This was a busy scene. We had been on good terms with the townspeople, and many of them attended us to the pier. As we marched down, the old women stood in rows, exclaiming,—‘Peer things! they are gaun awa’ to the slauchter.’ While the boys were ranked up, marching before our band, with as much importance as if they considered themselves heroes; and no doubt, the fine music, and the sight of the soldiers marching to it, gave them high ideas of a military life; and perhaps, was the incipient cause of their enlisting at a future period. Indeed, I must confess that when I heard the crowd cheering, and our music playing before us, I felt at least a foot higher, and strutted with as much dignity as if I had been a general. I almost felt proud at that moment that I was a soldier.
Once embarked, however, and fairly out to sea, my enthusiasm soon evaporated. Stowed like any other part of a cargo, with only eighteen inches allowed for each man to lie on, we had scarcely room to move. The most of the men became sea-sick, and it was almost impossible to be below without becoming so. The women particularly suffered much; being crammed in indiscriminately amongst the men, and no arrangement made for their comfort.
No incident of any consequence took place on this voyage, with the exception of a severe gale of wind, which forced us to run into Dungeness; but it soon abated, and proceeding on our voyage, we made the island of Jersey, and disembarked at St Oban’s harbour; from thence we marched through St Helier’s to the Russian barracks near Groville.
All kinds of liquor, tea, sugar, and fruit, were here uncommonly cheap; but bread was dear, and what we had served out as rations was quite black and soft, something in consistence like clay. Brandy was only a shilling a bottle; wine, two shillings; cyder, three-halfpence a quart; and tobacco, fifteen pence a pound.
The jovial drinking fellows amongst us thought this another paradise—a heaven on earth; and many of them laid the foundation of complaints here which they never got rid of.
It was during the time we were here that the jubilee (on his late Majesty’s entering the fiftieth year of his reign) was celebrated. We were marched to the sands between St Helier’s and St Oban’s, where the whole of the military on the island were assembled. We were served out with eighteen rounds of blank cartridge per man, and the feu-de-joie was fired from right to left, and again taken up by the right, thus keeping up a constant fire until it was all expended. The artillery, with the various batteries, and shipping in the harbour, joined in the firing; and altogether formed an imposing scene.
When we arrived at our barracks, we got a day’s pay in advance, and, with great injunctions not to get drunk and riotous, we were allowed to go and make ourselves merry until tattoo-beating. Dennis and I resolved to hold the occasion like the others, although he said he did not admire this way of ‘treating us to our own.’
We went to one of the usual drinking-houses; but it was full, up to the door; volumes of tobacco smoke issued from every opening; and the noise of swearing and singing was completely deafening.
We were obliged to go farther off to get a house to sit down in. At last we found a place of that description, and went in. After a glass or two, we became quite jovial; and Dennis insisted that our host and his wife should sit down along with us. He was a Frenchman and spoke little English; but Dennis did not mind that, and there soon commenced a most barbarous jargon—Dennis laying off a long story, of which, I am sure, the poor man did not understand a syllable. Yet he went on, still saying at the end of every sentence, ‘You take me now?’—‘You persave me now, don’t you?’ While our host, whose patience seemed pretty well taxed, would shrug up his shoulders with a smile, and looking at his wife, who seemed to understand what was said nearly as well as himself, he would give a nod and say,
‘Oui, monsieur—yees, sare,’