CHAPTER XXII.

IN THE LUNETTE ST. LAURENT.

At first a kind of—shall we say it?—savage joy and exultation swelled up in the breast of Goring at the prospect of being face to face with Cadbury again, and already in fancy he was covering with his pistol the spectrum of the peer's thick-set, pudgy person, for he had at first serious doubts—though they were both on the Continent—that the latter would accept his challenge.

'Well, I have faced much in my short time, and figured in many things; but I never thought to do so in such an old-fashioned affair as a duel!' he said, with a grim smile, to his new friend Gabion.

And he wondered what Tony Dalton, Jerry Wilmot, and others of the battalion now far away beyond the equator, would think of the event, when tidings would reach them that he had been shot by Lord Cadbury, or had shot the latter—and in a duel!

How strange it sounded to English ears now!

He wrote to his solicitors to settle a sum stated—a handsome annuity on Alison, if she was found—one that would keep her every way independent alike of her father and Lord Cadbury, if he fell by the hand of the latter—instructions which made those quiet and very acute legal practitioners, Messrs. Taype, Shawrpe, and Scrawly, open their eyes very wide indeed, when the letter reached them at Gray's Inn Square.

His reveries were not very rose-coloured, as he might be a dead man long before this time to-morrow, he thought, while looking at the clock; however, it did not impair his appetite, and he and Victor Gabion spent the evening at the Café Grisor, in the Rue Von Shoonhoven, listening to the grand organ which is played by machinery, while enjoying their wine and cigars, far into the small hours of the morning.

Yet we may be sure that there are few men, if they told truth, but would acknowledge that they felt a very unpleasant emotion when thinking that when another round of the clock was achieved their part in this world might be over—ended and done with!

In the morning he was in a brighter mood, and, though infuriated against Cadbury, had no desire to kill, but only to wound him, to the end that he might wring from him the secret of what he had done with Alison. He was a good marksman—had been a musketry instructor—and with rifle and revolver had done some great things among the big game and hill tribes in India.

A revelation was all he wanted. On his own life, save in so far as Alison Cheyne was concerned, he set little store. How short seemed the minutes he used to spend with her under the old beeches at Chilcote, or when in Laura Dalton's at the Grange. Short and few, and how much alone he used to feel when not with her!

Now how much more alone he felt, when he seemed to have so mysteriously and painfully lost her!

After some coffee, backed by a chasse—i.e., dashed with cognac—he and Gabion—with the latter's case of pistols—departed before sunrise in a voiture for the citadel—a pretty long drive, through winding and tortuous streets, crossing between the great shipping basins at the Quai Hambourg, and ere long the houses were left behind, and the great grassy embankments of the fortress rose before them.

Every feature of the scenery, every detail of what he saw, however petty and trivial, impressed itself curiously upon the mind of Bevil Goring on this eventful morning.

A group of old peasant women, with wide dark-blue or black cloaks and coal-scuttle bonnets, gossiping in the roadway; children at cottage doors; Flemish labourers, with hard and earnest types of face, leisurely filling their huge pipes with tobacco; a boy sitting on a gate, munching a straw, and dreaming perhaps of the future; the view of the vast Scheldt, curving in a mighty sweep round the flat green Tête de Flandres, with all its steamers and other shipping.

The mighty cathedral spire, and all the thousands of high-peaked roofs and masses of the quaint city, thrown forward in dark outline against the lurid and vapoury red of the winter morning sky, all seen like a vast panorama from the green heights of the citadel. Goring recalled the first morning he had seen the latter from the deck of the Rotterdam, and had looked at its great gaping embrasures and lunettes, well flanked out, with the leisurely interest it cannot fail to have in a soldier's eye.

He was now perhaps looking upon Nature, with all her beauties, for the last time, and the coming spring and summer might be as nought to him, even after the wealth that had come upon him so unexpectedly; but if he was fated to fall by Cadbury's pistol his chief regret was not for these things, but the fear that, unless those in another world are cognisant of what passes in this, he would never know the fate of Alison Cheyne, or penetrate the veil that hid her whereabouts in mystery now!

