Gil the Gunner Part 6

"We may run against each other sometimes out yonder; but it is a great country, and you may be stationed hundreds of miles away."

"I hope so," I thought.

"Rather a rough time to come for you, my lad," he said, with what I took to be a cynical smile; "but you will soon get used to the noise of the guns."

"Of course," I said coldly. "Tell me more about the country. There are plenty of tigers, I suppose?"

"Oh yes, but far more mosquitoes."

"Well, I know that," I said.

"You have never seen one, I suppose?"

"No."

"Then don't make the same mistake as the Irish private's wife at Madras."

"What was that?" I said.

"It is an old story that you may not have heard. She was on shipboard, and eagerly listening to an old sergeant's wife who had been there before; and this woman told her that one of the great troubles of the country was the mosquito. 'An' what's a moskayto?' said the Irishwoman.

'Oh, a horrid creature with a long trunk, and it plunges it into you, and sucks your blood.' At last they reached the coast, and the young Irishwoman was eagerly watching the sh.o.r.e with its troops of turbaned natives, palanquins, and mounted men, till suddenly a train of elephants came in sight, steadily nodding their heads and waving their trunks.

The young Irishwoman drew a long deep breath, and looked as if she would never see home again, and the old sergeant's wife asked her what was the matter. 'Oh,' she said, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, 'is thim moskaytoes?'"

Captain Brace appeared so different as he told me this little old anecdote, that I felt as if I should like him after all; but the light died out of his face again, and he looked at me in a troubled way, as if vexed with himself for having been so frivolous.

"How long have you been back home?" I said, so as to keep up the conversation, for it was miserable to sit there in the silence.

"Six months," he said gravely.

"That's a good long holiday," I said merrily.

"Holiday, boy?" he cried, in so wild and pa.s.sionate a tone that I was startled, and looked at him wonderingly as he turned away.

"I--I beg your pardon," I said apologetically. "I'm afraid I have blurted out something which I ought not to have said."

"Never mind--never mind," he said, with his head averted; "of course you could not know."

He sank down on the edge of his berth with so sad and dejected a look that I rose and went to him.

"Pray forgive me," I said. "I did not know."

He looked up at me with his face drawn and old.

"Thank you," he said, taking my hand. "There is nothing to forgive, my lad. You may as well know, though. Brother-officers ought to be brotherly, even if they are a little strange. It was a case of illness.

I took some one home--to save her life, and--"

He was silent for some moments, and I could feel his hand tremble as he pressed mine very hard, and seemed to be making a desperate effort to be calm, and master the emotion which evidently thrilled him.

"G.o.d knows best," I heard him whisper, hardly above his breath. And then aloud, "I am going back to my duties, you see--alone."

The painful silence which followed was broken by the sound of a bell, and he started up quite a changed man.

"There!" he said, in a strange tone, "soldiers have no time for sorrow.

It is the dead march, Vincent. Then a volley over the grave, and a march back to quarters to a lively quick-step. Come, brother-officer, we are abreast of Gravesend: as far as we shall go to-night, and there's the dinner-bell. Right shoulder forward. March!"

"No," I said to myself. "I am sorry for him, but he is too strange. I shall never like Captain Brace."

CHAPTER FIVE.

Rough weather as soon as we were out of the mouth of the Thames gave me something else to think about, and I did not spend much time in calculating whether I liked Captain Brace or not; but I suppose I behaved pretty well, for in two days I went on deck feeling a little faint, and as if the great ship was playing at pretending to sink beneath my feet.

"Come, that's good," said a familiar voice; and I found Captain Brace had crossed over to where I was holding on by the bulwark, looking at the distant sh.o.r.e. "Why, Vincent, you are a better sailor than I am."

I smiled at him in rather a feeble manner.

"Oh, I mean it," he said. "It has been very rough for the past forty-eight hours, and I have been, as you know, pretty queer, but I forced myself to get up this morning, and it has done me no end of good.

I have been down to see the men, thinking I would rouse them up, but, poor fellows, they are all so utterly miserable that I think I'll leave them alone to-day."

Human nature is curious; for I was so glad that the men were worse than the officers, that I felt quite cheerful, and after breakfast--to which I went down feeling as if I could not touch a bit, but did touch a good many bits and drops--I found myself walking up and down the deck with Captain Brace, taking an interest in the towering masts with their press of sail, and the flashing, sparkling water, which came with a b.u.mp every now and then against the side of the great ship, and scattered a fine shower of spray over the bows.

For the wind was brisk, and the ship heeled over pretty well as she sped down Channel.

In the course of the day, during which I began to be acquainted with the officers, a pa.s.senger or two slowly made his appearance. I say "his,"

because not a lady showed on deck during the week. Then, as the weather fell calm, they all came up nearly at once; and when I caught sight of the stout elderly lady who had been so affectionate to me in the docks, I felt disposed to go down. But there was no occasion. The week's confinement below, and their miserable state of illness, had pretty well swept away the recollection of the drowning scene, and beyond one or two looks and a whisper pa.s.sed on from one to the other, which I felt were about me, there was nothing to make me feel nervous and red.

I am not going to give a description of our long voyage round by the Cape, for that was our course in those days; let it suffice if I say that we sailed south into warmer seas, with the torrid sun beating down upon us in a way which Captain Brace said would prepare us for what was to come. We had storms in rounding the Cape, and then we sailed on again north and east.

It was a long, slow, monotonous voyage, during which I went on learning a good deal of my profession, for there was drilling every morning on deck, and the draft of men were marched and countermarched till the rough body of recruits began to fall correctly into the various movements, while I supplemented the knowledge I had acquired as a cadet, and more than once obtained a few words of praise from the sergeant with the draft, and what were to me high eulogies from Captain Brace.

"Nothing like mastering the infantry drill, Vincent," he said to me one day. "Young officers know, as a rule, far too little of foot drill. It will save you a good deal of trouble when we get there."

It was monotonous but not unpleasant, that voyage out. We had the customary sports on crossing the line; we fished and caught very little, though the men captured the inevitable shark with the lump of salt pork; and used the grains, as they called the three-p.r.o.nged fork, to harpoon dolphins. I had my first sight of flying fish, and made friends with the officers. Then there was music and dancing on the hot moonlit nights; deck quoits under the awning by day; a good deal more sleep than we took at home; and at last we reached Ceylon and touched at Colombo, where everything struck me as being wonderfully unlike what I had pictured in my own mind.

"Well," said Captain Brace one evening, after we had had a run together on the sh.o.r.e, "what do you think of the Cingalese?"

"That they look so effeminate," I said.

"Exactly," he replied, nodding his head as I went on.

"They are not bad looking; but it looks so absurd to see those elderly men dressed in muslins, with drawers and clothes that put me in mind of little girls about to go to a children's party or a dance."

He looked amused, and I continued--

"And then the ordinary people, with their oily black hair all done up in a knot behind and held by a comb. It does look so womanish."

"Yes; to us," said Captain Brace. "But their clothes are comfortable for the hot climate, and that is more than you will be able to say of ours when you get out in the plains in full uniform some day."