One day, the old man said, "Gordon, I am tired of fooling with you.
You are incompetent; you will never make an officer."
The young cadet, a boy of sixteen, gave him look for look, without quailing—then by way of reply tore his epaulettes from his shoulders, turned on his heel, and strode out of the room.
Naturally, the guardhouse was next in order, where the culprit could cool his heels and meditate upon the sinfulness of superior officers. In this particular case he seems to have blamed it upon the missing leg, for he remarked, long afterwards: "Never employ any one minus a limb to be in authority over boys. They are apt to be irritable and unjust."
He remained in the Military Academy four years, having been put back six months by way of discipline, and left it without any regrets. At this time, indeed, he had a positive distaste for the army. It was all drill and monotony. One day was too much like another. What was the good of it all? Why did men have to learn to kill each other anyhow? Were we not put on earth for a higher mission?
Thus reasoned the young man, who, all his life, was subject to moods of introspection and intense religious thought—surely strange material out of which to build a soldier! He sensed this fact himself and was not at all anxious to enter the army; and frequently in later life expressed a lively dissatisfaction for the service. He was an exemplification of the poet's line:
"I feel two natures struggling within me."
When he entered the service, as a second lieutenant of the Engineers, at the age of nineteen, there was little to attract one in the army life. The long peace of Europe, which had followed the defeat of Napoleon, seemed likely to last forever. Except for a relatively small outbreak in France, in 1848, all Europe was quiet. Consequently, the army held little attraction to an active young man. It was all drill and the petty details of garrison life. But underneath the placid surface, the political pot of Europe was really boiling furiously—only waiting a chance to bubble over. That chance soon came.
Gordon's first assignment was to Pembroke, where plans were required for the forts at Milford Haven. Here with other engineers he worked for a few months, when he was ordered to the Island of Corfu. This was not altogether to his liking. He had spent a part of his boyhood there in the Ionian Islands, but felt that they were "off the map" so far as real activity was concerned.
Then the bubbling pot at last boiled over. Russia, impatient of bounds, had begun her march southward, past the Black Sea, and toward the coveted lands of Turkey. The "balance of power," that precarious something that has always kept Europe on edge—and particularly in the Balkans—was upset. Whether England wanted to or not, she must get into the breach.
Thus began the Crimean War, a desperate struggle that was to bear some glorious pages in England's history, and some dark ones as well. It was to see the "Charge of the Light Brigade"—splendid in itself, but brought about because "some one had blundered." It was to produce a Florence Nightingale—but also the hideous sufferings which she helped to assuage.