He listened somewhat as one in a dream to Victor Gabion, who was drawing his attention, with no small pride and enthusiasm, to the features of the mighty model citadel, which is now so deserted in aspect, and the streets in the immediate vicinity of which consist chiefly of the ruins of the arsenals and magazines, that were destroyed in the great siege of 1832, when only 4,500 Dutchmen, under old General Chassé, defended themselves with such desperation against 55,000 Frenchmen, under Marshal Gerard.

'My grandfather commanded a regiment on that occasion,' said Gabion, 'and opened the ball by attacking this part—the Lunette St. Laurent, which lies nearest to the town. The trenches were nine English miles long, and sixty-three thousand shot and shell were fired into the place before Chassé hauled down his colours. Sapristi! but that was something like fighting! Diable!' he added, 'we are not first on the ground.'

Bevil Goring was much mortified to think that in that matter he had been anticipated by Lord Cadbury, when some dark figures appeared hurrying towards them along the terre pleine of the ramparts; but it was not so, for those who approached proved to be brother-officers of Gabion's, who, having been informed by him of the affair, had come forth, as one said, to see 'le sport.'

All touched their caps, and, after a few passing remarks, looked round for the appearance of Cadbury and his second, but no one, save themselves, seemed to be in the misty space, or amid the wet grassy works of the citadel, and no voiture from the town was as yet seen approaching the entrance to it. All these Belgian officers, to Goring's eye, seemed very square-shouldered, as they wore blue cloaks over their gold epaulettes. All were chatting and laughing merrily, while smoking as if their lives depended upon it.

'Sapristi! Sacré Dieu!' muttered Victor Gabion, looking at his watch, 'ten minutes past eight, and no appearance of milord.'

Time passed on. The cathedral clock struck half-past eight, and eventually nine; but there was no appearance of Cadbury.

'Can he have fallen ill?' was the last of many surmises as to this most unexpected turn in the matter.

'Not likely; he would surely have had the courtesy to send a message, and not keep us loitering here,' said Captain Gabion.

The Belgians twirled their moustaches, and exchanged glances of derision.

Bevil Goring felt keen shame that any Englishman should act as Cadbury had done, and at last they all left the citadel and drove back to the city.

'Sapristi!' was of course muttered by everyone; 'what is to be done now?'

Goring thought, if he could meet his lordship, he would certainly attack him rearward with his foot, and, as Hudibras has it:

'Because a kick in that place more
Hurts honour than deep wounds before.'

At the very time that Goring and his companions were cooling their heels on the Lunette St. Laurent, the Firefly was steering close-hauled against a head wind, mid-way between the city and Flushing, with Lord Cadbury on board! Since coming there he had imbibed in his wrath and tribulation of spirit so many of Pemmican's brandies and sodas that Tom Llanyard was puzzled what to think, and his temper was horrible.

On the preceding afternoon, immediately after the departure of Victor Gabion, he had gone to the telegraph-office near the Bourse, and telegraphed a message to himself that he might confidently open it in the presence of Sir Ranald Cheyne. This he accordingly did, and, saying nothing of his recent visitor's purpose, he suddenly announced that he must instantly depart for London by steamer and train, but he hoped that Sir Ranald, whom he left alone in his misery, would telegraph to his club the moment he heard tidings of Alison, on which he, Lord Cadbury, would instantly return to Antwerp. And, after this, the hereditary legislator (by one descent) took his hurried departure.

Goring and his new friend Gabion, by making inquiries, were not long in discovering that he had sailed in his yacht. Could Alison, under any circumstances, be on board that yacht too?

His departure so suddenly, if no puzzle to Goring, was certainly one to Sir Ranald, upon whose acceptance the peer pressed a little cheque for any present necessities, and he was just then sick of the whole affair.

Bevil Goring could go near Sir Ranald no more, but, as he loitered near the hotel, could he have looked in upon him just then he would have forgiven him, and more than forgiven him all, his passion and fury.

'A letter for you, Sir Cheyne,' the concierge had said.

It was in a lady's hand, foreign in style, and addressed to 'Sir Ranald Cheyne, Hôtel St. Antoine, E.L.V.' He opened it, and read the contents in tremulous haste.

'Ailie—my own bird Ailie—it is about her, but what?' he exclaimed, as his old eyes filled with salt tears. Then he covered his face with his hands, and added, hoarsely, 'Oh, my child, my darling Ailie!'

He strove to rise from his chair, but fell faintly into the arms of the startled concierge.

CHAPTER XXIII.

