“Out with it, Captain!” &c. &c., were some of the exclamations with which the Hibernian’s last speech was hailed by various members of the party, upon whom the whitebait (?) was beginning to tell.
Thus urged, that worthy, clearing his throat by a sip at the Claret, which half emptied the tumbler, began:—
“Well, boys” (here he caught a look from Horace D’Almayne, which caused him, nothing abashed, to add parenthetically), “if in the congeniality of good fellowship you will permit me to call ye so, the story’s nothing so very wonderful, after all—it was just a bit of a spree, do ye see, nothing more; but such as it is ye’re welcome to it”—(polite aside from Jack Beaupeep for Lord Alfred’s benefit—“You’re too liberal, really!”) “I was with Sir De Lacy Evans in Spain, captain in a regiment of lancers; a rare set of rattling dogs they were, too—up to everything, from robbing a henroost to burning towns and sacking monasteries”—(Beaupeep aside—“A decidedly sac-religious act that last!”)
“On one occasion, we were stationed at a place distant about four miles from a village occupied by a strong body of Carlists; well, sir, for several nights running, our sentinels on the side towards the village were assassinated—stabbed through the heart they were! We had ’em doubled, two men to each post; bedad, the only improvement that effected was, we got two men murdered instead of one; and yet the scamp that did it always contrived to get away clear and clean—we never so much as clapped eyes on him! Well, I bothered and puzzled the matter over, and thought of this thing and that thing, and at last I got hold of a notion I fancied might work well; so I cut off to our Colonel, and ‘Colonel,’ says I, ‘with your kind permission, I think I can stop these assassinations.’ ‘What is it, O’Brien?’ says he, ‘you’re a clever, rising young officer, and a man that bids fair to be an ornament to his profession;’ but I won’t trouble ye with the illegant eulogy he was so polite as to pronounce upon me that day”—(“Hear, hear!” from Beaupeep and the guardsmen). “So I jist obtained his permission to select two well-mounted troopers out of my own company, and leave to do what I pleased with them and myself during the night, and that was all I wanted. I happened at that time to have a particularly fast mare—a sweet thing she was, bay, with black points, nearly thorough-bred, a head like an antelope, and as to pace, ’gad there wasn’t a horse in the regiment could come near her. Before nightfall I picked out my two troopers—sharp, plucky young fellows, that I knew I could depend upon if it came to hard fighting, each of them well mounted; and I took care to see that their horses and the mare were properly fed and watered, so as to be fit for a stiff burst; then I amused myself with sharpening the point of my lance till it was as keen as a razor. About a stone’s throw from the post where the sentry they used to assassinate was stationed”—(“Of course, the same man every night till further notice,” murmured Jack Beaupeep, continuing his running commentary)—“there was a thicket of olive bushes and other shrubs; behind this, as soon as it grew dusk, I posted my men with the horses, while I availed myself of a rise in the ground to advance nearer, and lie down, hidden from sight by a stunted bush or two. Well, I waited and waited, and watched and watched, so that a mouse could not have stirred without my noticing it; but nothing did I see, except the shadowy figure of the sentinel pacing up and down in the moonlight, as though he were the discontented ghost of one of his murdered comrades”—(“Very pretty—quite poetical, I declare!” from Beaupeep).
“Well, at last, just about a quarter of an hour before daybreak, which is the darkest period of the night in those latitudes, whether I had dozed off for a minute I don’t know, but I was startled by a noise differing from the monotonous tread of the sentinel, and which sounded to my ear like the cracking of a dry twig; in another moment I perceived a dark, round object moving upon the ground, which I soon made out to be the head of a man drawing himself along, snake-fashion, upon his stomach—while so close had he got to the unconscious soldier that I perceived, if I would save the poor lad’s life, not an instant was to be lost. I therefore gave the signal to my troopers to come up, and drawing my sword, rushed forward to secure the assassin. As I did so, a light active figure sprang up from the ground, and brandishing a long keen dagger, made a furious stab at the sentry; but, fortunately, my approach confused the scoundrel, so that he missed his stroke, and, instead of killing the man, merely inflicted a slight flesh wound of no consequence. Notwithstanding his surprise,—for, as the soldier afterwards declared to me, his antagonist seemed to have risen out of the earth,—the sentry attempted to seize him; but he contrived to slip out of his hands like an eel, and before I could reach the spot, had disappeared in the darkness. In another moment the dull sound of a horse’s feet galloping over the turf proved to me that he was away; but my own horse being brought up, I sprang into the saddle, snatched my lance from the trooper who held it, and ordering the men to follow me, started in pursuit. ’Pon me conscience, gentlemen, I niver reflect on me feelings at that critical moment but it makes me—Ah, well! I’ll trouble your Lordship for the Claret.”
CHAPTER XLIV.—LORD ALFRED COURTLAND SOWS A FEW WILD OATS.
