'All right—let me get my men ashore, and we shall march in. The officer commanding must find us quarters. I long to stretch my legs on dry land again.'
Old Crank proved right; we were really wrecked upon those dangerous rocks which lie about the two little isles of Venetica, in the Bay of Salonica, about ninety miles from the mouth of the Dardanelles, and fifty from Constantinople, by the coast road.
A careful inspection of the Vestal proved that our carpenter's idea of getting her safely off, under any circumstances, was quite impracticable. She was firmly wedged and bulged between two masses of rock, and was so seriously injured that even were steam power procured sufficient to drag her into deep water, she would instantly sink. Thus all hope of preserving the shattered hull of our old donkey-frigate was abandoned; and as the sea was now calm, and she might be some weeks of going to pieces, we prepared to hoist up the battery guns, the ship's carronades, the stores, &c., and make other arrangements for disembarking by the boats with all due order and regularity.
Our men were paraded on deck, accoutred in heavy marching order, with their knapsacks, wooden canteens, greatcoats, and haversacks. The luggage, spare arm-chests, and squad-bags, were all brought up from below, and everything in the form of stores, clothing, and articles of value, were prepared for landing. Captain Crank, with Major Catanagh and an interpreter, were pulled ashore in the pinnace, with a well-armed crew, to make arrangements with the Turkish authorities for our reception and transmission to Constantinople.
With considerable interest—if not with some anxiety—we watched them and the pinnace disappear round a wooded promontory; and evening had almost deepened on the land and sea before they returned with intelligence that they had despatched tidings of our situation to the officer commanding at Scutari, and had made arrangements with Mir Alai Said, a Turkish colonel, who commanded in Heraclea, to afford us quarters in the barrack of that town.
We passed that night in the wreck. She was firm and motionless as the rocks on which she lay; but the occasional surging of the sea against her shattered sides, and the gurgling of the water, as it ebbed and flowed in the lower hold, together with the natural fear that some portion of her might give way in the night, kept us all anxious and wakeful; though Jack Belton was the life of our little party, and favoured us with his usual ditty—
'To be sad about trifles is trifling and folly,
Since the chief end of life is to live and be jolly.'
Though, like myself, he had only his pay, Jack was the most heedless of all heedless fellows. His father had been ruined, or nearly so, by a plea which had been before the Scottish Lords of Council and Session for the last fifty years; and which, in the hands of an able advocate and sharp-practising agent, like our friend the late-lamented Snaggs, bade fair to go on for another half century.
We idled away the chilly hours, muffled in our cloaks, regimental plaids, and paletots or bernous, à la Bedouin, over cigars, wine, and brandy-and-water, singing songs, telling stories, and practising the Highland feat of sheathing and unsheathing the claymore with both hands turned outwards, and playing other pranks, till again the bright sun of Asia shone upon the sea of Marmora, and after tiffin of biscuit, brandy, and junk, we paraded, to disembark upon the old historic shore of Roumelia.
I went off in the first boat with Mac Pherson (the captain of our Light Company), Jack Belton, Callum Dhu, and about thirty privates. We pulled away clear of the wreck into blue water, and then steered towards the shore, where three Turkish officers, on horseback, were waiting to receive us. After pulling for more than a mile through a sea which shone like burnished gold, and the transparent waves of which enabled us to perceive, at a vast depth below, the rank luxuriance of its dark green weeds, spreading their broad and tremulous leaves over a bed of snow-white sand, we reached the point indicated by Captain Crank as our landing-place. It was a rough and barren part of the coast, where the rocks were piled over each other in confusion, with a coarse bulbous plant, like a crocus, which spread its crooked leaves between the gaping interstices of the stones. No bushes or trees were there; but there were vultures, storks, and cranes, that hovered over the ruins of an old Roman wall, and flapped their wings upon the prostrate columns of a Corinthian temple, that lay half-merged among the waters of the encroaching sea.