Donald's final departure from this life shewed him a worthy specimen of his country, and his methodical arrangements, while they prove what I have stated, may, at the same time, serve as as a model for Joe Hume himself, when he comes to cast up his last earthly accounts.
Donald had but an old mare and a portmanteau, with its contents, worth about £15, to leave behind him. He took a double inventory of the latter, sending one to the regiment by post, and giving the other in charge of his servant—and paying the said worthy his wages up to the probable day of his death; he gave him a conditional order on the paymaster for whatever more might be his due should he survive beyond his time—and, if ever man did, he certainly quitted this world with a clear conscience.
Poor Donald! peace be to thy manes, for thou wert one whom memory loves to dwell on!
It is curious to remark the fatality which attends individual officers in warfare. In our regiment there were many fine young men who joined us, and fell in their first encounter with the enemy; but, amongst the old standing dishes, there were some who never, by any chance got hit, while others, again, never went into action without.
At the close of the war, when we returned to England, if our battalion did not shew symptoms of its being a well-shot corps, it is very odd: nor was it to be wondered at if the camp-colours were not covered with that precision, nor the salute given with the grace usually expected from a reviewed body, when I furnish the following account of the officers commanding companies on the day of inspection, viz.
Beckwith with a cork-leg—Pemberton and Manners with a shot each in the knee, making them as stiff as the other's tree one—Loftus Gray with a gash in the lip, and minus a portion of one heel, which made him march to the tune of dot and go one—Smith with a shot in the ankle—Eeles minus a thumb—Johnston, in addition to other shot holes, a stiff elbow, which deprived him of the power of disturbing his friends as a scratcher of Scotch reels upon the violin—Percival with a shot through his lungs. Hope with a grape-shot lacerated leg—and George Simmons with his riddled body held together by a pair of stays, for his was no holyday waist, which naturally required such an appendage lest the burst of a sigh should snap it asunder; but one that appertained to a figure framed in nature's fittest mould to "brave the battle and the breeze!"
I know not to what particular circumstances British tailors were in the first instance indebted, for ranking them so low in the scale of humanity, but, as far as my knowledge extends, there never was a more traduced race. Those of our regiment I know were among the best soldiers in it, and more frequently hit than any, very much to our mortification; for the very limited allowance of an officer's campaigning baggage left him almost constantly at their mercy for the decoration of his outward man; but as the musket-balls shewed no mercy to them, we could not of course expect them to extend it to us.
Our master-man having at this time got his third shot, we deemed it high time to place him on the shelf, by confining his operations in the field, to the baggage guard. So long as we could preserve him in a condition to wield the scissors, we luckily discovered that there were minor thimble-plyers ready to rally round him, for we should otherwise have been driven sometimes to the extraordinary necessity of invading the nether garments of the ladies!
The last night at Badajos had been to the belligerents such as few had ever seen—the next, to its devoted inhabitants, was such as none would ever wish to see again, for there was no sanctuary within its walls.