So the next evening they put out to sea through the gossamer scarves of moving twilight—the man in his coastguard kit gay to frivolity, the girl in fisher disguise, meditative, half tearful. She breathed not a word while her straining eyes could clutch the outline of the land from the embrace of night; but when all was wrapped in gloom she lifted her gaze to the star-spangled heavens, and murmured with folded hands, "Cher Royaume de Cezambre, adieu!"
Trooper Jones of the Light Brigade.
"To get myself in courage—crush out fears;
To strive with fate for something more than gold."
A year or two ago I received an envelope containing a lock of flame-red hair wrapped in a soiled linen rag. By this token I knew that old Sergeant Kemp—the name is a pseudonym, for reasons which will be seen—Sergeant Kemp, formerly of the Light Brigade, was dead. This knowledge unseals my lips, and permits me to divulge an extraordinary episode of the charge of Balaclava which was related to me by the veteran, and which, as far as I can judge, has entirely escaped the research of the romanticist and historian.
My original intention in going to see the old hero was to interview him and learn if he could throw any new light on the tragic and immemorial events of '54-5-6, through which, with the exception of a slight wound in the wrist, he had passed unscathed.
I propitiated him with gifts of tobacco, and, having found the "open sesame" to the cave of his reminiscences, visited him often. My object was to filch, surreptitiously as it were, the treasures I coveted, before their valuable crudity could suffer the unconscious adulteration to which such goods are liable at the hands of the professional story-monger. But I found, when the strings of his tongue were unloosed, he had very little more to relate about the events of the campaign than is already recorded. In fact, like many an actor in the drama of life, he really knew less about the general mise-en-scene than I, who had only reviewed it through the lorgnon of Tennyson and other contemporary writers. Seeing, however, that a shade of disappointment was cast by the fogginess of his disclosures, the old fellow one day abruptly asked if I could keep a secret were he to tell it me. I vowed my complete trustworthiness, but at the same time remonstrated that confidences so hampered would be of absolutely no use to the work I had on hand. He rose laboriously from his chair—lumbago had almost crippled him—and produced from a tin box a soiled rag containing the curl of red hair which is now in my possession.
"This 'air," he explained in mumbling tones, "was cut off the 'ead of Trooper Jones of ours—in times of war one 'asn't much truck with the barber," he parenthesised. "We called 'im 'Carrots,' as bein' most convenient and discriptive like. And that there bit of shirt belonged to my pal Jenkins, as good a chap as ever wore shako. It's the 'istory of 'em both as I've 'alf a mind to tell you, but you must be mum as old bones about it—at all events till this 'ere bloke's a-carried out feet foremost."
"And then?" I said, with unbecoming eagerness.