Being no longer able to bear with his noise and vanity, which always bent towards pride of ancestry, one of the men interrupted him by crying out: “Bad luck to you and all your ancisthors put together! I wish you’d hould your jaw, and let us lie quiet a little bit before the day comes, for we can hardly hould up our heads with the sleep.”
The “gentleman,” always put on his mettle at the mention of his ancestors, with indignant voice exclaimed: “Wretch! you personify all the disproportions of a vulgar cabbage-plant, the dense foliage of whose plebeian head is too ponderous for its ignoble crouching stem to support.”
“Faith, then,” replied the plebeian, “I wish we had a good hid o’ cabbage to ate now, and we’d give you the shrinking part,—that’s like yourself, good-for-nothing and not able to stand when wanted; and, damn your sowl, what are you like, always talking about your rotten ould ancisthors? Sure, if you were any good yourself, you wouldn’t be always calling thim to take your part. Be Jabers! you’re like a praty, for all your worth in the world is what’s down in the ground.”
“Contemptible creature!” replied the “gentleman,” “if even the least of my noble line of ancestors were to rise from the grave, he would display such mighty feats of arms as would astound you and all the vulgar herd of which you appear to be the appropriate leader.”
The conclusion of this contemptuous speech, being accompanied with a revolving glance, and his right arm put into semicircular motion, including all the men as it passed through its orbit, brought him many adversaries.
One of his new antagonists bellowed out with a loud laugh: “Bury him, bury him! Since all the bravery that belongs to him is with his ould dads in the ground, maybe, if we buried him a little while to make an ould ancisthor of him too and then dug him up again, he might be a good soldier himself.”
“Arrah! sure it’s no use,” cried out another, “to be loosing your talk with a dancing-masther like him. Wasn’t he squeezed up behind a tree, like the back of an ould Cramona fiddle, while I was bothering three Johnny Craps, when they were running down screaming like pelebeens to charge the bridge? And, after all that, I’ll engage with his rotten ould ancisthors that when we goes home he’ll have a bether pinshun than me, or be made a sergeant by some fine curnil that always stays at home and knows nothing at all about a good soldier.”
At this period of the noisy orgies, the night being far advanced, with no chance of repose owing to the loud laughter, a man of the company, who was always looked upon as a kind of mentor, at length interposed, and by some admirable and personal arguments put an end to the noisy revels.
THEY GO BACK FOR BOOTS.
How little the minds of soldiers on service are occupied with thoughts of the enemy from the moment they are separated from them may plainly be seen by the merriment which they enjoyed during the greater part of this night; and how reckless they are of the manner in which they will be employed next day, and how completely their hardships and fatigues are forgotten as soon as terminated, was also made clear on that same night: for although we had been for the previous four days and nights either marching or fighting or outlying piquets in the snow, yet some of the light company returned back nearly three miles to where the carts containing the Spanish clothing were abandoned, in the hope of procuring more shoes, thus voluntarily adding a night march of six miles to the most fatiguing march which took place during the whole campaign. The shoes thus procured, as well as those carried away previous to our entering the town, were regularly distributed among the company, which enabled the men to march stoutly next day. They who carried off some three, four or five pairs of shoes supplied those who were so unfortunate as not to have been enabled to carry away any. But the shoes were not given as presents; they were sold at high prices on promise of payment at Corunna or on arriving in England. Some of those promissory notes became post-obits next evening along the road to Constantino, and many more shared the same fate before and at the battle of Corunna.