We reached Cawnpore at last, and there joined Sir Colin Campbell’s force. The sight of this house of murder was simply maddening to the men. They left the place next morning with a sort of shudder, and set their faces towards Lucknow. It was not till we were well on the march that I had leisure to look about me and notice how our force was increased.
Several now regiments were with us, and the commander-in-chief and his staff and heavy guns and siege trains accompanied the march. With the exception of a few skirmishes, my master had yet to learn what a battle was. We crept on, halting sometimes, and sometimes pushing on, until one jubilant afternoon the distant walls of Lucknow appeared in sight. Then indeed our brave fellows began to breathe again.
To-morrow would bring them to the city walls, and—what was equally after their hearts—face to face with the enemy. We bivouacked here for the night.
Now it happened on this particular night that my master was on sentinel duty for the first time in his life, and mightily proud of his charge. There he stood as stiff as a poker, with his rifle at his side, and I verily believe would have thought nothing of running his bayonet through the body of the commander-in-chief if he had presented himself without the password.
Patrick was not a dreamer; and as he looked across in the direction of Lucknow I don’t suppose his meditations were of the loftiest kind. He knew there would be a fight to-morrow, and so he was happy; he knew duty might call him to action even to-night, and so he kept a very sharp look-out at his post; but otherwise his mind was profoundly untroubled. It was not so with me. On the eve of the battle I could not but feel that in a few hours I might be ownerless, and in a dead man’s pocket; and, as I looked back upon my strangely eventful life, I sighed, and half hoped, if he were slain, they would in mercy bury me with him, and so end my cares once and for all. Little I knew!
It was scarcely ten o’clock when Paddy was startled by approaching footsteps. They belonged to an officer of our force who was returning at this hour from an outpost. Paddy eyed him suspiciously, and even when he gave the word looked disappointed at not having the privilege of using his bayonet upon him. Just as he was going on his way, the officer turned and said, in a voice which startled me,—
“Is it ten yet, my man?”
Why did the voice startle me? I could not see the speaker’s face, but as he spoke I fancied myself back in the Randlebury schoolroom, and my memory saw a bright-eyed boy I had known once whom I could almost have believed to be the speaker of these few words. Strange what fancies take possession of one! Patrick, as he had a watch, and had by this time learned the mysterious art of telling the time, was not the man to answer such a question as this at random.
“Hould my gun, cap’n,” he said, “till I sthrike a light.”
Fancy a sentinel asking an officer to hold his gun! I knew enough of military discipline to make me tremble at the thought of what would become of my unceremonious master.