Robert Michael Ballantyne
Blue Lights: Hot Work in the Soudan
Chapter Six.
The Unfinished Letter—Too Late!
Next morning young Milton—or, as he was called by his comrades, John Miles—rose with the depressing thought that it was to be his last day in England. As he was dressing, it flashed across him that he had left his unfinished letter on the reading-room table, and, concluding that it would be swept away in the rush of people there—at all events that, not having been folded or addressed, it could not be posted—his depression was deepened.
The first thing that roused him to a better frame of mind was the smell of tea!
Most people are more or less familiar with teapots; with the few teaspoonfuls of the precious leaf which thrifty housekeepers put into these pots, and the fragrant liquid that results. But who among civilians, (save the informed), can imagine a barrack-room teapot?
Open your ears, O ye thrifty ones! while we state a few facts, and there will be no need to tell you to open your eyes.
Into the teapot which supplied Miles with his morning cup there was put, for one making, eight pounds of tea!—not ounces, observe, but pounds,—twenty-nine pounds of sugar, and six gallons—an absolute cowful—of milk! The pot itself consisted of eight enormous coppers, which were filled with boiling water to the brim.
“Yes, sir,” remarked the military cook, who concocted the beverage, to a speechless visitor one day; “it is a pretty extensive brew; but then, you see, we have a large family!”
A considerable portion of this large family was soon actively engaged in preparation for immediate embarkation for Egypt. Then the General made the men a farewell speech. It was a peculiar speech—not altogether suited to cheer timid hearts, had any such been there, but admirably adapted to British soldiers.
“Men,” said he, “I am very glad to see you parade looking so well and clean and comfortable and ready for active service. You will be dirty enough, sometimes, where you are going, for the country is hot and unhealthy, and not over clean. You will have hardships, hard times, and plenty of hard work, as well as hard beds now and then, and very likely the most of you will never come back again; but you would be unworthy of the name of British soldiers if you allowed such thoughts to trouble your minds. I sincerely express the hope, however, that you will all come home again safe and sound. I have not the slightest doubt that every man of you will do his duty in the field faithfully and well; but I’m not so sure of your wisdom in camp and barracks, so I will give you a word of advice. There is far more danger in getting drunk in hot countries than in England. Let me advise you, then, not to get drunk; and I would warn you particularly against the vile stuff they will offer for sale in Egypt. It is rank poison. If you had stomachs lined with brass you might perhaps stand it—not otherwise. Then I would warn you against the sun. In Egypt the sun is sometimes like a fiery furnace. Never expose yourself when you can avoid doing so, and, above all, never go outside your tents without your helmets on. If you do, you’ll repent it, and repentance will probably come too late. I wish you all a prosperous voyage, and may God keep you all!”
Delivered in a sharp, stern, unsentimental tone, this brief speech had probably a much more powerful effect on the men than a more elaborate exhortation would have had. The impression was deepened by the remarks of an old officer, who made a very brief, soldierly speech after the General, winding up with the information that he had himself been in Egypt, and assuring them that if they did not take care of themselves there was little chance of a man of them returning alive!
“May you have a pleasant passage out,” he said, in conclusion; “and, in the name of the Portsmouth Division, I wish you victory in all your battles, and a hearty good-bye.”
The men who were not going away were then called on to give their departing friends three cheers, which they did with right good-will. Captain Lacey, who was in charge of the detachment, stepped to the front, drew his sword, gave the order to shoulder arms, form fours, right turn, quick march, and away they went with the united bands of two regiments playing “The girl I left behind me!”
The girls they were about to leave behind them were awaiting them at the barrack-gates, with a considerable sprinkling of somewhat older girls to keep them company. Many of the poor creatures were in tears for the men whom they might never see again, and lumps in several manly throats rather interfered with the parting cheer delivered by the detachment at the gate. Most of them accompanied the soldiers as far as the Dockyard gates. Emily Armstrong was not among them. She had parted the previous night from her husband at his earnest request, and returned by rail to her father’s house, there to await, as patiently as she might, the return of her “Willie.”
“Noble defenders of our country!” observed an enthusiastic citizen, as they passed through the gates.
“Food for powder,” remarked a sarcastic publican, as he turned away to resume his special work of robbing powder of its food and his country of its defenders.
