“Mercy on us!” cried the lively Frenchman, “that’s a pleasant idea! We are going to that ‘undiscovered country,’ as your Shakspeare
says, ‘from whose bourn no traveller returns.’ Bah! let us change the subject, and hope for another ‘Peace of Amiens,’ and as short a one.”
And then the light-hearted fellow—for a light heart is often a kind one—seeing that open raillery was powerless, tried gentler means to cheer his companion up.
“Look, Tournier,” he whispered, after a pause, “what a charming view is on the left there. We must be on high ground. What a panorama for poor flat England! If we are good boys, we shall be out on parole, and be able to stroll about the country, and chat with the cherry-lipped maidens at the farms, and drink the farm-house milk, and, what is better, their famous English beer. And look, there is a lake, I declare. It seems a good-sized one. We will go fishing.”
So he ran on; and though the words pattered down in vain, like rain upon the pavement, yet the evident intention unconsciously pleased, as kind intentions often, if not always, do,
however awkward the way in which they are displayed.
And now, as the column passed a clump of trees at a bend in the road, the barracks and their surroundings suddenly came into view. All eyes were directed towards them; and if any of those unhappy sons of France had indulged in fancy on the way, and pictured their future place of confinement as some romantic fortress, with towering walls and gates of iron, they must have been greatly disappointed.
Nothing could be less romantic than the appearance of these Norman Cross Barracks. They looked from outside exactly like a vast congeries of large, high, carpenters’ shops, with roofs of glaring red tiles, and surrounded by wooden palisades, very lofty and of prodigious strength. In fact, the place was like an entrenched camp of a rather more permanent type. But if there was no architectural beauty, there was the perfection of security. It looked like business. The prisoners were in no wise to escape:—
Another regiment of militia, besides the men who formed the prisoners’ escort, was quartered in what we call the soldiers’ barracks, to distinguish them from those occupied by the prisoners. Of these, a strong body were drawn up right and left of the principal entrance, which was in the Peterborough Road, and as the column passed between them the soldiers were ordered to salute the officers. Major Kelly, the commandant of the troops, and Captain Mortimer, Admiralty agent to the Depôt, were there to receive them; and a large number of rustics from Yaxley and Stilton, and other villages, had collected as near as they could get to the entrance, and made their remarks in various sympathetic ways, for the country people, of all classes, were very friendly at all times with the prisoners.