sir, will you march straight to your front! Oh my wow wow wow, look there, look there! You are not fit to wow wow wow wow; by wow wow, I’ll keep you wow wow wow. Are you drunk?” &c., &c., &c. That was how the Major’s tongue wagged incessantly.

Murtough was a smart officer enough, and was really in the present instance marching as straight as possible, but the Major never cared whether he was just or unjust, so long as he was abusing some one; at last, however, the youngster found the game become monotonous, and thinking that if he were to be blamed and punished he had better do something for it, he commenced a most erratic course, and zigzagged his company diagonally across the square, amidst the tittering of the men, and of a group of officers assembled at the window of the ante-room, near which he was finally halted by Kerse, who had been at first struck speechless, but who now galloped up, and said slowly, in a dangerous tone of concentrated passion:

“Do you mean to tell me, sir, that you did what I told you that time?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What! you chose distant and intermediate points, and marched upon their alignment?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Impossible! and what may your distant point have been?”

“That vessel, sir,” replied Murtough, with the innocence of a lamb, pointing to a packet out at sea, which was steaming by at the rate of about ten knots an hour.

“Go to your quarters, sir!” roared the Major; “I shall put you under arrest.”

A short while afterwards the adjutant came to the ensign’s room, and demanded his sword.

“Who are you?” asked the youngster.

“Who am I? Why you know me well enough. I am Brown the adjutant of your regiment.”

“How am I to know that? You are like him, certainly, but as you are not in uniform—”

“Not in uniform!” cried Brown, glancing at his dress.

“No, where are your spurs?”

And he made the adjutant go back and put his spurs on before he would give up his sword.

Poor Murtough; I lost sight of him after a few days, but I heard that shortly afterwards, having had some money left him, he exchanged into a light cavalry corps, where, the first time he was on stable duty he astonished the colonel of the crackest of all crack regiments by shouting to the men:

“Now then, there; don’t you see the colonel is coming? Be smarter; one would think you were a lot of yeomanry!” And a short time after that he narrowly escaped being tried by court-martial for charging with his troop right through a foot regiment at a review.

“Why,” said he, when asked what on earth he did that for, “you see my horse ran away with me, and I should have looked such a fool if I had halted my men, and gone on alone!”

What has become of him now I know not, his name has disappeared from the Army List, but wherever or whatever he is, I’ll warrant him prosperous: he had too much Cork about him to sink.

Such cheek as his is rarely to be met with, but I should be very well pleased if I had that of Morrison, who procured me an order for the House of Commons the other day by walking coolly into a member of parliament’s offices, and announcing himself as one of his constituents: and so he was, and had voted against him.

Dumas in “Le Véloce,” a book which gives an account of his travels in Algeria, tells certain anecdotes of those African penal battalions called the “Zephirs,” which make me long to pay a visit to a set of men whose cheek must rival their bravery. Will you have a sample of these stories? A French emigrant arriving at Bougie, where a battalion of Zephirs was stationed, and looking about for a residence, had his attention arrested by a charming new house. True that the windows were guarded by iron bars and the door at once strengthened and ornamented by large-headed nails, but this was an advantage at a time when the Kabyles were in the habit of making frequent incursions into the town. As he made these reflections, wandering round the building, and eyeing it with a covetous air, a window opened, a Zephir appeared, and across the bars the following dialogue took place.

“A charming house, soldier,” said the emigrant. “Aye, none so ugly,” replied the zephir.

“Whose is it?”

“Parbleu! his who lives in it, it seems to me.”

“Is it yours?”

“It is mine.”

“Your own property, or let on lease?”

“My own.”

“Peste! you are not badly off. There are few soldiers lodged like you.”

“Well, you see, I took advantage of a heritage which came to me, and had it built. Besides, labour is not dear in Algeria.”

“And what did this little palace cost you?”

“Twelve thousand francs.”

“Give me time, and you shall gain two thousand francs upon it.”

“Eh! eh! we may do business together. It so chances that certain misfortunes have happened which force me to sell.”

“Misfortunes?”

“Yes, my banker has just failed.”

“How lucky!”

“Hein!Hein?” [sic]

“No, I mean to say how unlucky.”

“Well, how much money can you give?”

“One thousand francs down, and the rest—”

“Oh, never mind the rest. I will give you as much time as you like for that.”

“Five years?”

“That will do, five years, ten years. I want a thousand francs, that is all.”