Proceeding to the Embarkation Jetty, the detachment was marched on board the troop-ship, where the men were at once told off to their respective messes, and proceeded without delay to make themselves at home by taking possession of their allotted portion of the huge white-painted fabric that was to bear them over the waves to distant lands.
Taking off their belts and stowing them overhead, they got hold of their bags, exchanged their smart uniforms for old suits of clothes, and otherwise prepared themselves for the endurance of life on board a transport.
To his great satisfaction, Miles found that several of the comrades for whom he had by that time acquired a special liking were appointed to the same mess with himself. Among these were his friend Willie Armstrong, Sergeants Gilroy and Hardy, Corporal Flynn, a private named Gaspard Redgrave, who was a capital musician, and had a magnificent tenor voice, Robert Macleod, a big-boned Scotsman, and Moses Pyne, a long-legged, cadaverous nondescript, who was generally credited with being half-mad, though with a good deal of method in his madness, and who was possessed of gentleness of spirit, and a cheerful readiness to oblige, which seemed a flat contradiction of his personal appearance, and rendered him a general favourite.
While these were busy arranging their quarters a soldier passed with several books in his hand, which he had just received from one of the ladies from the Institute.
“Hallo, Jack!” cried Moses Pyne; “have the ladies been aboard?”
“Of course they have. They’ve been all over the ship already distributin’ books an’ good-byes. If you want to see ’em you’ll have to look sharp, Moses, for they’re just goin’ on shore.”
“See ’em!” echoed Moses; “of course I wants to see ’em. But for them, I’d be—”
The rest of the sentence was lost in the clatter of Moses’ feet as he stumbled up the ladder-way. Remembering his letter at that moment, Miles followed him, and reached the gangway just as the visitors were leaving.
“Excuse me,” he said to one of them, stopping her.
“Oh! I’m so glad to have found you,” she said.
“I have been looking for you everywhere. Miss Robinson sent you this little parcel of books, with her best wishes, and hopes that you will read them.”
“Thanks, very much. I will, with pleasure. And will you do me a favour? I left a letter on the reading-room table—”
A sudden and peremptory order of some sort caused a rush which separated Miles from the visitor and cut short the sentence, and the necessity for the immediate departure of all visitors rendered its being finished impossible.
But Miss Robinson’s representative did not require to be told that a forgotten letter could only want posting. On returning, therefore, to the Institute, she went at once to the reading-room, where she found no letter! Making inquiry, she learned from one of the maids that a sheet of paper had been found with nothing on it but the words, “Dearest mother, I’m so sorry”; and that the same had been duly conveyed to Miss Robinson’s room. Hasting to the apartment of her friend, she knocked, and was bidden enter.
“You have got an unfinished letter, it seems?” she began.
“Yes; here it is,” interrupted Miss Robinson, handing the sheet to her assistant. “What a pity that it gives no clew to the writer—no address!”
“I am pretty sure as to the writer,” returned the other. “It must have been that fine-looking young soldier, John Miles, of whom we have seen a little and heard so much from Sergeant Gilroy.”
Hereupon an account was given of the hurried and interrupted meeting on board the troop-ship; and the two ladies came to the conclusion that as nothing was known about the parents or former residence of John Miles no steps of any kind were possible. The letter was therefore carefully put by.
That same evening there alighted at the railway station in Portsmouth an elderly lady with an expression of great anxiety on her countenance, and much perturbation in her manner.
“Any luggage, ma’am?” asked a sympathetic porter—for railway porters are sometimes more sympathetic than might be expected of men so much accustomed to witness abrupt and tender partings.
“No; no luggage. Yes—a small valise—in the carriage. That’s it.”
“Four-wheeler, ma’am?”
“Eh! no—yes—yes.”
“Where to, ma’am?” asked the sympathetic porter, after the lady was seated in the cab.
“Where to?” echoed Mrs Milton, (for it was she), in great distress. “Oh! where—where shall I drive to?”
“Really, ma’am, I couldn’t say,” answered the porter, with a modest look.
“I’ve—I—my son! My dear boy! Where shall I go to inquire? Oh! what shall I do?”
These would have been perplexing utterances even to an unsympathetic man.
Turning away from the window, and looking up at the driver, the porter said solemnly—
“To the best ’otel you know of, cabby, that’s not too dear. An’ if you’ve bin gifted with compassion, cabby, don’t overcharge your fare.”
