I was immediately placed upright against the sergeant's pike, on the shaft of which were accurately notched the number of feet and inches which formed the standard height for recruits in his Majesty's Twenty First Foot. Though considerably below the required gage, as a growing lad, I passed the ordeal, and ere mid-day, with a few other aspirants for fame and Chelsea, was duly attested by a jolly, red-faced rector, who was a J.P. in that Riding of Yorkshire. Two guineas of bounty were then paid to me, and in the evening, with the sergeant, Corporal Mahoney, the drummers, &c., and a few more recruits, I found myself enthroned on a table at the "Maid and the Magpie," spending my newly-acquired pieces of gold with singular facility; and more likely to become a bibber than a Hannibal, as I strove to drown care and extract recklessness from brandy and tobacco.
A crowd of bumpkins and idlers filled the large wainscotted smoking-room of the old-fashioned inn, which Sergeant Drumbirrel had made his head-quarters; and as red-coats were seldom seen in the rural district of Compton Rennel, our redoubtable halberdier, who had all the bonhommie, acuteness, and confidence requisite for a complete recruiting sergeant, found himself acknowledged king of the company. He was a tall and handsome fellow, about forty years of age; his hair was already becoming grey, and his face lined by years of hard drinking and hard service in America and the tropics; and his staple subjects for conversation were his personal exploits in the fields of Mars and Venus,—stories in which he usually stood prominently forward,—thus: how, by following his friendly hints, Burgoyne beat the French on the banks of the Hudson; and how on another occasion he bilked an innkeeper at Chatham; for he deemed one exploit quite as worthy of consideration as the other.
He knew all the tricks of the recruiting service; enabled recruits to pass the standard by false scalps and glued cork heels, and made no secret of his art before his auditors. While he imbibed and expressed a hearty contempt for all civilians; he deemed it quite as much his duty to trepan as to enlist them; thus, by his own account, he had brought many gallant fellows into his Majesty's service by deluding them into an exchange of clothes with him, taking care to leave a shilling in one of the pockets; on the discovery of which, he desired the wearer to keep it in the king's name, and marched him straight to the nearest J.P. for attestation. He had freely proffered commissions, enlisting many as captains, colonels, and knights of the Bath and Garter; he had slipped "the shilling" into a bumpkin's pocket, or into his hand when shaking it, and then sworn in a whole vocabulary of oaths that it was given in the name of his Majesty.
From time to time, the health of the latter was drunk at my expense, with great vociferation and loyalty, the sergeant sitting the while at the head of a long bare table, armed with a huge Toby-tosspot jug (formed like a little squat man in boots, with a three-cocked hat, each angle of which was a mouth-piece); it was full of ruddy, foaming ale,—Yorkshire home-brewed.
"Are you wise," I whispered, "to let out all the secrets of your art before these fellows?"
"Wise, lad?" said he, "I never was wise, and 'tis too late to learn wisdom now; besides, what is the use of being wise? 'Tis better far to be jolly."
"But those who overhear you——"
"May go and be hanged," said he; "our beating order expires to-night, and to-morrow we march for Hull to join the regiment, and I don't care how soon we embark; for I begin to tire alike of barrack life, recruiting, and garrison duty."
"Hurrah! the sooner we embark the better," said I, with a shout; for now the fumes of liquor, tobacco, and the general odour of the room itself, were overpowering, while the noise, confusion, singing, quarrelling, and the voices of women lamenting the enlistment of sons, brothers, and lovers, made up a Babel, from which I could not escape, as Sergeant Drumbirrel was too old a soldier to trust a recruit for an instant out of his sight, until he was duly "turned over" to the staff at head-quarters.
"Oh, stay at home, my dear—dear son," exclaimed a poor old woman imploringly to a tipsy rustic, whose wide-awake hat was adorned by the tricoloured streamers of the gallant 21st; "stay at home with your old mother, who loves you so well, and do not go to the sodgering, leaving her to starvation and grief."