Larracy thus became interpreter and mediator, and it would be difficult to say in which character he best acquitted himself. Possessing no knowledge whatever of the language, notwithstanding his repeated assurances that he could talk it nately, he brought that happy talent for invention, for which the Irish most undeniably stand unrivalled, into play. Seizing one of the boots, he approached his employer, and suiting the word to the action, addressed him in the following words:—
“Si, senhor! Quanto the munnee, for the solee, the heelee, and the nailee?”
The astonishment portrayed in the countenance of the Portuguese baffles all description; he surveyed Larracy from head to foot, and with much gravity of manner replied, “En nào entendo-o que vós me dizeis.”[[8]]—“And sure I’m telling him so,” rejoined Larracy. “What does the fellow say?” demanded my friend. “What does he say?—What does he say, is it? He says he put a fine pair of welts to your boots, sir (and it’s true for him!); and that your honour will have to give him a dollar [about two shillings more than was demanded by the Portuguese!], but just only lave him to me, and give me the dollar, and if I don’t bate him down in the price, never believe a word that I’ll tell your honour again; and I’ll carry home your boots for you, and bring you the account in rotation (by which he meant in writing), and the change of the dollar.”—“Oh! never mind, you are an honest fellow, Larracy, and keep the change for your trouble; but you may tell your employer it is the last job he shall ever do for me.”—“Och! sure I told your honour he was a blackguard,” grinned Larracy, escorting his officer to the door, and putting the dollar in his pocket.
[8]. “I do not understand a word you are saying to me.”
While in the other parts of the Peninsula much activity prevailed, with us all was quiet; and although the season was advancing towards spring, there was no appearance of our commencing the offensive, and conjectures innumerable were the consequence. Promotion, that great planet whose influence more or less affected us all, was perpetually on the tapis. There were some among us of a desponding cast; they would say, “Have we not lost Almeida, Rodrigo, and now, though last not least, Badajoz? And should we be obliged to evacuate the Peninsula, good-bye to promotion.” Others there were who held a different opinion, and, resting their hopes on some fortunate “turn-up,” expected ere long to have the enviable title of captain attached to their name. To this class I belonged, and as it was the most numerous in the army, it was in consequence the most clamorous on this head.
The life of a subaltern, in what Miss Mac-Tab would call a marching regiment, where many of us, and I myself for one, had little except our pay, is a perpetual scene of irritating calculation from the 24th of one month to the 24th of the next. No matter under what circumstances, or in what quarter of the globe the subaltern is placed, his first thought points towards that powerful magnet the twenty-fourth—his next to promotion.
The 24th has scarcely passed when the same routine is pursued, every hour increasing in interest according to the immediate wants of the calculator; and time rolls on, either rapidly or slowly, in the exact ratio with the strength or weakness of his purse. The moment he receives his pay he discharges his bills, and by the time he has got about half-way into the first week of the next month, he has little occasion for a knowledge of Cocker to enable him to calculate his money.
The period generally reckoned on by a subaltern to get his company, in a good fighting regiment—that is to say, one that had the good luck to be in the thick and thin of what was going on, for all regiments fight alike for that matter—was from five to six years. The “extra shilling” was rarely heard of, and never thought of but with disgust.[[9]]