Accepting the direction, and exercising his discretion as well as his compassion, that intelligent cabby drove, strange to say, straight to an hotel styled the “Officers’ House,” which is an offshoot of Miss Robinson’s Institute, and stands close beside it!
“A hofficer’s lady,” said the inventive cabby to the boy who opened the door. “Wants to putt up in this ’ere ’ouse.”
When poor Mrs Milton had calmed her feelings sufficiently to admit of her talking with some degree of coherence, she rang the bell and sent for the landlord.
Mr Tufnell, who was landlord of the Officers’ House, as well as manager of the Institute, soon presented himself, and to him the poor lady confided her sorrows.
“You see, landlord,” she said, whimpering, “I don’t know a soul in Portsmouth; and—and—in fact I don’t even know how I came to your hotel, for I never heard of it before; but I think I must have been sent here, for I see from your looks that you will help me.”
“You may depend on my helping you to the best of my power, madam. May I ask what you would have me do?”
With much earnestness, and not a few tears, poor Mrs Milton related as much of her son’s story as she thought necessary.
“Well, you could not have come to a better place,” said Tufnell, “for Miss Robinson and all her helpers sympathise deeply with soldiers. If any one can find out about your son, they can. How were you led to suspect that he had come to Portsmouth?”
“A friend suggested that he might possibly have done so. Indeed, it seems natural, considering my dear boy’s desire to enter the army, and the number of soldiers, who are always passing through this town.”
“Well, I will go at once and make inquiry. The name Milton is not familiar to me, but so many come and go that we sometimes forget names.”
When poor Mrs Milton was afterwards introduced to Miss Robinson, she found her both sympathetic and anxious to do her utmost to gain information about her missing son, but the mother’s graphic descriptions of him did not avail much. The fact that he was young, tall, handsome, curly-haired, etcetera, applied to so many of the defenders of the country as to be scarcely distinctive enough; but when she spoke of “My dear Miles,” a new light was thrown on the matter. She was told that a young soldier answering to the description of her son had been there recently, but that his surname—not his Christian name—was Miles. Would she recognise his handwriting?
“Recognise it?” exclaimed Mrs Milton, in a blaze of sudden hope. “Ay, that I would; didn’t I teach him every letter myself? Didn’t he insist on making his down-strokes crooked? and wasn’t my heart almost broken over his square O’s?”
While the poor mother was speaking, the unfinished letter was laid before her, and the handwriting at once recognised.
“That’s his! Bless him! And he’s sorry. Didn’t I say he would be sorry? Didn’t I tell his father so? Darling Miles, I—”
Here the poor creature broke down, and wept at the thought of her repentant son. It was well, perhaps, that the blow was thus softened, for she almost fell on the floor when her new friend told her, in the gentlest possible manner, that Miles had that very day set sail for Egypt.
They kept her at the Institute that night, however, and consoled her much, as well as aroused her gratitude, by telling of the good men who formed part of her son’s regiment; and of the books and kind words that had been bestowed on him at parting; and by making the most they could of the good hope that the fighting in Egypt would soon be over, and that her son would ere long return to her, God willing, sound and well.
Chapter Seven.
Miles begins to discover himself—Has a few Rough Experiences—And falls into Pea-Soup, Salt-Water, and Love
While his mother was hunting for him in Portsmouth, Miles Milton was cleaving his way through the watery highway of the world, at the rate of fifteen knots.
He was at the time in that lowest condition of misery, mental and physical, which is not unfrequently the result of “a chopping sea in the Channel.” It seemed to him, just then, an unbelievable mystery how he could, at any time, have experienced pleasure at the contemplation of food! The heaving of the great white ship was nothing to the heaving—well, it may perhaps be wiser to refrain from particulars; but he felt that the beating of the two thousand horse-power engines—more or less—was child’s-play to the throbbing of his brain!
“And this,” he thought, in the bitterness of his soul, “this is what I have sacrificed home, friends, position, prospects in life for! This is—soldiering!”
The merest shadow of the power to reason—if such a shadow had been left—might have convinced him that that was not soldiering; that, as far as it went, it was not even sailoring!
“You’re very bad, I fear,” remarked a gentle voice at the side of his hammock.
Miles looked round. It was good-natured, lanky, cadaverous Moses Pyne.
“Who told you I was bad?” asked Miles savagely, putting a wrong—but too true—interpretation on the word.
“The colour of your cheeks tells me, poor fellow!”
“Bah!” exclaimed Miles. He was too sick to say more. He might have said less with advantage.
