So saying, we cantered towards the village, where we separated,—Power to join some Fourteenth men stationed there on duty, and I to the general’s quarters to receive my orders.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE CANTONMENT.
Soon after this the army broke up from Caja, and went into cantonments along the Tagus, the headquarters being at Portalegre. We were here joined by four regiments of infantry lately arrived from England, and the 12th Light Dragoons. I shall not readily forget the first impression created among our reinforcements by the habits of our life at this period.
Brimful of expectation, they had landed at Lisbon, their minds filled with all the glorious expectancy of a brilliant campaign; sieges, storming, and battle-fields floated before their excited imagination. Scarcely, however, had they reached the camp, when these illusions were dissipated. Breakfasts, dinners, private theatricals, pigeon matches, formed our daily occupation. Lord Wellington’s hounds threw off regularly twice a week; and here might be seen every imaginable species of equipment, from the artillery officer mounted on his heavy troop horse, to the infantry subaltern on a Spanish jennet. Never was anything more ludicrous than our turn-out. Every quadruped in the army was put into requisition. And even those who rolled not from their saddles from sheer necessity, were most likely to do so from laughing at their neighbors. The pace may not have equalled Melton, nor the fences have been as stubborn as in Leicestershire, but I’ll be sworn there was more laughter, more fun, and more merriment, in one day with us, than in a whole season with the best organized pack in England. With a lively trust that the country was open and the leaps easy, every man took the field. Indeed, the only anxiety evinced at all, was to appear at the meet in something like jockey fashion, and I must confess that this feeling was particularly conspicuous among the infantry. Happy the man whose kit boasted a pair of cords or buck skins; thrice happy he who sported a pair of tops. I myself was in that enviable position, and well remember with what pride of heart I cantered up to cover in all the superior éclat of my costume, though, if truth were to be spoken, I doubt if I should have passed muster among my friends of the “Blazers.” A round cavalry jacket and a foraging cap with a hanging tassel were the strange accompaniments of my more befitting nether garments. Whatever our costumes, the scene was a most animated one. Here the shell-jacket of a heavy dragoon was seen storming the fence of a vineyard; there the dark green of a rifleman was going the pace over the plain. The unsportsmanlike figure of a staff officer might be observed emerging from a drain, while some neck-or-nothing Irishman, with light infantry wings, was flying at every fence before him, and overturning all in his way. The rules and regulations of the service prevailed not here; the starred and gartered general, the plumed and aiguilletted colonel obtained but little deference and less mercy from his more humble subaltern. In fact, I am half disposed to think that many an old grudge of rigid discipline or severe duty met with its retribution here. More than once have I heard the muttered sentences around me which boded like this,—
“Go the pace, Harry, never flinch it! There’s old Colquhoun—take him in the haunches; roll him over!”
“See here, boys—watch how I’ll scatter the staff—Beg your pardon, General, hope I haven’t hurt you. Turn about—fair play—I have taught you to take up a position now.”