He stepped to the cupboard, opened it, and took down the time-rotten regimentals. Slowly, very slowly, he divested himself of his clothes, and, piece by piece, indued himself in the old finery.
At the breeches he paused; then drew them on hastily over his wooden leg, and left them unbuttoned at the knees while he thrust his arms into coat and waistcoat. Prison fare had reduced his waist, and the garments hung limply about him. But the breeches were worst. Around his wooden leg the buttons would not meet at all. And what to do with the gaiter?
Methodically he unstrapped the leg and regarded it. Heavens! how for these three years past he had hated it! He looked up. From the far side of the room the bust watched him, still with its fatuous smile.
He rose in a sudden access of passion, gripping the leg, taking aim. … A slight noise in the passage arrested him, and, leaning against the door-jamb, he peered out. It was the woman with the evening's milk, and she had set down the jug in the passage.
He closed the door, swayed a moment, and with a spring off his sound leg, leapt on the still grinning bust and smote at it, crashing it into pieces.
Mrs. Tiddy, the milkwoman, ran home declaring that, in the act of delivering the usual two pennyworth at the hospital, she had seen the ghost of the Major himself, in full regimentals, in the act of assaulting his own statue; which, sure enough, was found next morning scattered all over the floor.
The crash of it recalled the Major to his senses. He stared down on the fragments at his feet. He had burnt his boats now.
As methodically as he had indued them he divested himself of his regimentals, and so, having slipped into his old clothes again and strapped on his leg, stumped resolutely forth into the street.
Cai Tamblyn, like every other Trojan, kept a boat of his own; and on the eve of departing he had placed her at the Major's disposal. She lay moored by a frape off a semi-public quay door, approached from the Fore Street by a narrow alley known as Cherry's (or Charity's) Court.
The Major stumped down to the waterside in the fast gathering dusk and hauled in the boat. Luckily the tide was high, and reached within four feet of the sill of the doorway; luckily, I say, because few contrivances in this world are less compatible than a ladder and a wooden leg. The tide being high, however, he managed to scramble down and on board without much difficulty; unmoored, shipped a paddle in the sculling-notch over the boat's stern, and very quietly worked her up and alongshore, in the shadow of the waterside houses.