ON THE MARCH TO PRAH.

And now, while Bevil Goring is lingering somewhat hopelessly in Antwerp, hearing nothing of Alison, and with all aim apparently taken out of his life, feeling how terrible is the unknown; and Laura Dalton and Bella Chevenix are counting the days of separation from those they love—the long-lost husband in one case, the misjudged lover in the other—the transport with the Rifles on board, was running along the western coast of Africa, and some twenty days or so after the departure from Southampton saw her, with the rest of the sea and land armament, at anchor off the Gold Coast.

Save in so far as it concerns the adventures and fate of our friends Tony Dalton and Jerry Wilmot, we do not intend to write the story of how we fought there and marched to Coomassie, or what was the cause of the war, as there are never wanting old soldiers to tell the true tale of the fields in which they have fought.

Sir Richard Steele, that pleasing old essayist, in one of his fugitive papers gives us an amusing account of an ordinary in Holborn, where a veteran captain, furnished with a wooden leg, was never weary of telling long stories about the battle of Naseby, in which he had borne a part; and it is always the result of every battle or campaign of note to have survivors of it, who become perhaps after-dinner bores.

Thus the veterans of Blenheim and Malplacquet would hear with impatience the terrors of the great Civil War, but inflicted their reminiscences in turn on the victors of Dettingen and Culloden. So in turn the heroes of the glorious Peninsula have now given place to those of Alma and Inkerman, and even their annals are fading now beside those of the luckless and disastrous fields of Southern Africa.

'The Army is full of men with stories in their lives,' said Dalton to Jerry one day, when talking of this very subject; 'but I think, by Jove, that mine is an exceptionally strange one.'

Jerry, on the other hand, was thinking it strange that he should have proposed to his friend's wife; but that fancy was all a thing of the past now, and—when his genuine love for Bella Chevenix was considered—seemed a phantasy, an absurdity, out of which the brilliant Laura had herself laughed him, and he had ceased to think of her before he ever thought hopefully of winning Bella; but surely love in these days of ours is not what it was a hundred years ago, when, as the author of 'Guy Livingston' has it, 'our very school-girls smile at the love-conceits which beguiled their grand-dames, even as they may have smiled at the philandering of Arcadia.'

New Year's Day, 1874, was to witness the landing of Sir Garnet Wolseley's expedition—army it could not be called—on the Gold Coast, consisting in all of about fifteen hundred men, exclusive of officers. The Black Watch—clad in grey for the first time since the regiment first mustered on the Birks of Aberfeldy, a hundred and forty years before—reckoned only nine hundred bayonets, nominally, with the 23rd Welsh Fusiliers and the Rifles, formed the infantry. The pipers alone wore the kilt.

Long before daybreak, the Rifles came ashore. The seamen of the ships of war and transports were supplied with lanterns, in case the landing should occur in the dark; but a brilliant moon, shining in a clear, blue, cloudless sky, rendered their use unnecessary, and the dark grey column, with its black accoutrements and tropical helmets, was soon massed on the beach, and began its march alone under Colonel Arthur Warren—a veteran of Alma and the Eastern campaign—and long ere the sun of the tropical noon was high overhead, had marched seven miles on its route to the front; the rest of the troops, with the Naval Brigade, came on within five or six days, and the advance was continued towards the Prah. The troops did not—as the people at home curiously expected—proceed towards that now famous river by railway, as the materials which were brought out for its construction were not laid down, so 'that wondrous jungle, with its foot-track, some twenty or thirty inches wide, between close walls of luxuriant greenery, swarming with strange and lovely birds, hateful reptiles, and monstrous insects, was not as yet to be disturbed by the locomotives steaming and screaming across the land.'

The troops marched without music. The pipes alone at times—playing the warlike airs of other ages—woke the echoes of the path to Coomassie, scaring the turkey buzzards, the scavenger bird, and others of the feathered tribes in the far recesses of the dense primeval forests.

But there were some parts of the route where it lay through still and lifeless dells like those in the south of Scotland, without shelter, and then the fierce sun of Africa shone upon them with its pitiless glare, till rifle-barrets and sword-blades grew hot to the touch, and, like many others, Jerry Wilmot and Dalton sighed as they thought of iced champagne, of bitter beer 'in its native pewter' (as Dickens has it), and the fleshpots of Aldershot.

