My reason for leaving him was a sudden call I received to again join the army. I started on the fifth of November, 1819: I was ordered to Plymouth, where I joined the Third Veteran Battalion, which was about a thousand strong at the time, and from Plymouth we went on to Ireland, where we landed at the Cove of Cork and marched through Cork to Fermoy. We went on next day to Templemore, which took us two or three days, and after staying there about a month, three companies of the regiment, myself being one of the number, were ordered to Tralee in county Kerry. When we arrived at Tralee a detachment of a lieutenant, myself, a corporal, and seventeen men were ordered next day to go to Dingle, which is situated on a large tongue of land, and here we were again stationed in barracks for about a year, our principal duty being to guard the coast against the smuggling that was at that time being carried on to a very great extent.
We were chiefly under the command of the coastguard captain, whose name was Collis. It was astonishing to see the many manœuvres which the inhabitants practised in this art of smuggling. I remember once being called out by the captain to search a house that he had received information about as containing a quantity of smuggled tobacco. I went with twelve men and the captain to the house, and at the door we were met by three ruffianly-looking Irishmen, whose conversation we could not understand at all: however, we passed on and searched the house, at one end of which were standing three cows, which did not seem to me at the time to be very homely guests. At first we could find nothing, so we were proceeding to search the outside, when I saw the three men laughing. Not feeling at all satisfied I turned the cows out and looked under the litter, where I discovered a trap-door, under which when I had opened it I found a flight of steps leading into a cellar, which contained upwards of twenty bales of tobacco. This made the men's countenances change instantaneously. We brought this up, but still not being content we searched farther into the garden, and finding that ground had lately been moved, we disturbed it again and turned up about twelve bales more that were concealed there. These we conveyed in press-carts to the captain's house, and received a good supper for our services and extra pay, mine amounting to half a crown and the privates' less in proportion. On another occasion, when we were again out on the search, we passed what we thought was a funeral, to which we presented arms, but which we afterwards found was nothing but smuggled tobacco put into a box of the shape of a coffin with a pall over, and in this way conveyed into security. Such and similar transactions were frequent during our stay here, the inhabitants being of the very wildest sort. Once even a cotton-ship drove ashore, and we had the greatest difficulty in keeping them from plundering it.
At last, however, we were ordered back to Plymouth, so had to march to Waterford Harbour, whither after joining our other companions at Tralee we proceeded, and embarking on board a transport, arrived at Plymouth about June in the year 1821. Thus finally ended my military career, which had lasted seventeen years and seven months, the greater part of the time having been spent on active service. I was discharged on the same pension as before of ninepence a day, that having been stopped during my stay in the Third Veteran Battalion.
From Plymouth I and my wife marched back to Studland, where we took a house, and my master immediately took me back to work. I drifted about, however, between one or two trades, and finally took a little public-house, where I and my wife lived pretty prosperously till she died. I began to feel rather unwell, too, and thought it best to give up working and the public-house: so I wrote to the authorities at Chelsea, and obtained through the influence of a kind gentleman an addition of threepence a day to my pension, making a shilling in all; and with that I am now living in a house that was bequeathed to me for as long as I live by my late master, as comfortably as these circumstances and the interposition of a few friends can make me.
And to conclude I may add that I have striven here as well as my faculties will allow, though I know that is imperfectly, to sum up as it were in a small compass, so that they can be read over in a few hours by the residing populace, the leading scenes of my life, coupled as they have been with the various campaigns I served in; and though I am sorry that I cannot give the reader fuller details of the Peninsula and Waterloo, yet I think that if any even of my comrades themselves who went through the same campaigns, were to take up my work to examine it, they could not say that such information as I have been able to give has been wrong.
THE END.
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