I had also received a flesh wound in my left shoulder, with several other slighter wounds not worth particularizing.
The above wounds, except one, having been received prior to the munificent grant of his present Majesty to wounded officers, I never received a farthing remuneration, except ninety-six pounds for the last—a year's pay as ensign.
I confess, then, I had entertained a sanguine hope, that the extent and nature of my services, and the number of wounds I had received, would have more than outweighed the offence of which I had been convicted, and I felt the disappointment most acutely, and could not avoid giving vent to my agonized feelings. I was aroused by the endearing behaviour of my child, whose arms had, on his observing my grief, encircled my neck. "What's the matter, father? you are always crying now, since mother is gone away," said he. This was touching a tenderer chord than the babe imagined, for he still supposed that his dear mother was gone for a time only, and his constant inquiries were when she would return. We were found in this state of woe by Captain Thomas Marshall, of the Bengal army, my neighbour. This officer was my neighbour indeed; for his kindness, and that of his amiable wife, towards me, were unabated and unceasing. In the affectionate bosom of this lady my orphan babe found a foster-mother, who shared with her infant, three days older than mine, the one half of its best comfort. Towards this dear and affectionate couple my heart will ever cherish the fond remembrance of gratitude, and I hope this humble declaration may meet them in the far-distant clime in which they sojourn. When Captain Marshall saw the sentence, he turned from me, and walked into another room—for what purpose, I leave the sympathizing reader to guess. He soon returned to me, and said, "Come, Shipp, you have often mounted the breach of danger—cheer up—and recollect you have those dear babes to clothe and feed." Here my little boy, supposing that this was meant as a kind of rebuke, said, "I don't want anything to eat, Captain Marshall; therefore, don't cry." These are touches which the feeling heart can alone appreciate. To prevent, for the time, any further indulgence in sorrow, I was prevailed on to accompany my kind neighbour to his hospitable house, where I spent the day with him, and where a little musical party assembled in the evening, to rouse me from the state of despondency into which this last blow had plunged me. But all attempts to divert me from the recollections of my misfortunes were fruitless. Music and society but added to my pain; and I found that I was never, for a length of time, so composed as in those days and nights which I spent free from all company but that of my two motherless babes, with whom only I could, if I may so express myself, luxuriate in grief.
GHAUT ON THE GANGES.
From a Drawing by W. Daniell, R.A.
In one month after the confirmed sentence of the court-martial had been made known to me, I was compelled to obey the orders which I had received to repair to Calcutta, previous to embarkation for England. To enable me to comply with these directions, I was obliged to sacrifice all my property for a mere nothing, and I set out for the Presidency with my little boy, now my only comfort, having made the little infant over to my brother-in-law, J.P. Mellaird, Esq., indigo-planter Tirhoot, where his grandmother, somewhat recovered, found refuge also.
The voyage down the lonely river Ganges was not calculated to soothe my sorrows or to cheer my prospects. I reached Calcutta in safety, and remained there a considerable time waiting for a ship, where, strange to say, I received an order to proceed home with invalids, and to place myself immediately under the command of Captain Mathers, of his Majesty's 59th regiment. This order I was bound to obey; but it prevented me from bringing home my little boy, as every part of the ship was taken up for the troops, and the captain of the vessel would not accommodate me under a thousand rupees—a sum which I had not to give. A smaller foreign ship would have brought both myself and child home for what the Company allow for officers sent home—fifteen hundred rupees. By this I was deprived of the satisfaction of bringing home my child, who remains in India with my brother-in-law to this day.
In the beginning of the month of April, 1825, I embarked on board the free-trader, Euphrates, Captain Mead commanding, with an insufficient crew, as they did not exceed twenty-three hands in all, and winter was before us for the whole voyage. This would not have been a very pleasant prospect to the shattered nerves of an old Indian; but mine, although I had been so many years in that hot country, did not come under that description, and I had learnt long since to endure hardships. I was never much addicted to look on the dark side of things, but now it was impossible to refrain from thinking of the situation in which I stood. I was proceeding to a country, and that country my native home; but it was not endeared to me by a solitary relative that I knew of. I could not help comparing the close of my military career with its commencement. I was then friendless and isolated; and who had I now but those who mourned my departure from a land which I was compelled to quit for ever? I left England, when a child, without one friend or relative to bid me adieu, and I was now returning to it without one to bid me welcome! Yet there is something pleasing to every British bosom, in the anticipation of returning to the land of one's birth; and, although my prospects were anything but bright, I felt, notwithstanding, that I could be content to live in my native country, even in poverty. But the necessity which compelled me to leave behind me my two sweet babes distressed me exceedingly, and my eye seemed riveted on the arid sand along the banks of the river that had some few days before borne my boy from my sight. On the spot on which we parted I gazed with indescribable sensations, and I found that the more I gazed the dearer it grew in my estimation. There are few who have not experienced delight in revisiting, after many years' absence, the scenes of their childhood. When I returned to my native land from India, in the year 1807, after an absence of twelve years, I was proceeding home to visit my family; but when I reached Colchester (the place, as the reader will probably recollect, where I commenced "soldiering"), all the gambols and tricks I had played there when a boy, rushed upon my mind, and the place seemed endeared to me by a thousand recollections. Such was my wish to re-explore this place, that I forfeited my coach-hire for the rest of the journey, and stopped there that night. Early on the following morning I sauntered along to the lanes that stood in the vicinity of the barracks, and, on coming to a certain lane that ran behind them, where we went every day to practice, I found my name still on a stile. This had been cut by me when I frequented the place as a little fifer, twelve years before. Such were my feelings on this simple occasion, that I could scarcely restrain a tear, and I sat on the stile for an hour, looking on my own name a hundred times over. It will not, therefore, be wondered at, if the eye of a fond father should fondly linger on the spot where he took leave of, and last saw his motherless babe.
The scene before me in the vessel soon diverted me from the contemplation of all other subjects. I could have brooded over the fate of my dear little ones the whole night; but the din and tumult of more than two hundred soldiers, with their friends from shore, all rioting in the cup of inebriety, tumbling over each other, blaspheming, fighting, singing, fifing, and fiddling, and all huddled together in a confined space, with their beds, bedding, parrots, minors, and other birds, roused me to a lively sense of the scene before me.
On the following morning we bade farewell to Fort William, under whose proud battlements we had been lying. The wind was serene and fair, and the wave had scarcely a ripple on its silvery surface. Would that my bosom had been equally composed and tranquil; but my heart sickened within me when I felt the beautiful ship smoothly gliding down the rapid stream, and bearing me from that country and that service in which I had spent the prime of my life, and, I may say, the happiest of my days. The rapid Ganges soon bore me from the sight of the English flag, and I dropped a tear to the recollection of the many happy days I had spent at Fort William.