But anon, near Accrofal, the march lay through groves of cotton-trees some two hundred and fifty feet high, like the giant vegetation of another world—trees with stems like the Duke of York's column, as Sir Garnet Wolseley afterwards said—shutting out the sun from the wilderness of bush below; and, as trees of other kinds were already shedding leaves, the men often marched more than ankle deep through fallen foliage.

The desertion of five thousand Fantee burden-bearers threw their task on the troops, who—the 42nd setting the example—carried the stores, in addition to their kits, arms, and accoutrements, with seventy rounds of ball cartridge, three ball-bags, haversacks, belts, bayonet, and Snider-Enfield rifle—terrible toil for white men in such a climate.

At each halting-place food was cooked by men in advance, and whenever a half-battalion came in it was fed at once, and the cooks went forward to the next. Jerry's man, O'Farrel, was 'invaluable as an improviser of grub,' as Jerry said, though his cuisine was somewhat inferior to the luxuries of the transport mess.

The first halt on New Year's night was at a place called Barraco, of which a party of the Naval Brigade were the first to possess themselves, and there they were as hearty and happy as British sailors could be, as the whole campaign in the bush seemed to them but a spree ashore. But they were chiefly in their glory at night, when an enormous camp fire was kindled by them—a fire upon which the absolute and entire trunks of trees were heaped—throwing its flames skyward and its red light far into the recesses and dingles of the untrodden forest.

So on New Year's night, in that strange and isolated spot, were gathered the general and his staff, the sailors and their officers, and all made merry—the blue-jackets stepping forth in succession to sing their best, and often raciest, forecastle songs.

On the next day's march, the second of January, the advanced guard raised a cheer.

'What's up?' asked Dalton—'the Ashantees in sight?'

'No,' replied an officer, 'but the Prah is—that famous river which they believe no white man will ever be able to cross.'

Nevertheless, it was crossed that evening—the first man who stemmed its current being Lieutenant William Grant, of the 6th Regiment. It is sometimes called the Boosemprah, or river of St. John.

Swift and muddy-coloured, here it was rolling with great force between banks that were almost perpendicular—it was seventy yards wide and nine feet deep. The foliage on the banks was singularly beautiful, and there the stupendous cotton-trees were towering high in the air above a rich undergrowth of palms and plantains.

The troops crossed it by a pontoon bridge, and a trimly-hutted camp for three thousand men was speedily formed by the engineers, and then tents were pitched for Sir Garnet and his staff. Near them were parked the artillery under Captain Rait. It consisted of two batteries of steel guns, rifled muzzle-loaders, with one capable of throwing a seven-pound shell, or an oblong twelve-pound shell—sources of unutterable terror to Ashantees. There was also a multiplying Gatling gun for musketry.

It was here that letters came from Koffee, the barbarous Ashantee king, expressive of a desire for peace, but not on such terms as the general could grant after having come so far; thus the advance on Coomassie, the capital, was still resolved on. The only written language of the people is Arabic, and the only persons who can write it are Moors; but their verbal language is the softest and most liquid on the Gold Coast, abounding in vowels and nearly destitute of aspirates.

The black and nearly nude ambassadors remained in camp for a brief time, and one of them, on seeing the practice of the Gatling gun, which sent streams of bullets in every direction to which its muzzle was turned, told his colleagues that 'it was vain to fight against foes so terribly armed.'

On this they taunted him with cowardice, of which they threatened to inform King Koffee, and, knowing what his doom would be, the unfortunate creature shot himself, and was buried on his own side of the river, when each Ashantee, in accordance with some ancient custom, threw a handful of dust on his body and took their departure.

It was evident that there would soon be fighting now. 'Sir Garnet's demands were that the king must release all European prisoners' (of whom he had several), 'pay £200,000 for the cost of the war, and sign in presence of our forces a treaty securing firmly the British Protectorate from future aggression. Private warnings, however, and the information gained by Lord Gifford and Major Russel in their scouting advance beyond the Prah, caused Sir Garnet to distrust completely all the king's overtures for peace.'

On the night after the dusky ambassadors had departed, Tony Dalton had command of an out-piquet in the direction of the enemy, and as the sunset passed away he had, as in duty bound, examined carefully all the ground in his vicinity.