“Shall I fetch you some soup?” asked Moses, in the kindness of his heart. Moses, you see, was one of those lucky individuals who are born with an incapacity to be sick at sea, and was utterly ignorant of the cruelty he perpetrated. “Or some lobscouse?” he added.
“Go away!” gasped Miles.
“A basin of—”
Miles exploded, literally as well as metaphorically, and Moses retired.
“Strange,” thought that healthy soldier, as he stalked away on further errands of mercy, stooping as he went to avoid beams—“strange that Miles is so changeable in character. I had come to think him a steady, reliable sort of chap.”
Puzzling over this difficulty, he advanced to the side of another hammock, from which heavy groans were issuing.
“Are you very bad, corporal?” he asked in his usual tone of sympathy.
“Bad is it?” said Flynn. “Och! it’s worse nor bad I am! Couldn’t ye ax the captin to heave-to for a—”
The suggestive influence of heaving-to was too much for Flynn. He pulled up dead. After a few moments he groaned—
“Arrah! be off, Moses, av ye don’t want my fist on yer nose.”
“Extraordinary!” murmured the kindly man, as he removed to another hammock, the occupant of which was differently constituted.
“Moses,” he said, as the visitant approached.
“Yes, Gaspard,” was the eager reply, “can I do anything for you?”
“Yes; if you’d go on deck, refresh yourself with a walk, and leave us all alone, you’ll con—fer—on—”
Gaspard ceased to speak; he had already spoken too much; and Moses Pyne, still wondering, quietly took his advice.
But if the Channel was bad, the Bay of Biscay was, according to Flynn, “far badder.”
Before reaching that celebrated bay, however, most of the men had recovered, and, with more or less lugubrious aspects and yellow-green complexions, were staggering about, attending to their various duties. No doubt their movements about the vessel were for some time characterised by that disagreement between action and will which is sometimes observed in feeble chickens during a high wind, but, on the whole, activity and cheerfulness soon began to re-animate the frames and spirits of Britain’s warriors.
And now Miles Milton began to find out, as well as to fix, in some degree, his natural character. Up to this period in his life, a mild existence in a quiet home, under a fairly good though irascible father and a loving Christian mother, had not afforded him much opportunity of discovering what he was made of. Recent events had taught him pretty sharply that there was much room for improvement. He also discovered that he possessed a very determined will in the carrying out of his intentions, especially when those intentions were based upon his desires. Whether he would be equally resolute in carrying out intentions that did not harmonise with his desires remained to be seen.
His mother, among her other teachings, had often tried to impress on his young mind the difference between obstinacy and firmness.
“My boy,” she was wont to say, while smoothing his curly head, “don’t mistake obstinacy for firmness. A man who says ‘I will do this or that in spite of all the world,’ against advice, and simply because he wants to do it, is obstinate. A man who says, ‘I will do this or that in spite of all the world,’ against advice, against his own desires, and simply because it is the right thing to do, is firm.”
Remembering this, and repenting bitterly his having so cruelly forsaken his mother, our hero cast about in his mind how best he could put some of her precepts into practice, as being the only consolation that was now possible to him. You see, the good seed sown in those early days was beginning to spring up in unlikely circumstances. Of course the habit of prayer, and reading a few verses from the Bible night and morning, recurred to him. This had been given up since he left home. He now resumed it, though, for convenience, he prayed while stretched in his hammock!
But this did not satisfy him. He must needs undertake some disagreeable work, and carry it out with that degree of obstinacy which would amount to firmness. After mature consideration, he sought and obtained permission to become one of the two cooks to his mess. Moses Pyne was the other.
Nothing, he felt, could be more alien to his nature, more disgusting in every way to his feelings—and he was right. His dislike to the duties seemed rather to increase than to diminish day by day. Bitterly did he repent of having undertaken the duty, and earnestly did he consider whether there might not be some possible and honourable way of drawing back, but he discovered none; and soon he proved—to himself as well as to others—that he did indeed possess, at least in some degree, firmness of character.
The duties that devolved on him were trying. He had to scrub and keep the mess clean and tidy; to draw all the provisions and prepare them for cooking; then, to take them to the galley, and fetch them when cooked. That this last was no simple matter, such as any shore-going tail-coated waiter might undertake, was brought forcibly out one day during what seamen style dirty weather.
