Next day, I was taken before the commanding officer, a hot-headed Welshman, whom I shall call Colonel Morgan, charged with having been asleep on my post. To him I related particulars of the mysterious figure I had seen; but my statement, instead of proving a satisfactory excuse for my offence, as I hoped it would, threw the worthy colonel into a state of great indignation, and he at once remitted me for trial by court-martial.
On the third day after the sitting of the court, I was informed that my sentence would be promulgated at forenoon parade. With a sinking heart, I heard the ‘assembly’ sounded, then the ‘fall in;’ and shortly afterwards the band played merrily, as if in mockery of my agitation.
Escorted by a file of the guard, I marched to the centre of the hollow square into which the regiment had been formed; and the adjutant read out my sentence, which was, that I should be imprisoned with hard labour for a period of eighty-four days. Appended to the confirmation of the proceedings of the court-martial by the general commanding the district was a note to the following effect: ‘Considering the nature of the prisoner’s defence, which was calculated to excite an uneasy feeling among the men of his regiment, I consider the punishment inflicted quite inadequate to the enormity of his offence.’
The next day, I was escorted, handcuffed, to a military prison about six miles distant, where, after having been medically examined and weighed, I was introduced to a most select assemblage of erring brethren of the sword, who were engaged in the exhilarating occupation of picking oakum, alternated with the agreeable muscular exercise of ‘shot’-drill.
The humiliating and degrading situation in which I found myself, through no fault of my own, made me, naturally enough, deeply regret my folly in having joined the army, and excited within me many unpleasant reflections on the good prospects in civil life which I had thrown to the winds. Like Mickey Free’s father, in Lever’s Charles O’Malley, I heartily ejaculated: ‘Bad luck to the hand that held the hammer that struck the shilling that listed me!’
Now for the sequel to my ghost story, which was related to me when I was released from durance vile.
Between two and three o’clock on the morning of the day after I was taken to prison, a man came screaming into the guardroom of the barracks, exhibiting symptoms of the most extreme terror, and declaring that he, too, had seen the figure while on sentry; and his description of its appearance was precisely similar to mine.
The sergeant of the guard at once rushed to the officers’ quarters, woke up the adjutant, and informed him of the ghost’s alleged reappearance. A hue-and-cry was at once instituted; and the orderly sergeants having been roused, a ‘check-roll’ was called, to ascertain whether any man had left his room for the purpose of playing a practical joke. Every nook and cranny in barracks, from the officers’ quarters to the wash-houses, were rigidly examined; but the spectre had apparently vanished into thin air, leaving all the regiment in a state of unpleasant suspense.
‘What’s all the row?’ shouted the colonel from the window of his room, he having been awakened by the unusual commotion in barracks.
‘The ghost has appeared again, sir,’ replied the adjutant.