[TAKING IT COOLLY.]
Some of many instances of extraordinary coolness in the midst of danger and otherwise that have been recorded, are here offered to our readers, together with some amusing sayings and doings. When gallant Ponsonby lay grievously wounded on the field of Waterloo, he forgot his own desperate plight while watching an encounter between a couple of French lancers and one of his own men, cut off from his troop. As the Frenchmen came down upon Murphy, he, using his sword as if it were a shillelagh, knocked their lances alternately aside again and again. Then suddenly setting spurs to his horse, he galloped off full speed, his eager foes following in hot pursuit, but not quite neck and neck. Wheeling round at exactly the right moment, the Irishman, rushing at the foremost fellow, parried his lance, and struck him down. The second, pressing on to avenge his comrade, was cut through diagonally by Murphy's sword, falling to the earth without a cry or a groan; while the victor, scarcely glancing at his handiwork, trotted off whistling The Grinder.
Ponsonby's brave cavalry-man knew how to take things coolly, which, according to Colonel R. P. Anderson, is the special virtue of the British man-of-war, who, having the utmost reliance in himself and his commanders, is neither easily over-excited nor readily alarmed. In support of his assertion, the colonel relates how two tars, strolling up from the Dil-Kusha Park, where Lord Clyde's army was stationed, towards the Residency position at Lucknow, directed their steps by the pickets of horse and foot. Suddenly, a twenty-four-pound shot struck the road just in front of them. 'I'm blessed, Bill,' said one of the tars, 'if this here channel is properly buoyed!' and on the happy-go-lucky pair went towards the Residency, as calmly as if they had been on Portsmouth Hard. During the same siege, a very young private of the 102d was on sentry, when an eight-inch shell, fired from a gun a hundred yards off, burst close to him, making a deal of noise and throwing up an immense quantity of earth. Colonel Anderson rushed to the spot. The youthful soldier was standing quietly at his post, close to where the shell had just exploded. Being asked what had happened, he replied unconcernedly: 'I think a shell has busted, sir.'
Towards the close of the fight of Inkermann, Lord Raglan, returning from taking leave of General Strangways, met a sergeant carrying water for the wounded. The sergeant drew himself up to salute, when a round-shot came bounding over the hill, and knocked his forage-cap out of his hand. The man picked it up, dusted it on his knee, placed it carefully on his head, and made the salute, not a muscle of his countenance moving the while. 'A neat thing that, my man?' said Lord Raglan. 'Yes, my lord,' returned the sergeant, with another salute; 'but a miss is as good as a mile.' The commander was probably not surprised by such an exhibition of sang-froid, being himself good that way. He was badly hurt at Waterloo; and, says the Prince of Orange, who was in the hospital, 'I was not conscious of the presence of Lord Fitzroy Somerset until I heard him call out in his ordinary tone: "Hollo! Don't carry that arm away till I have taken off my ring!" Neither wound nor operation had extorted a groan from his lips.'
The Indian prides himself upon taking good or ill in the quietest of ways; and from a tale told in Mr Marshall's Canadian Dominion, his civilised half-brother would seem to be equally unemotional. Thanks mainly to a certain Métis or half-breed in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, a Sioux warrior was found guilty of stealing a horse, and condemned to pay the animal's value by instalments, at one of the Company's forts. On paying the last instalment, he received his quittance from the man who had brought him to justice, and left the office. A few moments later the Sioux returned, advanced on his noiseless moccasins within a pace of the writing-table, and levelled his musket full at the half-breed's head. Just as the trigger was pulled, the Métis raised the hand with which he was writing and touched lightly the muzzle of the gun; the shot passed over his head, but his hair was singed off in a broad mass. The smoke clearing away, the Indian was amazed to see his enemy still lived. The other looked him full in the eyes for an instant, and quietly resumed his writing. The Indian silently departed unpursued; those who would have given chase being stopped by the half-breed with: 'Go back to your dinner, and leave the affair to me.'
When evening came, a few whites, curious to see how the matter would end, accompanied the Métis to the Sioux encampment. At a certain distance he bade them wait, and advanced alone to the Indian tents. Before one of these sat crouched the baffled savage, singing his own death-hymn to the tom-tom. He complained that he must now say good-bye to wife and child, to the sunlight, to his gun and the chase. He told his friends in the spirit-land to expect him that night, when he would bring them all the news of their tribe. He swung his body backwards and forwards as he chanted his strange song, but never once looked up—not even when his foe spurned him with his foot. He only sang on, and awaited his fate. Then the half-breed bent his head and spat down on the crouching Sioux, and turned leisurely away—a crueller revenge than if he had shot him dead.
It is not given to every one to play the philosopher, and accept fortune's buffets and favours with equal placidity. Horatios are scarce. But there are plenty of people capable of behaving like Spartans where the trouble does not touch their individuality. 'How can I get out of this?' asked an Englishman, up to his armpits in a Scotch bog, of a passer-by. 'I dinna think ye can get oot of it,' was the response of the Highlander as he went on his way.
Mistress of herself was the spouse of the old gentleman, who contrived to tumble off the ferryboat into the Mississippi, and was encouraged to struggle for dear life by his better-half shouting: 'There, Samuel; didn't I tell you so? Now then, work your legs, flap your arms, hold your breath, and repeat the Lord's Prayer—for its mighty onsartin, Samuel, whether you land in Vicksburg or eternity!'
Thoroughly oblivious of court manners was the red-cloaked old Kentish dame who found her way into the tent occupied by Queen Charlotte, at a Volunteer review held shortly after her coming to England, and after staring at the royal lady with her arms akimbo, observed: 'Well, she's not so ugly as they told me she was!'—a compliment the astonished queen gratefully accepted, saying: 'Well, my good woman, I am very glad of dat.' Probably Her Majesty forgave her critic's rudeness as the outcome of rustic ignorance and simplicity.