Oliver Ellis, etc

Front matter

OLIVER ELLIS OR THE FUSILIERS EY JAMES GRANT AUTHOR OF " THE ROMANCE OF WAR LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, Limited Broadway, Ludgate Hill GLASGOW. MANCHESTER, AND NEW YORK JAMES GRANT'S NOVELS. RECENT VOLUMES. Violet Jermyn. Derval Hampton. Dulcie Carlyon. Jack Chaloner. Miss Cheyne of Essilmon'T, Love's Labour Won. PKEFACE. " In regard to prefaces," says the author of " Curiosities of Literature," — " ladies consider them so much space for a love story lost, though the Italians call them la salsa del libro, — the spice of the book." Be this as it may, I must mention that many of the men whose names occur in these pages, bore the part ascribed to them during the operations of Sir Charles Grey's army in the Antilles. A duel, nearly similar to that which is described as having taken place on board of the Adder frigate, actually occurred on the deck of one of H.M.'s ships of war when lying in a South-American port, in 1821.

The situation of the wreck in the Isle of Tortoises was suggested to me by the discovery of a mysterious vessel in a cavern of the island of Baccalieu, when I was at Fort Townsend in Newfoundland, where it excited much speculation. Aa a few Mexican dollars were found on the rocks near, she was supposed to be Spanish ; and such rumours were circulated of the vast treasure she contained, that H.M.S.

Preface

. Comus was despatched from Halifax tt. Investigate -he matter ; but the hull contained a few dead bodies alone. That the marvellous might not be wanting, there was told a story of a gigantic anchor being thrown by the sea on the desert shore near her. There it lay for a time, till a party came to remove it ; but it had vanished, like the treasure, — by no mortal agency, of course ! 26, Danube Street, Edinburgh. May, 1SC1. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAOR 1. BOYHOOD 1 2. THE MINISTER 7 3. MESSRS. HARPY, QUIRKY, AND MACFARISEE 12 4. — APPLEWOOD 18 5. THE WILL 23 6. — AMY LEE 29 7. TWO YOUNG HEARTS 34 8. FROM POETRY TO PROSE AGAIN 39 9. SEQUEL TO THE STORY OF THE WILL 43 10. — MAHOGANY V. LAW 54 11. — EDINBURGH IN 1792 61 12. — THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE 68 13. — THE PRESS-GANG 77 14. — MR. MACROCODILE 83 15. — THE PRESSING-TENDER 89 16.

THE WHITE-SLAVE SHIP 93 17. — JACK THE MARINE 97 18. — OVERBOARD ! 100 19. THE SANDRIDGE LIGHT 105 20. — DICK KNUCKLEDUSTER Ill CONTENTS. VI PACE CHAP. 114 21. — RETRIBUTION 121 22. — COMPTON RENNEL 23. THE "MAID AND THE MAGPIE " '■^ i) 1 SO 24. SERGEANT DRUMBIRREL iu-J 1 .7 25. HEAD-QUARTERS 26. THE ROUTE I44 27. THE " ADDER " FRIGATE 150 28.— land! 159 29. — THE SNAKE 167 30. THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT '. 175 31. THE STORY OF EULALIE 184 32. STORY OF EULALIE CONTINUED 192 33. OUR ESTEEM PROGRESSES 204 34. THE MANGROVE CREEK 209 35. THE EMIGRANT PRIEST 214 36. THE SPY 223 37. ANXIETY • 228 38. A REVELATION 232 39. A SEA OF FIRE 242 40. THE LANDING 246 41. — LA CHAPELLE 250 42. A PAIR OF COLOURS 258 43. — a halt 264 44. THE SKIRMISH AT LE MORNE ROUGE 26/ 45. — THE BLANK FU3ILADE 272 46. CAPTURE OF ST. PIERRE , 279 47. — THE CONVENT OF ST. URSULE CONTENTS.

