As we passed through the sepoy lines, and approached the parade, the men were just in the act of falling in, and my ears were saluted by a strange and confused hubbub, loud shouts, and words of command in odd voices.
There was the “Hall dreez” (halt dress), “Lupt buccas wheel” (left backwards wheel), and “Qeeck marruch” (quick march), of the native officers (by whom one-half of the platoons, at least, were commanded), and the same, though in more intelligible English, in the sharper tones of the Europeans.
Then there was a rattling of muskets, and a ringing of ramrods; the loud voice of the commandant; the clattering of the adjutant’s steel scabbard, and the ringing of his horse’s hoofs, as he thundered down the ranks in a prodigious fuss—why, I could not tell—unless to create a sensation. Our adjutant, however, of the Zubberdust Bullumteers, was a prodigiously smart officer, and always galloped three times as fast as was necessary.
It was all exciting and strange to me, to find myself thus, for the first time, about to participate in real military proceedings; the actual game of soldiers, which I had hitherto only viewed, with becoming awe, à la distance, or mimicked, as a younker, with penny drum and falchion of tin. I was now about to realize one of my dreams of boyhood.
Time’s misty veil has long rested on those days, but still I can recal the stirring interest I used to experience when the recruiting-sergeant, on a fair-day, marched through our village. I think I now behold him, with his drawn sword and flying ribbons, proud as a turkey-cock, with all the tag-rag and bobtail at his heels.
What a glorious thing I thought it was to be a soldier—a real, downright, actual soldier—to wear a red coat, and fight the French! How I longed to be the fifer, or even the little duck-legged drummer, as he strode valiantly through the mud, with his long gaiters—very little older than myself, too, and yet privileged to wear a real sword! Even the gawky smock-frock clowns, won by the sergeant’s eloquence, touching the joys of a soldier’s life, and forming a part of the tail of this flaming meteor, came in for a share of my envy.
“Ah!” I used mentally to exclaim, “I’ll certainly be a soldier when I am a man!” Here, then, was the realization; a downright bonâ fide regiment, real guns, real colonel, and all, and I a constituent portion of it—in a word, an officer! Thus, my gratification, in a great measure, overcame my uneasiness.
“The battalion will pass in review—march!” roared the colonel; and away we went, as solemn as mutes at a funeral, I behind my sepoys,—sword drawn, stiff as the little man in the Lord Mayor’s carriage, right leg foremost. It was an agitating moment, and I in a nervous tremour, lest I should commit some blunder. We turned the angle of the square,—the band struck up,—and we approached the saluting flag.
“Rear rank, take open order!”
The native officers made a long leg; I did the same, and found myself in front of the company, exposed to general notice. To use a coarse, but expressive phrase, I was in a “devil of a stew.”