It was raining at the time. The sea was grey, the sky was greyer, and as the steamer itself was whitey-grey, it was a grave business altogether.
“Is the soup ready, Moses?” asked Miles, as he ascended towards the deck and met his confrère coming down.
“I don’t know. Shall I go an’ see?”
“No; you can go and look after the table. I will fetch the soup.”
“A nasty sea on,” remarked a voice, which sounded familiar in Miles’s ears as he stepped on deck.
“Hallo! Jack Molloy!” he exclaimed, catching hold of a stanchion to steady himself, as a tremendous roll of the vessel caused a sea to flash over the side and send a shower-bath in his face. “What part of the sky did you drop from? I thought I had left you snug in the Sailors’ Welcome.”
“Werry likely you did, John Miles,” answered the tar, balancing himself with perfect ease, and caring no more for spray than if he had been a dolphin; “but I’m here for all that—one o’ the crew o’ this here transport, though I means to wolunteer for active sarvice when I gets out. An’ no wonder we didn’t come across each other sooner! In sitch a enormous tubful o’ lobsters, etceterer, it’s a wonder we’ve met at all. An’ p’r’aps you’ve bin a good deal under hatches since you come a-boord?”
Molloy said this with a knowing look and a grin. Miles met the remark in a similar spirit.
“Yes, Jack, I’ve been paying tribute to Neptune lately.”
“You looks like it, Miles, judgin’ by the colour o’ your jib. Where away now?”
“Going for our soup.”
“What! made you cook o’ the mess?”
“Ay; don’t you wish you were me?”
Another roll and flash of spray ended the conversation and separated the friends.
The pea-soup was ready when our hero reached the galley. Having filled the mess-tureen with the appetising mixture, he commenced the return journey with great care, for he was now dependent entirely on his legs, both hands being engaged. Miles was handy, if we may say so, with his legs. Once or twice he had to rush and thrust a shoulder against the bulwarks, and a dash of spray served for salt to the soup; but he was progressing favourably and had traversed full three-quarters of the distance to the hatch when a loud “Hooroo!” caused him to look round smartly.
He had just time to see Corporal Flynn, who had slipped and fallen, come rolling towards him like a sack of flour. Next moment he was swept off his legs, and went into the lee scuppers with his comrade in a bath of pea-soup and salt-water!
Fortunately, the obliging wave which came in-board at the same moment mingled with the soup, and saved both men from a scalding.
Such mishaps, however, were rare, and they served rather to enliven the voyage than otherwise.
Besides the duties already mentioned, our hero had to wash up all the dishes and other things at meal-hours; to polish up the mess-kettles and tin dishes; and, generally, to put things away in their places, and keep things in apple-pie order. Recollecting another of his mother’s teachings—“Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well”—he tried his best, and was so ably seconded by the amiable Moses, that the Miles-Moses mess came to be at last regarded as the best-kept one on board.
One morning, after clearing up the dishes and putting things in order, Miles went on deck for a little fresh air. On the way up he met an elderly gentleman whose dress proclaimed him a clergyman.
He looked earnestly at our hero, and, nodding kindly, spoke a few words to him in passing. Miles had been aware that there was a clergyman on board going out to Egypt with his family—whether in connection with the troops or for health he did not know. He was much impressed with the looks and expression of this man. It seemed to him as if there were some sort of attractive power about him which was unaccountably strong, and he felt quite interested in the prospect of hearing him preach on the following Sunday.
While on deck the previous day, he had seen the figures of two ladies, whom he rightly judged to be the family above referred to, but as there was nearly the whole distance of the ship’s length between them, he could not distinguish their faces.
On taking his place when Sunday came, he observed that the family were present, seated, however, in such a position that he could only see their backs. Speculating in a listless way as to what sort of faces they had, he whiled away the few minutes before the service began.
He was recalled from this condition by the tones of the clergyman’s voice, which seemed to have the same effect on him as his look and manner had the day they first met. During the sermon Miles’s attention was riveted, insomuch that he almost forgot where he was. The text was a familiar one—“God is Love,”—but the treatment of it seemed entirely new: the boundless nature of that love; its incomprehensible and almighty force; its enduring certainty and its overwhelming immensity, embracing, as it did, the whole universe in Christ, were themes on which the preacher expatiated in a way that Miles had never before dreamed of.
“All subordinate love,” said the preacher, in concluding, “has its source in this. No wonder, then, that it is spoken of in Scripture as a love ‘which passeth knowledge.’”