VII CHAP. PAGE 48. LA FLEUR d'epee 295 49. THE ASSAULT 303 50. — "smith" of THE ROYALS 307 51. — THE HURRICANE 313 52. THE DESERT ISLAND 322 53. THE TREASURE-SHIP 328 54. A SURPRISE 335 55. — we visit TnE "galleon" 341 56. — knuckleduster's story 344 57. — a sail in sight 354 58.— saved ! 361 59. — captain cranky 365 60. — the yellow fever 369 61. — i rejoin the regiment 373 62. — the dos d'ane 377 63. — the worshippers of the devil 381 64. — scipio 386 65. — capture of point a petre 390 66. — the obeah negro 397 67. — m. de thoisy 402 68. — a discovery 409 69. — georgette 414 70. — a crisis 420 71. — conclusion CHAPTER J. boyhood. " When is a man the arbiter of his own destiny ? sot he is like the leaf which is torn from a tree, and which the wind of heaven blows about." This fate has been my owd, as peculiarly as it has been that of other military wanderers in life ; for your soldier is a great traveller both by sea and land, an errant and a restless spirit ; yet his travels and his restlessness are involuntary ; for the moment he dons the red coat he ceases to be the master of " his own proper person," or (like the leaf torn from the tree) to be the arbiter of his own destiny ; but must march, sail, or fight wheresoever he may be ordered, obedience being the first word in his vocabulary.

He becomes a machine in some sort, yet not a machine according to the degrading idea of his sapient majesty of Prussia ; for the history of mankind will prove that the most brilliant achievements in war, and the most happy resul/s in peace, like those efforts by which thrones have been won and nations freed, had their origin in the influence of the hums a heart, and in the mastery of the human passions, when hope, religion, or love of country, fired the tjoldier's spirit ! Who, then, will dare to say that the poor private soldier who mounts a deadly breach, or rushes on a B hedge of steel, risking mutilation, wounds, and death, wit • out the hope of future fame if he falls, or the chance of sharing in the glory of the victory his valour wins if he survive,— is the mere automaton, the cold in blood and basely utilitarian would have him to be ?

Love of country, a noble sentiment, is ever strong in the heart of a true soldier. When the 67th, or South Hamp shire regiment, commanded by Callender of Craigforth, landed at Portsmouth in 1772, after a long career of dangerous foreign service, with one accord and impulse the whole of the men threw themselves on the beach and kissed the pebbles. The reader will pardon the professional vanity, or esprit de corps, which makes me thus prelude the plain un varnished story of a soldier's career, — a description of some of the adventures I have passed through, the persons I have met, and the scenes I have witnessed on my march through life. I was born in the camp of Burgoyne's army when it was on the borders of Lake Champlain : thus, the first sounds to which my infant ears became accustomed were the rattle of the drum, the notes of the Kentish bugle, the tread of marching feet, and the thoughtless hilarity of my father's comrades.

I remember myself first as a little boy, the pet and play thing of the soldiers, who made bats and balls, tops and toys for me ; who allowed me to ride on their backs, and to hold on by their queues, whenever I had a mind to do so ; who told me old stories of Wolfe's days, of the sie»e of Belleisle, and of wild adventures in West Florida. I remember of marches from town to town, from camp to barrack, and from fort to fort — all of which seem like dreams to me now ; while the troops trod on, through clouds of Bummer dust or the deep snows of an American winter, and T with other regimental imps, sat merrily and cosily perched BOYHOOD. on the summit of a baggage-waggon, among trunks, arm* chests, knapsacks, pots, kettles, and soldiers' wives, who smoked, sung, and swore occasionally, and bantered the escort who marched on each side, with bayonets fixed.

A thousand childish incidents of the soldiers' kindness to me when a boy (because they loved my father well), are linger ing in my memory, while many a more important event of the days and years between that time and this, is for gotten for ever. My father was a captain in a Scottish regiment, which formed a portion of Sir John Bnrgoyne's unfortunate army. He had received a severe wound at the storming of a stockaded fort near Skenesborough, and had to undergo the delicate operation of trepanning, which was skilfully done with a silver plate, whereon he had fancifully inscribed his name and the number of the regiment. He was afterwards slain in a skirmish on the banks of the Hudson, and was hastily buried on the field. The last time I saw him, was when my mother, with her eyes full of tears, held me up in her arms that the poor man might kiss me, as he was buckling on his sword, while the troops went hurriedly to the front.

