Notwithstanding the severity of the day, it was impossible to avoid occasionally smiling at the outré appearance of some of the officers. The total disregard which the Commander-in-Chief paid to uniformity of dress is well known, and there were many on this day who were obliged to acknowledge that they showed more taste than judgment in their selection. Captain Adair of my corps nearly fell a victim to the choice he had made on this our first day of opening the campaign of 1812. He wore a pair of boots that fitted him with a degree of exactness that would not disgrace a “Hoby”; the heels were high and the toes sharply pointed; his pantaloons were of blue web; his frock-coat and waistcoat were tastefully and fashionably chosen, the former light blue richly frogged with lace, the latter of green velvet with large silver Spanish buttons; but he forgot the most essential part of all—and that was his boat-cloak. For the first ten or twelve miles he rode, but the cold was so intense that he was obliged to dismount, and unquestionably his dress was but ill calculated for walking. The rain with which his pantaloons were saturated was by this time nearly frozen (for the day had begun to change), and he became so dreadfully chafed that he was necessitated to give up the march, and we left him at a village half way from Robleda, resembling more one of those which composed “the army of martyrs” than that commanded by Lord Wellington. I myself was nearly in as bad a state, but being a few years younger, and more serviceably clad, I made an effort to get on.
We had by this time (eight o’clock at night) proceeded a considerable way in the dark, and, as may be supposed, it was a difficult matter to keep the men together as compactly as could be wished. Whenever an opportunity occurred a jaded soldier or two of my regiment used to look in on our Spanish friends, and if they found them at supper, they could not bring themselves to refuse an offer to “take share of what was going,” and, to say the truth, this was no more than might be expected from a set of fellows who belonged to a country so proverbial for its hospitality to strangers as theirs (Ireland) was! Besides this, the men of the Connaught Rangers had a way of making themselves “at home” that was peculiar to them, and for which—whatever else might be denied them!—they got full credit. Bob Hardyman used to say “they had a taking way with them.”
Passing a hamlet a short distance from Robleda we saw a number of Spaniards, women as well as men, outside the door of a good-looking house; much altercation was apparently taking place; at length a soldier (named Ody Brophy) rushed out with half a flitch of bacon under his arm; a scuffle ensued, and Lieutenant D‘Arcy, to whose company the soldier belonged, ran up to inquire the cause of the outcry, but it was soon too manifest to be misunderstood; the war-whoop was raised against our man, who, on his part, as stoutly defended himself, not by words alone but by blows, which had nearly silenced his opponents, when he was seized by my friend D‘Arcy. Piccaroon, Ladrone, and other opprobrious epithets were poured with much volubility against him, but he, with the greatest sang froid, turned to his officer and said, “Be aisy now, and don’t be vexing yourself with them or the likes of them. Wasn’t it for you I was making a bargain? and didn’t I offer the value of it? Don’t I see the way you’re lost with the hunger, and the divil a bit iv rations you’ll get ate to-night. Och! you cratur, iv your poor mother, that’s dead! was to see you after such a condition, it’s she that id be leev’d iv herself for letting you away from her at-all-at-all.”—“Well,” said D‘Arcy (softened, no doubt, and who would not at such a speech?), “what did you offer for it?”—“What did I offer for it, is it? Fait, then, I offered enough, but they made such a noise that I don’t think they heard me, for, upon my sowl, I hardly heard myself with the uproar they made; and sure I told them iv I hadn’t money enough to pay for it (and it was true for me I hadn’t, unless I got it dog cheap!) you had; but they don’t like a bone in my skin, or in yours either, and that is the raison they are afther offinding me afther such a manner. And didn’t one of the women get my left thumb into her mouth, and grunch it like a bit of mate? Look at it,” said he in conclusion, at the same time thrusting his bleeding hand nearly into D‘Arcy’s face, “fait and iv your honour hadn’t come up, it’s my belief she would have bit it clane off at the knuckle.” This speech, delivered with a rapidity and force that was sufficient to overwhelm the most practised rhetorician, carried away everything along with it, like chaff before a whirlwind, and D‘Arcy made all matters smooth by paying the price demanded (two dollars), and the piece of bacon was carried away by Ody, who was a townsman of D‘Arcy’s, and who repeatedly assured him “he would do more than that to sarve him.”
It was impossible to avoid paying a tribute of praise to Ody Brophy for the tact with which he avoided the storm with which he was threatened; and upon this occasion he proved himself as good a pilot as ever guided a vessel, and to the full equal to one I once heard of in the harbour of Cork. A captain of a man-of-war, newly appointed to a ship on the Irish station, took the precaution, in “beating out” of harbour, to apprise the pilot that he was totally unacquainted with the coast, and therefore he must rely on the pilot’s local knowledge for the safety of his ship.
“You are perfectly sure, pilot,” said the captain, “you are well acquainted with the coast?”
“Do I know my own name, sir.”
“Well, mind, I warn you not to approach too near the shore.”
“Now make yourself aisy, sir; in troth you may go to bed iv you plaise.”
“Then shall we stand on?”
“Why—what else would we do?”