Captain O’Brien, having finished his glass of Claret, and turned up the points of his carroty moustaches, thus resumed his story:—
“At first it was as much as I was able to do to track the fellow by the sound of his horse’s hoofs upon the soft turf, but I trusted a good deal to the mare’s instinct to follow the horse before her; fortunately we had not very far to go before we got upon the hard village road, and then there was nothing to do but ride him down, for the grey light that precedes the dawn enabled me to see his figure distinctly. But that same riding him down was easier to talk about than to do, for the scoundrel had obtained a long start of us, and though I was well mounted, I soon perceived that he was equally so. Away we rattled at a slashing pace, and for about a mile the two troopers managed to keep up pretty tolerably; but by the time we had ridden rather more than twice that distance, I found my friend was gradually drawing ahead, and that if I waited for my men, I should soon have seen my last of him; so giving the mare her head, and a trifling reminder with the spur besides, I left them, and they gradually tailed off in the distance, until a turn of the road hid them altogether. In my time, I’ve ridden steeple-chases, hurdle-races, and every species of race that the divil ever invented, but a faster thing than that morning’s ride I never saw nor heard of. The horses were well matched as to speed, mine was rather the freshest, but then the Carlist was the lighter weight; the thing could not have been fairer. However, after a couple of miles or so more, I was glad to perceive that I was gradually creeping up to him; and I suppose he began to suspect it too, for, as the light increased, I saw him every now and then look round suspiciously, and urge his horse still faster at each successive glance. About a mile from the village, I had gained upon him so decidedly that it was evident I must overtake him before he could reach its friendly shelter. Apparently he was of the same opinion, for, before I was aware of his intention, he unslung a carbine he carried, pulled up suddenly, and turning in his saddle, levelled it, and took a deliberate aim at me. Everybody that knows Terence O’Brien, knows he’s no coward, but ’pon my conscience, at that moment, I wouldn’t have been sorry to have turned my horse’s head, and cried quits with him; however, a bullet is a style of article that doesn’t allow a man much time for deliberation, so seeing it was a case of hit or miss, I only rammed in the spurs harder, bent down my head, couched my lance, and galloped on. Bang went the carbine; and almost before the report reached me, a bullet whistled through the air; I heard a sort of ‘thud,’ as when an arrow strikes a straw target, and felt my throat-strap suddenly tightened,—the messenger of death had passed through my cap, severing a lock of hair and just raising the skin, without doing me the slightest injury; but it was a close shave in every sense of the word. Well, as soon as the scoundrel perceived that his shot had failed, he felt that his only chance was to exert every nerve to reach the village before I overtook him; so, flinging away his discharged carbine, he dashed on, urging his failing steed with voice and spurs, and even, as I gained upon him, with the point of his dagger. Another minute brought us in sight of the village, where a sleepy sentinel was pacing up and down the road in front of a sort of toll-house. Astonished at the sight of two men riding like lunatics, he first attempted to close the bar fixed there to defend the entrance to the village, then, recognising my companion, he paused, and before he had come to any decision, we had dashed past him—my friend obligingly desiring him to ‘shoot the dog of a Christino,’ as we flew by; an order which, fortunately for me, he was too much confused to execute, discharging his firelock harmlessly into the air. As we passed the toll-house, I was not above two horse-lengths from my antagonist, and gaining upon him at every stride. Any feelings of compunction I might have had at the thought of slaying a fellow-creature, had been effectually put to flight by the shot he had so deliberately fired at me; thus when I found myself at length coming up with him, I grasped my lance more firmly, set my teeth, drove the spurs into the mare, and dashed at him. In another moment I had overtaken him, the point of my lance entered his back between the shoulder-blades, and by the mere impetus of my onward career I drove it through him. As the weapon transfixed him, the poor wretch uttered a yell of agony, and fell forward on his horse’s neck a corpse. If you’ll believe me, gentlemen, it wasn’t till I’d thus squared accounts with the rascal for our sentries that he’d murdered in cold blood, that the idea ever struck me how I was to get back again, with the Carlist village between me and our camp. The first thing I tried, was to pull my lance out of the dead assassin, as he lay on his face in the middle of the road; but the more I pulled, the more it wouldn’t come—I’d driven it in with such force; and, at last, with a wrench I gave it, I snapped the staff in two. Seeing there was no time to lose, I was about to turn my mare’s head in a homeward direction, when it occurred to me that they’d never believe in the regiment that I’d killed the fellow;”—(“Not an improbable thing,” soliloquised Beaupeep)—“so I jumped down, secured the scoundrel’s sash and dagger, remounted, and rode off. As I expected, the sentinel’s shot had roused the village, and just as I got back, a company of soldiers were turning out, half-awake and in great confusion, and the lieutenant contrived to draw a file across the road to stop me. There was nothing for it but impudence; so, drawing my sabre, I waved it in the air, then looking round, as if I’d got a regiment at my back, I sang out, ‘Come on, boys!—trot, gallop, charge!’ and dashed at ’em, cut down the lieutenant, and what between their fright and their confusion, broke their line, rode slap through ’em, escaped by good luck half-a-dozen bullets that were sent after me, and should have got clear away but for a patrol of dragoons that came up on hearing the firing, and who, learning how the matter stood, gave chase. As their horses were fresh, while the race she’d won had pumped every puff of wind out of my mare, they soon overtook me; and after two or three minutes’ hard fighting, a cut in the sword-arm disabled me, and I was forced to give in. Well, they carried me back to the village, settled that I was a spy, besides having killed Don Pedrillo Velasquez de Hatadoro, or some such jargon; for which double crime I was to be hung at noon. Owing to the fortunate arrival of my lancers and a regiment of rifles, however, that event was indefinitely postponed, but I’ll mercifully spare you the recital of the scrimmage, which ended in our taking the village; and, as talking is dry work, I’ll just thank you for the Claret, D’Almayne, me boy!”