'Sergeant, dear, may be you know Tim Riley who inlisted into the sogers?'
'Tim Riley? How do you spell his name?'
'Devil a one of me knows, but he was a boy from Dublin.'
'Oh, I knewed him well. He's a colonel now,' replied the sergeant.
'A colonel—oh, glory be to God! Is it Tim, whose ears I've warmed many a time for stealing the ould man's Scotch apples? Where is the shilling, sergeant?'
'Now be off and make an omadhaun of yourself,'said one of the 18th. 'I knew Thady Boyle; he 'listed as a captain—devil a less—in the Royal County Down, and when he joined he was put in the black-hole by a spalpeen of an English corporal.'
The bustle of the embarkation seemed endless, but at last the bugle sounded, and a bell clanged for all visitors to quit the ship; the various gangways were run ashore, the screw began to revolve, and H.M.S. Bannockburn was off.
While the air seemed to vibrate with cheers, the great white trooper, slowly and stately in aspect, came out of the harbour between the Blockhouse Fort and the Round Tower, and steamed abreast of the crowded Clarence Esplanade, which was gay with people even at that season, and there the soldiers, as they clustered like red bees on the vessel's side and in the lower rigging, could see the troops of jolly children with frocks and trousers tucked up paddling in the water, so far as they dared venture, or making breakwaters and fortifications of sand as actively as if they had to defend the shores of old England.
Portsmouth, its spires, batteries, and ultramural line of magnificent, but now obsolete, batteries and casemates, its masts and shipping, was becoming shrouded in the golden haze of evening, and the farewell greetings of the women on board the harbour craft and those of the youthful tars of the old St. Vincent had died away astern; but cheers rose in volleys, if we may use the term, when the Bannockburn neared Cowes, where the Queen—the Queen herself—was known to be in the Alberta yacht, which had the Royal Standard floating at her mainmast head, and every heart beat high as the vessels neared each other, and the Queen—a small figure in black—was seen amid a group waving her handkerchief.
Roland had only two buglers on board, but these poured forth the Royal Anthem with right good will from their perch in the foretop, while instead of the boatswain's shrill whistle the steam siren was sounded. The Royal yacht steamed round the towering trooper, which slackened speed, and the signal fluttered out, 'You may proceed.'