This pompous and inflated notice, which excited much merriment at the mess-table, fell heavily and sorely on me. Every word of it was like a death-knell—yet I loitered calmly and placidly, as old Duncan Catanagh read it with a comical smile in his grey Highland eye, and with a quizzical emphasis on certain portions of it. No one who saw me sitting there, so quietly and so pale (I could perceive my face in an opposite mirror), would have dreamed there was such a hell raging in my heart.
But alas! this world is full of strange fancies and misplaced affections.
Though I was fully prepared or this marriage, the notice of it, so plainly and palpably in print, was a source of great agony to me; but amid the noise and bustle of the transport, the constant change of scene in the Mediterranean, and the reckless gaiety of those around me—those brave and light hearts, who amid the mud and gore of the rifle-pits were to find 'glory or the grave,' I had fortunately little time left for reflection. Knowing my secret, and sympathising with me, honest Jack Belton, left nothing unsaid or undone to draw me from myself; to wean me as it were from my own thoughts, and to fix my attention more on the events that lay before us than those which were past and irremediable for Jack's maxim, like his favourite song, was ever,—
'To be sad about trifles is trifling and folly,
For the true end of life is to live and be jolly.'
All day long, with our revolver pistols, we practised at bottles or old hats slung from the mainyard arm; and in this feat none but Callum Dhu could beat Jack Belton, who had been one of the most successful pupils in our new school of musketry at Hythe. In the evening we had the fine brass band of the Rifles, who gave us the best airs from Il Travatore and La Traviata; then we sang glees on the poop, or danced to the bagpipes on the main-deck, leaving nothing undone to beguile the tedium of a sea-voyage; for there is a tedium even in the beautiful Mediterranean; and daily we exchanged salutes and cheers with troop-ships and war-steamers, French, British, and Sardinian, returning with sick and wounded men from the land towards which we were hastening.
Many of these vessels were imperial transports, on their way to Marseilles; and they had generally in tow a sailing-vessel, also crowded by the miserable convalescents of Scutari and Sebastopol; and hourly, while they were within sight, we saw the ensign half hoisted, and the dead launched off to leeward—sans shroud or coffin or other covering than their blood-stained uniform, their Zouave cloak, or grey greatcoat, all tattered and torn by the mud of the rifle-pits and toil of the trenches.
After bidding adieu to the Cape de Gata, that long ridge of rocks which lie on the eastern limits of Almeria, and form the last point of Spain, we sighted Tavolaro, a promontory at the southern extremity of Sardinia. On that evening I had some trouble in saving my irritable follower Callum Dhu from being put in irons, for beating a rifleman who had been making fun of his Celtic peculiarities. On, on, we sped, with the smoke from our funnel pouring a long and vapory pennant astern.
We landed the Rifles at Malta, and took on board ten pieces of battering-guns—forty-eight pounders—for the Crimea, and ere long saw a gorgeous sunset deepening on the green Sicilian hills. In due time we were among the countless isles of the Greek archipelago—the Andælat Denhisa (or sea of islands, as it is named by the Turks), with the stern and rocky shore of the Morca frowning on our lee from the deep azure sky of the Levant.
The Ægean was covered with foam, and as we ran through the narrow strait that divides the charming isle of Scio from the vast continent of Asia, the sides of our steamer, the shrouds, our rough coats—even our hair and moustaches, were encrusted with salt from the flying spray, as we sped on past Milo, Hydra, and other isles of a thousand old classic memories; and after passing and saluting the castles of the Dardanelles, bore up for Gallipoli, at thirteen knots an hour, with full steam, and every sail set that would draw fore and aft.
Let not my readers fear that I am about to afflict them with a history either of the war or the siege of Sebastopol, or even with the now-hackneyed description of Constantinople. Fortunately for myself, I never saw either the Malakoff or the Redan, though my regiment did, to its cost; and though quartered in its vicinity, duty or destiny prevented me from seeing much of the far-famed city of Stamboul. We have had enough and to spare of the East and Eastern War of late; thus I mean to confine myself entirely to my own adventures, which will prove more than enough to fill my volume, without the introduction of any extraneous matter.