The livelong day the roar of the distant musketry rung in the pale woman's ears and in her soul, as the din of battle rose and fell upon the gusty wind. At sunset the troops came back defeated and dispirited ; but my father not among them. He was lying at the foot of a pine-tree, shot through the heart ! After this bereavement, my mother returned home with her two children (my sister Lotty and myself), and, renting a small cottage, about a mile from her native town, lived the quiet and secluded life that the scanty pension of a captain's widow allotted her. I was two years older than dear little Lotty, who was a pretty black-eyed girl, with a fair skin, and greaf. masses of dark-brown hair. b At our mother's side, as children, we prattled and talked of the regiment. It was the centre around which our thoughts revolved ; the feature upon which all our conversations and infant recollections hinged, though its ranks were filling fast with new faces, and the old had long since forgotten us; yet it was always " the ltegiment" — our once happy, movable home — that we spoke of, as of some good friend that loved us, aud was far away ; and I loved the coarse red uniform, with its pewter buttons and white braid, for its wearers seemed a race of men apart from the cold and selfish society among which my mother's diminished means and widowhood had cast her.

She, poor woman ! seemed to feel something of this, too ; for more than once, on beholding a wayfaring soldier passing through our quiet little village, I have seen her start, with her eyes full of tears, as her thoughts reverted to him who was sleeping far away in his lonely grave by the shore of the mighty Hudson. Like that old Scottish lady who is so beautifully portrayed in the " Lounger," " when she spoke of a soldier, it was in a style above her usual simplicity ; there was a sort of swell in her language which sometimes a tear (for her age had not lost the privilege of tears) made still more eloquent. She kept her sorrows, like the devotions that solaced them, sacred to herself; they threw nothing of gloom over her deportment ; a gentle shade only, like the fleckered clouds of summer, that increase, not diminish, the benignity of the season."

The pretty village in which we resided ky at the bottom of a dell, which, in shape, resembled a great natural basin. Its sloping sides were clothed with luxuriant wood. Above the ancient trees, the old grey belfry of the village church —a church in which Knox had preached and the Covenant was signed — peeped forth from a mass of ivy that clambered to its weathercock. Through the dell brawled a rapid stream, which came foaming down from the mountains, and turned the great mossy wheel of an ancient mill, which, with BOYHOOD. the blue-slated manse, the quaint old kirk, aud the ruined fragment of a haunted tower, wherein, as legends averred. a spectre wandered and treasure was buried, formed the four principal features in the valley. The stream where the spotted trout lurked in the deeper holes, or shot to and fro in the sunbeams, was crossed by a little bridge, which, in my boyhood, I considered a great work of art, though, in after-years, I was astonished to find it so diminutive.

The rush of the mill-race, as it poured in white foam over a wooden duct ; the voices of the children that played on the green before the village school ; the ceaseless clink of the hammer in the forge, which formed the rendezvous of all the male gossips ; the occasional note of a blackbird or a cushat dove from the coppice, — were the only sounds that were heard in our valley, save when the tolling of the church bell announced the Sunday, when the air was hushed and still, "and even the forest leaves seemed stirred with prayer." Though little more than a mile from a large and populous city, our hamlet was as secluded as if it had been twenty leagues distant. No thought had we then of railroads, electric wires, or Atlantic cables ; and even the stage-coach passed far from our wooded locality.

Our cottage was neat and small : it was situated on a slope of the dell which faced the south, and was buried among the woodbine, clematis, and sweetbrier, which oovered all its rustic porch, grew around the windows, and clambered over the chimney-tops. I can yet, in memory, see the little parlour in which we used to sit in the long nights of winter, by the cheerful fire, above which hung my father's sword and old gilt gorget, with two engravings of General Wolfe and the Marquis of Cornwallis in full uniform, with white breeches and keven huller hats ; and where we spent the calm evenings of Bummer, when the Ught lingered long in the blushing west, and the perfume of the sweetbrier, the wild roses, the ripening fields, and of the fragrant earth, on which the dew was descending, were borne through the open windows ; while my mother — her grey hair smoothly banded under a spotless white cap, her black dress and meek sweet face making her look so like a picture, her work-basket and knitting apparatus at hand— read to Lotty and me, or spoke of scenes and adventures she had seen when far away from our present quiet locality, as she had an excellent memory for anecdotes and a refined literary taste.

