THE WOODEN LEG.
“Peregrine and Gauntlet heard the sound of the stump ascending the wooden staircase with such velocity, that they at first mistook it for the application of drum-sticks to the head of an empty barrel.”—PEREGRINE PICKLE.
EVER since the year 1799, I have had, in the coachman phrase, an off leg and a near one; the right limb, thanks to a twelve-pounder, lies somewhere at Seringapatam, its twin-brother being at this moment under a table at Brighton. In plain English, I have a wooden leg. Being thus deprived of half of the implements for marching, I equitably retired, on half-pay, from a marching regiment, and embarked what remained of my body, for the land of its nativity, literally fulfilling the description of man, “with one foot on sea and one on shore,” in the Shakspearian song.
A great deal has been said and sung of our wooden walls and hearts of oak, but legs of ditto make but an inglorious figure on the ocean. No wrestler from Cornwall or Devonshire ever received half so many fair back-falls as I, the least roll of the vessel—and the equinoctial gales were in full blow—making me lose, I was going to say, my feet. I might have walked in a dead calm, and as a soldier accustomed to exercise, and moreover a foot soldier, and used to walking, I felt a great inclination to pace up and down the deck, but a general protest from the cabins put an end to my promenade. As Lear recommends, my wooden hoofs ought to have been “shod with felt.”
At last the voyage terminated, and in my eagerness to land, I got into a fishing-boat, which put me ashore at Dungeness. Those who have enjoyed a ramble over its extensive shingle, will believe that I soon obtained abundance of exercise in walking with a wooden leg among its loose pebbles; in fact, when I arrived at Lydd, I was, as the cricketers say, “stumped out.” It was anything but one of Foote’s farces.
The next morning saw me in sight of home,—as a provincial bard says—
“But when home gleams upon the wanderer’s eye,
Quicken his steps—he almost seems to fly.”