"Climb down, Harry," whispered Mr. Rogers. "Shake hands and good luck to you!"
I was given a hand over the bows by a man whose face I could not see. The boat was full of men, and one dark figure handed me to another till I reached the stern-sheets.
"Give way, lads!" called a voice beside me, as the bow-man pushed us off. We were travelling fast when at a bend of the creek a line of lights shot into view—innumerable small sparks clustered low on the water ahead and shining steadily across it. I knew them at once. They were the lights of Plymouth Dock.
"Where are you taking me?" I cried.
"That's no question for a soldier," said a voice which I recognised as the sergeant's. And one or two of the crew laughed.
CHAPTER XXI.
I GO CAMPAIGNING WITH LORD WELLINGTON.
The vessel to which they rowed me was the Bute transport, bound for Portugal with one hundred and fifty officers and men of the 52nd Regiment, one hundred and twenty of the third battalion 95th Rifles, and a young cornet and three farriers of the 7th Light Dragoons in charge of fifty remounts for that regiment.
We weighed anchor at daybreak (the date, I may mention, was July 28th), and cleared the Sound. At ten o'clock or thereabouts the wind fell, and for two days and nights we drifted aimlessly about the Channel at the will of the tides, while the sergeant—a veteran named Henderson, who had started twenty-five years before by blowing a bugle in the 52nd, and therefore served me as index and example of what by patience I might attain to—filled the most of my time between sleep and meals with lessons upon that instrument. From a hencoop abaft the mainmast (the Bute was a brig, by the way) I blew back inarticulate farewells to the shores receding from us imperceptibly, if at all; and so illustrated a profound remark of the war's great historian, that the English are a bellicose rather than a martial race, and by consequence sometimes find themselves committed to military enterprises without having counted the cost or made complete preparation.