| Portrait of Captain Charles Boothby. From a miniature | |
| [Frontispiece] | |
| Page | |
| The Start. From an old print | [6] |
| Gibraltar. A sketch from Drinkwater’s “Gibraltar” (1785) | [18] |
| Penelope Boothby. From portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds | [118] |
| Corunna. From an illustration in “Campaign of Lt.-Gen. Sir John Moore, K.B.” (1809) | [216] |
| Major Sir William Boothby, Bart. After portrait by Dance | [229] |
| Rafela, wife of Sir William Boothby, Bart. From portrait by Hoppner | [231] |
| Pen-and-Ink Sketches | |
| From the Author’s Journal | |
| Facsimile signature of Captain Boothby | [viii] |
| Tail of Sea Monster | [13] |
| Representation of the Legend of St. Francisco di Paolo | [43] |
| Strange Bird on Fore Topsail Yard | [135] |
| Head and Claw of Strange Bird | [136] |
| The Deaf Corregidor | [167] |
| Bridge of Alcantara | [181] |
| Bridge of Benavente (?), destroyed 29th December 1808 | [200] |
| Sketch Plan of Battle of Corunna | [215] |
| Diagram illustrating Ineffectual Firing of French Battery | [225] |
| Tomb of Sir John Moore | [226] |
| Facsimile signature of Sir John Moore | [285] |
UNDER ENGLAND’S FLAG
That branch of the military profession to which I was destined (the Royal Engineers) requires an early dedication to its peculiar studies. We are put under military discipline while we are yet boys, and are in many respects good soldiers before we come to be men. Hence a consequence is derived to this service which I think is favourably felt by its members in after life; and this is, that their companions in arms and in the labours and dangers of war are, for the most part, those with whom they have shared the yoke of education, and the more than redeeming pleasures of youthful fellowship. Much doubt, therefore, in the selection of friends, and much of the disappointment and injury which so often accrue from a bad choice, are hereby spared, since at a period when Nature seldom permits any sustained disguise, each young mind has furnished itself with friends, chosen, as it were, in the castle of truth. Here it has obtained the knowledge of which to seek and which to shun. Thus, when at the age of seventeen or eighteen I assumed the sword of a British officer, the branch of service into which I entered contained numbers of my chosen friends, whose hearts I knew to the bottom, and who knew mine. A character on both sides was already established which we would have died rather than sully, and certainly the advantages of this emulous friendship did not terminate with the individual, but extended to the service in which they were employed. Of all my early friends, I never knew one who was not eager and importunate to be placed in the front of danger and of enterprise, or who thought even for a moment of sparing any extent of labour, peril, loss of liberty, or life itself in the service of his country; and most of these, in the flower of youth and dawn of military glory, have fallen in battle.
After about a year spent on a home station, in compliance with my earnest request, I was nominated, early in 1805, to proceed with a foreign expedition, going, no one knew whither, under the command of Sir James Craig.
This order plunged me immediately into a new state of existence, wherein every sort of agitation, activity, and conflicting emotion succeeded to the monotony of routine duty. I exulted that I was so early to taste of foreign service, and the note of preparation and outfit was well suited to the stirring propensity of youth; but in the midst of all my satisfaction and ardent hope there did lurk a fear and a dread at the bottom of my heart of something I had first to encounter.
My father and mother had accustomed the hearts of their children to such unbounded tenderness and love as is sure to draw a proportionate return; and in spite of the commonness of such separation, I knew better than any one else could that the thoughts of my departure would make that home unhappy whose happiness and peace I prized above all other things.
I knew that my incomparable father, whatever he might feel, had no wish to make a home soldier of his son. I knew he would both mourn and approve my departure. But it was a thing which lay in my way and hung at my heart, and my first object on arriving in London was to seek my new commanding officer, and gain his consent to my making a hurried journey to take leave of my friends.
The name of my new chief I had long known, for his fine person and dark flashing eye had been pointed out to me when a boy as belonging to the finest officer in the service, and his manner and conversation were all that a raw boy could hope to find in a young man, of kindness, genius, and experience. My heart beat with the thoughts of serving under such a master, of being trained to actual service under his eye, and (youthful vanity perhaps added) of being made by him as fine and clever a fellow as himself.
He entered at once into the feelings which made me so desirous to make a journey home, and the moment he could ascertain that the time would serve, “Be off then, Boothby,” he said, “but make all the haste you can back; and if I have left London, lose not a moment in getting to Portsmouth.”
Away I went. The parting scene was more trying even than I anticipated, but “Time and the hour run through the roughest day,” and I was soon on my way back to London. I had seen my father’s venerable form and manly features shaken with childish weeping as he held me to his breast, and though long the pang of that sight dwelt in my mind—for I have ever since cherished that sacred picture as one of the holiest my memory can retain—I never shall forget the relief and lightness I felt from having got through this sad passage of tears and lamentations. On arriving in London I feared that my Chief had left it, so I hastened to that second mother who had spent the short interval of my absence in collecting all the various articles desirable for an officer in the Mediterranean, to which we were supposed to be destined.