Thus she be came our sole preceptress. Save old Dr. Twaddel, the minister, and the village doctor, we had no neighbours, and consequently few visitors. My mother spoke seldom of our father ; but we could see by the current of her thoughts that they rarely ran on aught else than his memory. Hopes she had none, save those that were centred on us. So, for seven years, the blameless tenor of our even life rolled on. My mother's quiet gentleness and soft ladylike manner, together with her kindness to the poor of the village, the sick and dying, among whom she shared her widow's mite — the mite that in heaven shall become a talent of price, — caused her to be tenderly loved by all ; and I repent me now, even after the long lapse of many stirring years, that in her latter days, the tears that rolled over her pale and fast-furrowing cheeks were caused by my errors, and it may be, my selfish and resentful pride. IHE MINISTER.

Chapter II. The Minister

Time sped the faster that it sped unmarked; arid now I had reached that most important and unpleass&t period of a boy's life, when the necessity for increased action arrives ; and a period it too generally proves to all the delusions, the dreams, and the charms of childhood — I mean the time when grave old gentlemen begin to question us categorically, and, as it often seems, somewhat intrusively, upon our future plans, and to impress upon us the necessity of " doing some thing for ourselves." My mother, who had frequently spoken with me on thi3 subject, and seen with regret how my thoughts turned towards the army, of which she had now a terror, as being the too probable means of separating us for ever, resolved to con sult Dr. Twaddel, the minister, on the subject ; and in Scotland, " the minister" is always esteemed the second per son in the parish ; so to this consultation I consented, with some outward reluctance and considerable mental repugnance.

Our minister was a good kind of man in his own quiet way, though his excessive views of uprightness and pro priety, together with certain severe lectures he had read me for making midnight raids into his orchard, for shooting one of his hens with a penn^ cannon on the King's birthday (the 4th of June), and for burning "Johnnie Wilkes" in effigy in the churchyard, had made him somewhat of a bugbear to me. He made indifferent sermons, but capital whisky negus, and could take a comfortable share thereof, though eschewing all hearty mirth or levity, and adopting in his deportment that somewhat too solemn gravity and cold, hard external rigidity, with which the mass of the Scottish Lowlanders are tinged, and which makes their most sunny summer Sunday a day of gloom and silence. Like the majority of the northern clergy, he was a humble, meek, and well-meaning man, who, though he preached incessantly against the nothingness of this world and the good things thereof, had taken especial care to provide himself with a remarkably well-dowered helpmate.

Without brilliance of talent, he possessed just heart enough to find favour with the poor of his flock ; and head enough to accomplish his Sunday task, by emitting a hazy sermon on some old scrip tural text, which no one cared a jot about. Yet he was a good man withal, our old parish minister. I remember, on one occasion, while he was commencing his sermou in the gloomy little village church, an old man propping himself on a staff entered the aisle, and being a stranger, he looked wearily and wistfully round for a seat. Being clad in rather dilapidated garments, and having a canvas wallet for alms, such as meal and broken bread, no| attention was paid to him, either by 'the pew-openers or the congregation. The old man tottered along the aisle, and was about to seat himself humbly on the lower step of the pulpit stair, when the portly minister, with a glance of honest indignation on all around him, descended from the pulpit, and taking the aged mendicant by the hand, led him to his own pew, and placed him on a well-cushioned seat, beside his wife and family, to the no small discomfiture of the Misses Twaddel.

