He told them that this here War was a War of Right and Justice—a War about to be fought by Old England shoulder to shoulder with her Natural Allies. And that Heaven—Thompson Jowell confidently answered for Heaven—would not fail to nerve the arms of those who were taking the part of the weak against the strong. Talk of Uncle Tom—Cousin Turk being a-many shades nearer the true British color, ought to be as many degrees nearer the true-born Briton’s heart.... Thompson Jowell laid a podgy paw upon his own, and dropped the “h” as he enunciated the word. If anybody told him otherwise, he added—his name being Peter Plain—he wouldn’t believe him, by Gosh! he wouldn’t. But all present were Englishmen and also gentlemen. And—Britannia—Thompson Jowell had answered for Heaven and now he answered for Britannia—Britannia confidently looked to all his gallant friends—might the speaker call them his dear and gallant friends?—somebody said “Oh Lord, yes!” to this, and Thompson Jowell thanked him in a stately way, and lumbered on to his peroration. Britannia looked to every one of his dear and gallant friends here present to uphold the reputation of British Arms. England, he added, was not absolutely ignorant of the name of Jowell. He bowed his tier of chins, above their stiff frill of gray whiskers, in the direction of the sarcastic voice that cried “Hear, hear!” And ended, with overflowing eyes turned upon his boy, and real emotion surging behind his magnificent Turkish-shawl waistcoat:
“May she hear more of it before this War is done!”
Jowell hugged and kissed his boy at parting, ignorant of the secret shrinking with which Morty received these caresses—bade God bless him and take care of him! and the tears rolled openly down his large whiskered face as he thrust a bulky roll of banknotes into his hand.
And then he tore himself away, and Morty—conscience-stricken in the realization of his own unfilial relief at the sight—saw the bulky back of him—topped with a low-crowned curly-brimmed hat that was of straw in deference to the hot May weather—waddle down the bouncing gangway—saw the great red face slewed midway for a last glance, and a clumsy farewell flourish of a big gross hand that gripped a gold-topped stick. And then the Great Man was lost in the huge crowd surging and roaring at the quay-edge as completely as though the grave had swallowed him up.
And with much churning of oily-looking salt water and vomitings of sooty-black coal-smoke and cindery flavored white steam by an excited paddle-wheel tug-steamer; amidst waving of male hats and feminine handkerchiefs, cheers and good-byes from the throngs upon the quays—with a return of hurrahs from the troopers crowding at her bulwarks and thrusting their faces through the ports of her main troop-deck—with chorusing of “Auld Lang Syne” and “Cheer, Boys, Cheer, Old Russia’s All Before Us!”—the second line having been adapted by an anonymous genius to fit the case—The British Queen dropped her moorings, and was towed away down the River on her watery way to Gallipoli, via—why on earth via Gibraltar?—receiving the customary compliment of eighteen guns from the Platform, and leaving the usual deposit of red-eyed, shabbily-clothed soldier’s wives and children, crying on the sunshiny, cheerful quay.
Had Moggy Geogehagan been numbered among those disconsolate women left weeping on the quayside, she would have had no tale to tell me in Ballymullet Workhouse, where her days were ended. But, indeed, had “the lots gone agin’ her,” she declared—and it was not possible to doubt her, for there was fire in the glance of her eye, and energy in the thump of her staff-end on the tiled floor, even at eighty-nine—she would have made her way out to where Jems was fighting with the Ridgimint—on her own four bones.
But here she was, on The British Queen—and near her Mrs. Joshua Horrotian. When the Call was sounded for the drawing, and the folded slips of official paper that had an inky scrawl of “Go” inside them, or a blank more eloquent still, were tossed—as was the ancient custom in this Regiment—upon the sheepskin of the kettledrums yet vibrating from the Charge—Nelly had waited her turn in a mounting fever of anxiety that had melted the last icicles away from her poor heart. Joshua Horrotian had hardly known the bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked creature, who had run to him, panting and trembling, and thrown glad arms about his neck, and shed tears of bliss upon his bosom, crying, “I’m to go!—I’m to go!” For until you are about to lose the last remaining joy, you never realize how rich you are, or how poor you may yet live to be if God takes that also.
After dinner that evening, while the light airs from the nor’-west were pushing The British Queen—long since parted from her tug—towards the Bay of Biscay, and glowing cigar-ends were patroling the quarter-deck singly and in couples; and the tinkle of a piano-played waltz came cheerfully from the Officers’ Mess Cabin, and the strains of “Annie Laurie” and “A Life on the Ocean Wave” proceeded from the troop-deck as the forecastle—where troopers and tars fraternized in high accord—Morty heard one semi-visible stroller say, in answer to some remark of a companion:
“By Jove no! But with me it’s like this!—I don’t object to a man who smells of Money—but a man who stinks of it, I simply can’t stand!”