He went off after staying for an hour.
"That is all done," he said, as he walked down the town. "If the war goes on for seven or eight years I shall be of age when I come back, shall have my thousand a year, and shall have sown my wild oats;" and he laughed. "I have certainly made a mess of it so far. Unless the Spaniards have changed from what they were twenty years ago, their promises are not worth the paper they are written upon, and I expect that we shall often go hungry to bed. Well, I think I can stand it if anyone can."
The next morning he called on a second-hand clothing dealer, who examined his clothes. Arthur was obliged to allow that most of these had seen rough work. However, after great bargaining he got three pounds, a rough shooting-coat, and a good supply of shirts and underclothes for the lot, including the portmanteau. He kept his stock of books, and, packing them up in a box, directed them to be sent four days later, if he did not come for them, to his uncle's house. He had already bought the knapsack, and found that he could get all his remaining belongings into this. At five o'clock he went down to the quay and was taken out in a boat, with some twelve other recruits, to the hulk. As he reached the deck he regretted for a moment the step he had taken. A crowd of recruits is not at the best of times a cheering spectacle. Here was a miscellaneous crowd of men--many of them drunk, some lying about sleeping off the effects of the liquor, which had been the first purchase they had made out of their bounty money.
Others were standing looking vacantly towards the land. Some were walking up and down restlessly, regretting, now that it was too late, that they had enlisted. Others were sleeping quietly, well content that their struggle to maintain life had for the present ended. A few men, evidently, from their carriage, old campaigners, were gathered together comparing their experiences, and passing unfavourable comment upon the rest, while forward were a group of country yokels, to whom everything was strange. Here and there men with dejected faces--failures in trade, men for whom fortune had been too strong--paced up and down. A few young fellows had escaped the general contagion, and were laughing uproariously and playing boyish tricks upon each other. These thought more of their freedom from their taskmasters, and pictured for themselves their fury on finding that they had escaped from their grasp. A few, for the most part old soldiers, walked up and down with a military step and carriage. These were glad to be in the ranks again--glad to feel that they would soon be in uniform again. It was the sight of these men that reanimated Arthur. These men were soldiers; they knew war and rejoiced at it, and he pictured that in a short time this motley group--these drunken specimens, these careworn men--would be turned into soldiers, their past misfortunes forgotten, with carriage active and alert, ready to face their enemies.
"They are a rougher lot than I expected," he said to himself; "but many of them must, like myself, have come to this through their own folly. I looked for a rough time of it, but scarcely so bad as this."
One of the soldiers, struck by his appearance, stopped in his walk to speak to him. "Well, young fellow," he said, "you look to me one of the right sort. Got into a scrape, and run away from home, eh? Well, your sort often make the best soldiers. What shall you do with your kit? Well, whatever you do with it, don't let it out of your sight for the present. If I am not mistaken, there is more than one jail-bird here. You will be safe enough when we once get under way; but eight or ten have already jumped overboard and got away, and you can't count on keeping anything till we are clear out at sea. Look at those boats round the hulk. Half of them have got friends on board, and are waiting for the chance of getting them away in spite of the sentries. There are twenty or thirty of us, all old hands, who will probably be non-coms. when we are landed.
"At present we are told off on guard, and there are four of us always on sentry duty. I guess you won't be long before you get stripes too. You have only to keep yourself steady to get on. We have got half a dozen officers on board--at least they are called officers, though they know no more of soldiering than those drunken pigs in the scuppers. That is where our difficulty will be. We call them the politicals. They are most of them men Colonel Evans has appointed for services rendered to him at Westminster. Some of them look as if they would turn out well; but others are sick of it already, though they have only been two or three days on board, and are heartily wishing themselves back in their homes. However, one can't tell at first. They may turn out better than we expect. What is your name? Mine is James Topping."
"Mine is Arthur Hallett. I am much obliged to you for coming to speak to me, for I was beginning to get rather down in the mouth."
"You mean at the look of the recruits, I suppose? They are a fair average set, I think; only one doesn't generally get so many together. By the time we have been in Spain for a fortnight, they will have a different look altogether. I wish we had a few more country chaps among them. But there are not twenty here with full stomachs, except those who are drunk with beer. They have the making of good soldiers in them, but just at present they are almost all down in the dumps."
"How much longer are we going to stay here?"