This silent rebuke was worth a thousand homilies ; it powerfully affected the whole congregation; and from that moment, the minister, though usually cold and reserved, completely won the esteem of my mother. To consult him on my affairs, we repaired to the manse, which was a hand some and comfortable modern villa, separated from the village church by an orchard and the humble burying-ground. THE MINISTER. 9 in which " the rude forefathers of the hamlet slept." We were speedily ushered into his presence in a snugly-curtained richly-carpeted, and fashionably-furnished room, which was so large, that our little cottage might have stood within it altogether. He received us rather kindly than politely, as he had a great esteem for my mother, though, since the ad vent of the felonious appropriation of a dozen of golden pippins and the slaughter of his best-laying hen, none whatever for me ; and while he reclined in an easy-chair and played with a large bunch of gold seals in one hand, or polished his bald head impatiently with the other, my mother, in a voice that was rendered tremulous by her maternal love and anxiety, briefly stated her wishes " concerning her boy Oliver."

After letting her relate her own story unaided, he rather sharply asked me what views I had for myself. I glanced timidly at my mother; for although now nearly sixteen, I felt like a child in her presence ; and at that moment, the influences of her faded cheek, her widow's cap, with its modest crimping, and her sweet sad face, were not lost upon me, though my proud spirit writhed under the humiliation of consulting even such a parish potentate as the minister concerning me or my affairs. " What views have you for yourself, sir 1 " reiterated the minister. '■' I wish to be — to be " I stammered and paused. " What, sir — speak out ! " continued the divine, autho ritatively. " Well, then, I wish to be a soldier." " A soldier — whew ! " he reiterated, with a tinge of sur prise and contempt in his tone.

" Like my father before me." " And leave your poor mother alone in her old age, you ungrateful loon ! you should add that," he added, bending his stern grey eyes angrily upon me. OLIVER ELLIS. I shrunk at these words, and was silent, for they found an accusing echo in my heart. ■ Could you endure his absence, Mrs. Ellis V " Alas !" said my poor mother, with her eyes full of tears, " adversity has taught me to endure all things patiently — a bitter art to cultivate ; but such a separation would be the hardest of all." " Then we must put him to Rome respectable business, where hard work and long hours will knock all silly notions out of his head. What kind of business would you like, young man ? " " I do not know, sir." " Then who should know, sir ? But no doubt you despise all manner of business."

I was silent, and my mother gave me an imploring glance to remain so. " You Cre a boy — a mere bairn yet," resumed the minister, in that contemptuous manner often adopted by testy old gentlemen to their juniors ; " but the trials of life will teach you the hollowness of those romantic fancies which are fostered by novels, playbooks, and such-like literary trash, of which, I doubt not, you have devoured over many already. You wish to be happy ?" " Of course, sir," said I, with a sigh of impatience ; for all this sounded uncomfortably like a lecture, or a scrap of the doctor's sermons. " Then you will find that it most truly consists in be stowing happiness on others." I pondered over this remark, for I was too young to understand the application of it. " Do you know the origin of happiness?" continued tho minister.

I could have said, Plenty of money and fun — a fine house, a fine horse, and so forth ; but I was silent, or merely said, "No." THE MINISTER. " Then hark you, Master Oliver Ellis — the origin of hap piness is contentment, and the resources of a mind humbled by the trials with which it pleaseth God to inflict us." " So I have heard you preach a thousand times," thought I ; and while I glanced around the magnificent drawing room, on his well-cushioned easy-chair, his amplitude of paunch and successive folds of chin, the idea did occur to me, that the apostles were content with fewer of this world's goods ; but I was silent again. In short, the minister talked of morality and duty — of business habits, of close application, and strict honesty, and so forth, until I was heartily weary. I seemed to listen, but heard him not ; for my thoughts were running far away on other things, and had soared into the region of sunshine and daydreams, until, after many trite common-places and in numerable pious nothings, he broke the spell by bluntly announcing that " the time was come when I must look about me.

