"Domine, in manus tuas animam suam commendamus!"
CHAPTER XXXVI
Sergeant Wilkes wants to know
Mr. Lumsden and Me—Me and Mr. Lumsden—A Lady in the Case—The Pleasure of your Company—O'Hare and the Ladies—The Grampus takes Cover—The Eve of Parting—The Age Limit—Poor Mr. Dugdale!—The Question
"Want to know about the fight at Corunna, do you? Hanged if you ain't always wanting to know something. Well, attention! dress by the right! and stand easy while I endeavour to reconstruct the situation."
The scene was the quay at Lisbon; the speaker was Sergeant Wilkes; the audience was a knot of green-coated recruits who, to judge by their docility, regarded the sergeant with admiration and awe. Since he had won the three stripes Wilkes had lost nothing of his loquacity, and had, indeed, cultivated a vocabulary of words long enough to match his new importance.
"Here you are, then; that there stands for the formidable French battery at the summit of the eminence"—he placed a jack-knife on the wall before him,—"this here stands for General Disney's brigade"—he put a plug of black tobacco at a distance from the knife,—"this here stands for the Reserve of that exemplary and notorious general Ted Paget"—he ranged two pebbles to the right of the tobacco,—"and this here," taking up one of the pebbles, "is Captain O'Hare's company. Look at him well, 'cos 'twas Captain O'Hare's company, and me in it, that won the battle on that most fatal and obstrepolous day. We was a-going up the hill towards that there battery, when blowed if we didn't get variegated with a lot of French dragoons in among the farmyards. Then up comes Mr. Lumsden, and says to me, 'Corp'ril Wilkes,' he says—I was only a corp'ril then, you understand—'Corp'ril Wilkes,' he says, 'we've got to shove down that there wall and drive the mounseers out. You an' me can do it if we puts our backs into it,' says he. 'Right you are, sir,' says I, 'we'll fustigate the mounseers and extipulate them to the last individual.' Them were the words I used. Well—"
"I say, sargint," said Corporal Bates, strolling across the road, "that's a smart little craft a-spanking up the river there. Looks like a despatch-boat, eh?"
"Don't interjeculate," said Wilkes irritably. "You always must put your spoke in. I was just telling the young 'uns how Mr. Lumsden and me won the fight at Corunna; who cares for a despatch-boat?—which it ain't, but only a common sloop."
"Go on, sargint, if you please," said one of the men.