It was market-day, and a crowd soon collected. Two policemen came up, and in spite of my asseverations that I had left my furlough in the pocket of my regimentals at my sister’s house, I was marched off a prisoner to the lock-up; but I was allowed to send a note to my sister, and she soon made her appearance in a gig, with all my regimentals and furlough. This satisfied the superintendent, and he set me at liberty.
Every soldier is, on all occasions (except when a reduction of the army takes place, which is very seldom), invested with power to enlist recruits. In time of peace, however, recruiting is not carried on in the cavalry to the same extent as in the infantry; the latter being so much more numerous than the former, and available for service in every part of the British possessions, where fever and change of climate often leave a larger vacancy than death in battle from the weapons of a living enemy. Many recruits enlist in foot regiments, because there are generally recruiting parties in every market-town, which is more convenient for a poor, destitute lad, who is too often compelled to enlist because he has neither money nor food. The presence of a dragoon or a hussar in full regimentals is more of a rarity everywhere than a foot soldier. I was anything but pleased with the “starchy” old sergeant who had interfered with my freedom, and, by way of retaliation, I was determined to enlist some likely-looking young fellows, who stood idling around the door of the “Cross Keys,” in the market-place—the recruiting rendezvous,—and who, it afterwards appeared, had made up their minds to enlist in the 33rd Regiment.
Going to the inn where my sister had put up the horse and gig, I rigged myself out in a manner that would have passed muster for a parade before royalty. We were not allowed to take the two jackets (pelisse and dress jacket as well) with us on furlough; but, being the winter season, I wore only the scarlet pelisse, with its many rows of lace and more than a hundred buttons in front, fantastically trimmed with yellow braid behind, with fur collars, cuffs, and waistband, when I left barracks. But I had managed to get hold of a nice dress jacket, which, though cast into store, was in very good condition, from the quartermaster-sergeant. This I put on, and slinging the gorgeously trimmed scarlet pelisse loose over my left shoulder, as in full dress, I sallied out with my high-crowned, bell-topped shako, and black horse-hair plume, into the streets, and strutted proudly up to the “Cross Keys.” There I was soon surrounded by a crowd of growing lads likely to make hussars. The crusty old sergeant and his minions looked daggers at me; for, after all, it is the dress of a soldier that allures many of the recruits from their homes into the service, and it was easy to be seen that they fancied my dashing uniform much more than the ruddle-coloured, beer-stained coatees and shovel-shaped shakos of the foot soldiers.
I called for “a gallon of ale,” and asked each of the people in the room, including the infantry soldiers, to drink.
Now I had fully made up my mind long before this occurrence not to enlist a recruit, if I could possibly avoid it; and, although I had entered the public-house in defiance of this resolution solely to retaliate upon the recruiting-sergeant for his giving me into custody, I reflected upon the misery I might entail upon the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends of these poor deluded lads, several of whom looked like the younger sons of farmers; and although I was constantly importuned to enlist them, I refused, and soon after left them a prey to the infantry-sergeant, who, I have no doubt, got them into the meshes of his net before the day was over.
It is often a source of comfort to me to reflect that I never enlisted a recruit in my life; and I thank goodness that I was never sent on the recruiting service, for, although I pretend to be not a whit better than the majority of my comrades in point of morality, I had a particular aversion to inveigle a youth from his home and friends, perhaps for ever, by means of the gross deception and paltry untruths so often practised by recruiting parties both in cavalry and infantry regiments.
While on this furlough I of course visited my home; but although my mother, sisters, and brothers received me joyfully, and treated me with great kindness, my father positively refused to see or speak to me, and even said that he would “horsewhip me whenever he could get a sight of me;” so, after remaining cooped up in a bedroom for a couple of days, I returned to my kind sister at Mugginton, and shortly after left for my regiment, where, in the spirit-stirring incidents constantly occurring, I soon got over the unpleasant feeling always engendered in the mind of a soldier by the visit to, and leave-taking of, his relatives and friends in his native village. That little word “good-bye” leaves a very unpleasant sensation after shaking hands and kissing a kind and indulgent mother, whose heart is well-nigh broken through her son leaving her, perhaps for ever, to follow the fortunes of war. My mother said she never went to bed but she prayed for me, and she never awoke in the night but her “soldier-son” was uppermost in her mind. She is dead now, and I often think that my leaving home to become a soldier might have hastened her end, for she died at the age of sixty-five. But after all comes the balm to my qualms of conscience for any breach of duty I may have been guilty of to my parents,—I have still done my duty to my country.
Besides these furloughs granted to well-conducted soldiers, they are frequently indulged with a few hours or days’ “passes” to spend with any friends they may have in the vicinity of the barracks. A soldier may be invited to an evening party, or he may wish to spend a few extra hours with a sweet heart, go to church or chapel with her, or, more frequently, take her to a theatre, the admittance to which she generally pays out of her own pocket-money. These “passes” may be obtained by a good soldier about once a week, so that in place of having to be in barracks by nine o’clock, he may, when furnished with a “pass,” signed by the captain of his troop, prolong his stay until any hour that may be convenient to him to return; but the time is generally limited to twelve, one, two, or three o’clock, so as to allow him to have a little sleep before the réveillé sounds, at five o’clock in summer and six in winter. Some of these “late” soldiers are fond of playing practical jokes upon their comrades, who are generally sound asleep when they return from these passes, and enter the barrack-rooms in the dark, for lights are not allowed to be struck on any pretence whatever.
We had a very good-tempered, rollicking young Irishman in our room named Larry Byrne, who often went on pass to meet his sweetheart Nannie McCarthy, who was cook at a gentleman’s house about two miles from barracks. Larry generally came to barracks in high spirits; and he would either disturb every man in the room and keep them awake by a recital of his “divarshuns” with Nannie and the rest of his friends, or quietly play off some practical joke invented before he entered the room.
He had returned from his “coorting” one morning about two o’clock—it was a beautiful bright moonlight morning, and I happened to be awake and could see Larry’s every movement—when he softly entered the room. He was evidently bent on having a lark. Pulling out of his pocket a ball of twine, and after undressing himself, he walked stealthily up to the foot of old Sam Whelan’s bed (a man with none the best of tempers, even when he ought to have been pleased); turning up the clothes, so as to bare old Sam’s feet, he tied one end of the twine round the joint of his big toe, and then, replacing the bed-clothes, got into his own bed at the farther end of the room with one end of the string in his hand. There were eight of us in the room, and it afterwards appeared that, although not a word had been spoken, there were more watching the movements of Larry than myself. All was still for a few moments. I could distinctly see, in the moonlight that bore full upon Larry’s bed near the window, his white teeth grinning underneath his jet-black moustache as he bobbed up his curly head and jerked the string; but there was no response. A suppressed titter from some one reached Larry’s ears. “Whist! whist! ye omedhaun!” said he, in a low whisper; and then, with twofold vigour, he jerked at the line again. “Whah!” sang out old Sam, in a strange, unearthly yell, as he sat bolt upright in bed and peered anxiously around the room. All was, however, as still as the grave; and, thinking it must have been a dream, he lay down again. By his snoring, Larry could tell he was asleep, and that he had not detected the string round his toe. Seizing the end of the string again, which he had dropped at his bedside to slacken the tension on the toe, Larry gave it another regular “twinger.”