When the men rose to leave, it could be easily seen that they were deeply impressed. As they went out slowly, Miles passed close to the place where the ladies sat. The slighter of the two was talking in a low tone to her companion, and the young soldier was struck with the wonderful resemblance in her tone to that of the preacher. He wondered if her face also resembled his in any degree, and glanced back, but the head was turned away.
“I like that parson. He has got brains,” remarked Sergeant Hardy, as he walked along the deck with Sergeant Gilroy and Corporal Flynn.
“Sur’ an’ I like him too,” said the corporal, “for he’s got heart!”
“Heart and brains,” returned Gilroy: “a grand combination! What more could we want?”
“Don’t you think that tongue is also essential?” asked Miles. “But for the preacher’s eloquence his heart and brain would have worked in vain.”
“Come now, John Miles, don’t you be risin’ up into poethry. It’s not yer natur—though ye think it is. Besides, av a man’s heart an’ brains is all right, he can make good use of ’em widout much tongue. Me own notion is that it’s thim as hasn’t got much to spake of, aither of heart or brain, as is over-fond o’ waggin’ the tongue.”
“That’s so, Flynn. You’re a living example of the truth of your own opinion,” retorted Miles.
“Och! is it angered ye are at gittin’ the worst o’ the argiment?” rejoined the corporal. “Niver mind, boy, you’ll do better by and by—”
As Flynn descended the ladder while he spoke, the sense of what he said was lost, but the truth of his opinion still continued to receive illustration from the rumbling of his voice, until it was swallowed up in the depths of the vessel.
Next day our hero received a shock from which he never finally recovered!
Be not alarmed, reader; it was not paralytic in its nature. It happened on this wise:
Miles had occasion to go to the fore part of the ship on some culinary business, without his coat, and with his sleeves rolled up above his elbows. Arrived there, he found that the captain was taking the ladies round the ship to point out some of its interesting details. As Miles came up, the younger lady turned round so as to present her full face to him. It was then that poor Miles received the shock above referred to. At that moment a little boy with wings and a bow stepped right in front of the young lady and shot straight at Miles Milton! The arrow entered his heart, and he—no, he did not fall; true men in such circumstances never fall! They stand transfixed, sometimes, or stupefied. Thus stood Miles and stared. Yes, though naturally modest and polite, he stood and stared!
And small blame to him, as Flynn might have said, for before him stood his ideal of a fairy, an angel, a sylph—or anything beautiful that best suits your fancy, reader! Sunny hair, sunny eyes—earnest and inquiring eyes—sunny smiles, and eyebrows to match. Yes, she had eyebrows distinctly darker than her hair, and well-defined over a pair of large brown eyes.
Poor Miles was stricken, as we have said; but—would you believe it?—there were men there looking at that girl at that time who, to use their own phraseology, would not have accepted a dozen of her for the girls they had left behind them! One young fellow in particular murmured to himself as follows—“Yes, very well in her way, no doubt, but she couldn’t hold a candle to my Emmy!” Perhaps the most cutting remark of all—made mentally, of course—was that of Sergeant Grady, who, for reasons best known to himself, had left a wife, describable as a stout well-favoured girl of forty, behind him.
“In twenty years or so,” he thought, “she may perhaps be near as good-lookin’ as my Susy, but she’ll never come quite up to her—never!”
“Come this way, Mrs Drew,” said the captain. “I will show you the men’s quarters. Out of the way, my man!”
Flushing to the roots of his hair, Miles stepped hastily aside.
As he did so there was heard an awful rend of a sort that tests the temper of women! It was followed by a musical scream. The girl’s dress had caught on a block tackle.
Miles leaped forward and unhooked it. He was rewarded with a smiling “Thank you,” which was followed by a blush of confusion as Miss Drew’s mother exclaimed, “Oh! Marion—how could you?” by way of making things easier for her, no doubt!
“You did that, young man, about as smart as I could a’ done it myself,” growled a voice behind him.
The speaker was Jack Molloy, and a general titter followed Miles as he hurried away.
As we have said, the weather became much worse when the troop-ship drew near to the Bay of Biscay; and it soon became evident that they were not to cross that famous portion of the Atlantic without experiencing some of the violent action for which it is famed. But by that time most of the soldiers, according to Molloy, had got their sea-legs on, and rather enjoyed the tossing than otherwise.