A night piquet, especially in a wood and in a savage country, is always a post of danger. By day sentries can see about them more or less, but not so in the gloom of night, and in a jungly wilderness where savages might creep upon them unawares—even past or between them—and cut the piquet off. Hence no man thought of sleeping, and Dalton had at least one connecting sentry on the narrow track that led to the front where his line was posted.

The pipers of the Black Watch, playing tattoo in the hutted camp, had made the mighty woods of the Prah re-echo to the notes of the 'Pibroch of Donuil Dhu,' its last notes had died away in the leafy dingles, and as silence stole over the plain Dalton gave way to thought.

The war in which he was engaged had been stigmatised as one against savages, but they were savages who were far from being feeble foes; and if (as a print of the time said) 'by honour and glory is meant the creditable performance of duty at the call of the State, then is that just as applicable to soldiers and sailors who fight savages as to those engaged in the more showy scenes of European war. Her Majesty's troops do not pick and choose either the enemies they have to encounter, or the regions wherein their valour and fortitude are to be displayed; and it is unjust to shower laurels on one set of men, while another, equally employed in defending our empire, are deprived of due recognition.'

It was with a consciousness of this—the high sense of duty—that our troops landed cheerfully on the perilous Gold Coast; yet Dalton, like many of his comrades, had been elsewhere engaged in 'the big wars that make ambition virtue,' and he felt that this Ashanti strife, though a petty one, was fraught with many dangers peculiar to itself. Would he escape them, and yet be spared to enjoy the society of the now brilliant and beautiful Laura and their sweet little daughter? How hard if the bullet of a naked savage deprived him of that double joy, and gave him a grave amid the eternal forest that spread from the Prah to Coomassie!

He tried to shun this thought—that almost fear, which came to his naturally gallant spirit—but failed. It would come again and again, with a persistency that troubled him; for life seemed dearer, sweeter now, than it had ever been before. He never thought of sleep, but indulged in waking dreams of scenes and faces far away in pleasant Hampshire, and in hopes that the wild work would soon be over, and hideous Coomassie won.

The night wind was whispering among rushes and reeds of wondrous growth, or stirring the foliage of the cotton-trees, between which could be seen the stars—constellations unknown in our northern hemisphere; and he could hear the ripple of the Prah as it poured between its banks on its way to St. Sebastian, the chirp of enormous insects, the twitter of brilliantly plumaged birds, scared by the red gleams of the watch-fire. Round the latter were the men of the picket, in their grey Ashanti uniforms and tropical helmets, in groups, sitting or lying beside their piled rifles, the barrels of which reflected the sheen of the flames.

As Dalton looked and listened, he felt as one in a dream, amid surroundings so strange, and far over the seas his heart seemed to go, to where no doubt at that hour little Netty, his daughter—his daughter, how strangely it sounded!—was sleeping by her mother's side 'like a callow cygnet in its nest'—Netty so recently found, one of whose existence he had been so long ignorant.

The two tresses of hair he had got in such hot haste at Southampton were many a time drawn forth from the breast-pocket of his Ashanti patrol-jacket, to be tenderly unfolded, kissed, and replaced, for as yet no locket had been procured in which to enshrine them, and such an ornament was not likely to be procured among the reed-built wigwams of Coomassie.

Not far from him lay Jerry Wilmot, indulging in thoughts of his own—wondering on what terms were now Bella Chevenix and haughty Lady Julia Wilmot, his cold and heartless mother, who had seen him depart from his father's house to face peril, disease, toil, and, it might be, death, so callously!

Adjacent to Dalton's post was many a horrid souvenir of the hasty retreat made across the Prah by the army of King Koffee, by torchlight, on the night of the 29th of the preceding November, when three hundred men perished. On the skirts of our camp—the foreshore of the Prah—their festering corpses lay in scores, and many that were half skeletons hung curiously and terribly from the branches of trees that arched over the stream. In one place a dead Ashanti sat propped against the stem of a palm-tree, with his head between his hands and his elbows on his knees; around him lay heaps of bones, among which the turkey buzzards waddled. All these men had perished by having failed to achieve a passage by the use of their rope bridge.

Suddenly the sound of musketry close by, ringing out sharply upon the air of the silent night, made the whole picket start to their feet.

'Stand to!' cried Dalton, drawing his sword. 'Unpile!' was the next order, and the picket faced its line of sentries.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.