My mother was enchanted with Georgette, and so would you have been had you known her, for she proves to me all that the famous paragraph of Zimmerman expressed. Wealth flowed in upon us, for old M. de Thoisy, whom we left behind in Guadaloupe for a little time, chartered a vessel and raised the treasure of La Lima, which amply repaid the speculation by realizing our most sanguine expectations; and from that hour my old comrades of all ranks, drew on me as if I had been the Bank of England, or a species of regimental factor.
We had not been at home a week before I detected Haystone in the act of rhyming off to poor Lotty some of his usual love-speeches; on which I borrowed a leaf from Père de Thoisy's book, and at once took him to task on the subject; so the result was, that Lotty became Mrs. Rowland Haystone in three months after.
By this time the French had recaptured the whole of Guadaloupe, and heavily on my old comrades fell the slaughter of that day.
They defended Fort Matilda, our last stronghold there, till it was no longer tenable, so severely had it been injured by the enemy's fire; thus the Earl of Kildonan and Colonel Grahame resolved to abandon it on the night of the 10th December. One company, under Lieutenant Paterson and Ensign Drumbirrel, occupied the ramparts on the right of the great breach; Price, Colepepper, and Mackay, each at the head of their companies, fought bravely as they lined the bank of the Gallion river, when the whole garrison, with its stores and cannon, embarked on board the fleet of Admiral Jervis. By this time, the three companies which covered the retreat, were reduced to six sergeants and ninety-two rank and file!
I loved my regiment well; to me it had been friends and kindred—home, a happy but movable home. We had shed our blood together; slept on the same turf; under the same tents; endured the same hardships, and shared the same glories, dangers, and disasters; for a "regiment is a permanent body, depending for its excellence on the general fellowship of a permanent set of officers—on their general relations with the non-commissioned officers and men under their command—a high esprit du corps—and the preservation of old associations and recollections connected with its past history and achievements."
We were a band of brothers, for there is among soldiers a deep fount of fraternity, of which the citizen knows nothing, and in which he cannot share. "My comrade—my brother soldier—my old brother officer!"—these, indeed, are endearing terms, and in the spirit they imbue we share our blanket in the bivouac, our last biscuit or ration bone, our last shot, and, too often, our last shilling, together!
Since the capture of Martinique and the loss of Guadaloupe, long years have changed, and war and pestilence have made sad havock in the ranks; death, distance, and time, have dug deep and fast their lonely graves on many a far and foreign shore—far from the land of the rock and the heather; but "while the kindling of life in my bosom remains," I shall remember with pride and joy the friends that I made, the dangers that I dared, and the years that I spent in the old regiment of Scots Fusiliers.
THE END.
COX AND WYMAN, PRINTERS, GREAT QUEEN STREET, LONDON.