I was now sixteen ; my mother was getting old ; she could not last for ever, and if anything happened to her, what would become of me." This cruel insinuation, so coldly uttered, cut me to the heart, and my mother's sad eyes involuntarily sought mine. She had often — too often in her sad and lonely hours — thought of the separation death might one day make be tween her penniless children and herself ; but to hear it thus roughly alluded to, was too much for her, and the poor woman wept aloud. The minister tried to console her by some hackneyed scriptural text : that man was made to mourn, — that he was sent into this world to be miserable, and had no business to be anything else ; but this burst of emotion on her part stifled every secret aspiration and every strong wish in me, and I assented to any plan his reverence had to propose, resolving to leave to him the onerous office of opening up the path that was to lead me to fortune and to fame.

OLIVER ELLIS. I He promised " to speak anent me to his doer," a literal, and often fatally literal phrase, applied by the Scots to their lawyer or " man of business," without consulting whom, many of them will not even vote for an M.P., or do the most trivial thing. " I'll tak' a thought— I'll spier o' my doer," being the answer in the country to almost everything proposed. Hence, in one week after our visit to the manse, I found myself in Edinburgh, and perched on the leathern summit of a high three-legged stool, in the office of Messrs. Harpy, Quirky, and Macfarisee, solicitors, eminent alike for their " sharp practice " and acute manner of handling all trouble tome or cloudy cases of insolvency.

Chapter III. Messrs

HARPY, QUIRKY, AND MACFARISEE. From the earliest period of which I can remember, I had fixed upon pursuing the career of a soldier. Notwith standing the grim specimens I had seen of it, during my father's service in the States, I deemed it a life of glitter, change, and jollity — a chain of pleasures — a long and romantic panorama. I saw only scarlet and feathers, gold lace, the glitter of epaulettes and the flash of steel, with music and sunshine ; and from amid this chaos came forth those airy castles and brilliant visions, which the mind of every imaginative and impulsive boy can fashion so readily — and too readily at times for his own peace ; as such fragile creations are but ill calculated to stand the rough shock ot' awakening, or the stern realities of every-dav life. MESSRS. HARPY, QUIRKY, AND MACFARISEE. 13 So it was with me.

My new occupation, with its in tolerable monotony, seemed a death-blow to all my hopes and romantic fancies ; while the manner and bearing of Messrs. Harpy, Quirky, and Macfarisee, were in no way calculated to reconcile me to my lot, or to enhance the value of the dog's pittance they doled out me, and a few other drudges of the quill. If, after a trial, I liked (ugh !) the law, I was to be indentured for five years, and to commence my legal studies at the college — to dive deep into " Stair's Institutes," " Dirlton's Doubts," and other light literature of a similar kind : money was to be raised to enable me pass muster ; but my growing repugnance to a civil life causrd many delays in making the final arrangements. It was my misfortune to have to do with three of the worst specimens of those legal and religious charlatans who bring discredit on a profession which, for three hundred years, has shed a brilliance over Scottish literature and Scot tish society.

If any such, now living, recognize themselvei in my delineation, the resemblance is entirely fortuitous, and they had better not boast of it. They had, I have said, a vast amount of " sharp practice," and law proved a dear commodity to those who dealt with them. The first partner was a wealthy idler, who gave himself insufferable airs, and affected to be "a man about town ; " but then he brought business to the firm, and gave it an air of respectability ; the second was a legal bully, miserly and underbred, longheaded and narrow-hearted ; for Mr. Quirky had been educated in one of the many charitable institutions with which the city abounds, and had come forth into the world a master in the science of subtlety, and without au emotion of sympathy for anything human or divine. Macfarisee was one of the most amusing of rogues.

With the vanity of the first and the subtlety of the second, he covered his many failings by a bland aspect of meek sanctity, and that entire garb of accurate blackcloth which, with a long visage and a white necktie, go far to impose upon the simple in Scotland. He was an elder, and reputed an upright pillar of the Church, and on each successive Sunday might be seen, with hands meekly folded, standing behind the brass platter wherein the offerings of the charitable were dropped. He never hid his holy candle under a bushel, but subscribed only to charities which published lists of the donors ; he out wardly and vehemently eschewed strong waters, laughter, gaiety, the world, the flesh, and the devil ; and yet, withal, had privately the reputation of being on the best possible terms with the latter.