Years have passed since then, and many more may pass, but I never shall forget the hours of delight that I spent with the unfortunate Eulalie.
I hurried from the villa, and almost ran towards the town; but as the distance increased between us, my steps became slower, and, from every little eminence, I gazed regretfully back to the lofty cabbage-palms and the orange-groves of Boscobelle, all darkening now, and deepening in the rapid twilight of a tropical evening in March. The white walls of the villa had disappeared amid the sombre foliage; but I knew that she was there, where I might never be again.
At last I reached the fallen palm by the way-side, where, yesterday, the priest, or the disguised Rouvigny, had met me, and there again I turned to take a farewell glance.
Boscobelle and its groves were alike lost in darkness now; but soon my heart throbbed with a new anxiety, on beholding the glow of a conflagration, tinting all the calm sky with red and orange-coloured flame, and throwing forward in black and strong outlines several intervening objects, and this alarming light seemed to rise from Boscobelle! I gazed on it, wavering, irresolute, and almost trembling with anxiety. My limbs faltered, and I nearly made a retrograde movement, when the deep boom of a heavy gun, whether from the garrison or the fleet I know not, pealed through the echoing sky, and died in distance far away, recalling me to a sense of duty; and I hastened to Needham's Point, where we spent our last night in Barbadoes, as an express order had come for the troops to embark on the morrow.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
ANXIETY.
The sun was yet far below the horizon of a sea that, like the sky above it, presented a purity of blue, which still, on each successive morning, excited the wonder of the European, when, by beaten drum and the ringing Kentish bugle in camp and fort, and all along the echoing shore, the various corps of Sir Charles Grey's army were roused from slumber, and summoned to their colours; while, on a gun being fired from the ship of Admiral Jervis, all the boats of the fleet shot off simultaneously, to convey them on board.
I have already mentioned that the Adder frigate lay nearest to the shore in the leeward line; thus we, the Fusiliers, were on the extreme left flank, when drawn up on the beach for embarkation.
Already our restless fellows had forgotten their long sea-voyage; already they were tired of garrison routine, and longed to be at the enemy. After three hearty cheers, we departed from the fort to the beach in heavy marching order, with our band playing and colours cased; and forming close column, halted; then, by successive companies, we were embarked in the boats of the Adder.
Fifteen thousand men were there under arms—their bayonets flashing in the sun. A few years after, and what had war and pestilence left of all that glittering host? Hecatombs of rotten bones, when the roll of their "spirit-stirring drums" was lost in the silence of their graves by sea and shore; for Rochambeau and Rouvigny, who commanded in Martinique, and Ricard in St. Lucia, with Victor Hughes in Guadaloupe, were all skilful and resolute officers, who promised to give us pretty hot work before we could add these isles to the empire of the Queen of the Sea.