"'I thought I heard the general say,
Strike your tents at break of day;
Strike your tents and march away,
March, march away!'"
sang, or rather shouted, Lieutenant Patrick Cantillon of the light company, as he burst into our quarters one hot afternoon, a few weeks subsequent to my adventure on the convent road.
"Tom, ye lazy divil! is it sleepin' ye are?" And he caught me a whack on the shoulder that nearly knocked me out of my chair.
"Don't make such a confounded row, Paddy!" I exclaimed irritably; for I had been indulging in a siesta, and this "rude awakening" startled me not a little. "Why the deuce can't you come in quietly?"
"Come in quietly, bedad!—hark to him!" cried my brother sub, capering round the room. "Sure, man, am I not ready to jump out of me skin!"
"Then I wish you'd jump out of it somewhere else," I retorted. "What's the matter with you?"
"Listen while I tell ye, alannah," said Paddy, coming to an anchor on my camp-bed. "May-be ye know that some six years ago we kicked the French out of Egypt, and put the Turks in possession of Alexandria and other towns on the Egyptian coast. Now Boney has humbugged the Sultan to enter into an alliance with France;[!-- [Pg 81] --] so our Government—more power to its elbow!—has decided to send an expedition to turn the Turks out of the very places we turned them into; in short, we're goin' to punish the haythins for havin' the impudence to hobnob and make friends with the French."
"And are we to join this expedition, Paddy?" I asked.
"We are, me son," was the reply.
Paddy Cantillon's news proved to be true. Orders had already been issued for an expedition to be fitted out in Sicily, for the purpose of making a descent on the coast of Egypt, and occupying Alexandria and Rosetta, and the same evening it was officially notified that the 35th would be one of the regiments employed on this service.