THE GATHERING OF THE NATIONS

                                                     Chapter-11

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And now I come to a bit of my story that clean takes my breath away as I

think of it, and makes me wish that I had never taken the job of telling

it in hand.  For when I write I like things to come slow and orderly and

in their turn, like sheep coming out of a paddock.  So it was at West

Inch.  But now that we were drawn into a larger life, like wee bits of

straw that float slowly down some lazy ditch, until they suddenly find

themselves in the dash and swirl of a great river; then it is very hard

for me with my simple words to keep pace with it all.  But you can find

the cause and reason of everything in the books about history, and so I

shall just leave that alone and talk about what I saw with my own eyes

and heard with my own ears.

The regiment to which our friend had been appointed was the 71st

Highland Light Infantry, which wore the red coat and the trews, and had

its depot in Glasgow town.  There we went, all three, by coach: the

Major in great spirits and full of stories about the Duke and the

Peninsula, while Jim sat in the corner with his lips set and his arms

folded, and I knew that he killed de Lissac three times an hour in his

heart.  I could tell it by the sudden glint of his eyes and grip of his

hand.  As to me, I did not know whether to be glad or sorry; for home is

home, and it is a weary thing, however you may brazen it out, to feel

that half Scotland is between you and your mother.

We were in Glasgow next day, and the Major took us down to the depot,

where a soldier with three stripes on his arm and a fistful of ribbons

from his cap, showed every tooth he had in his head at the sight of Jim,

and walked three times round him to have the view of him, as if he had

been Carlisle Castle.  Then he came over to me and punched me in the

ribs and felt my muscle, and was nigh as pleased as with Jim.

"These are the sort, Major, these are the sort," he kept saying.

"With a thousand of these we could stand up to Boney's best."

"How do they run?" asked the Major.

"A poor show," said he, "but they may lick into shape.  The best men

have been drafted to America, and we are full of Militiamen and

recruities."

"Tut, tut!" said the Major.  "We'll have old soldiers and good ones

against us.  Come to me if you need any help, you two."

And so with a nod he left us, and we began to understand that a Major

who is your officer is a very different person from a Major who happens

to be your neighbour in the country.

Well, well, why should I trouble you with these things?  I could wear

out a good quill-pen just writing about what we did, Jim and I, at the

depot in Glasgow; and how we came to know our officers and our comrades,

and how they came to know us.  Soon came the news that the folk of

Vienna, who had been cutting up Europe as if it had been a jigget of

mutton, had flown back, each to his own country, and that every man and

horse in their armies had their faces towards France.  We heard of great

reviews and musterings in Paris too, and then that Wellington was in the

Low Countries, and that on us and on the Prussians would fall the first

blow.  The Government was shipping men over to him as fast as they

could, and every port along the east coast was choked with guns and

horses and stores.  On the third of June we had our marching orders

also, and on the same night we took ship from Leith, reaching Ostend the

night after.  It was my first sight of a foreign land, and indeed most

of my comrades were the same, for we were very young in the ranks.  I

can see the blue waters now, and the curling surf line, and the long

yellow beach, and queer windmills twisting and turning--a thing that a

man would not see from one end of Scotland to the other.  It was a

clean, well-kept town, but the folk were undersized, and there was

neither ale nor oatmeal cakes to be bought amongst them.

From there we went on to a place called Bruges; and from there to Ghent,

where we picked up with the 52nd and the 95th, which were the two

regiments that we were brigaded with.  It's a wonderful place for

churches and stonework is Ghent, and indeed of all the towns we were in

there was scarce one but had a finer kirk than any in Glasgow.

From there we pushed on to Ath, which is a little village on a river, or

a burn rather, called the Dender.  There we were quartered--in tents

mostly, for it was fine sunny weather--and the whole brigade set to work

at its drill from morning till evening.  General Adams was our chief,

and Reynell was our colonel, and they were both fine old soldiers; but

what put heart into us most was to think that we were under the Duke,

for his name was like a bugle call.  He was at Brussels with the bulk of

the army, but we knew that we should see him quick enough if he were

needed.

I had never seen so many English together, and indeed I had a kind of

contempt for them, as folk always have if they live near a border.

But the two regiments that were with us now were as good comrades as

could be wished.  The 52nd had a thousand men in the ranks, and there

were many old soldiers of the Peninsula among them.  They came from

Oxfordshire for the most part.  The 95th were a rifle regiment, and had

dark green coats instead of red.  It was strange to see them loading,

for they would put the ball into a greasy rag and then hammer it down

with a mallet, but they could fire both further and straighter than we.

All that part of Belgium was covered with British troops at that time;

for the Guards were over near Enghien, and there were cavalry regiments

on the further side of us.  You see, it was very necessary that

Wellington should spread out all his force, for Boney was behind the

screen of his fortresses, and of course we had no means of saying on

what side he might pop out, except that he was pretty sure to come the

way that we least expected him.  On the one side he might get between us

and the sea, and so cut us off from England; and on the other he might

shove in between the Prussians and ourselves.  But the Duke was as

clever as he, for he had his horse and his light troops all round him,

like a great spider's web, so that the moment a French foot stepped

across the border he could close up all his men at the right place.

For myself, I was very happy at Ath, and I found the folk very kindly

and homely.  There was a farmer of the name of Bois, in whose fields we

were quartered, and who was a real good friend to many of us.  We built

him a wooden barn among us in our spare time, and many a time I and Jeb

Seaton, my rear-rank man, have hung out his washing, for the smell of

the wet linen seemed to take us both straight home as nothing else could

do.  I have often wondered whether that good man and his wife are still

living, though I think it hardly likely, for they were of a hale

middle-age at the time.  Jim would come with us too, sometimes, and

would sit with us smoking in the big Flemish kitchen, but he was a

different Jim now to the old one.  He had always had a hard touch in

him, but now his trouble seemed to have turned him to flint, and I never

saw a smile upon his face, and seldom heard a word from his lips.

His whole mind was set on revenging himself upon de Lissac for having

taken Edie from him, and he would sit for hours with his chin upon his

hands glaring and frowning, all wrapped in the one idea.  This made him

a bit of a butt among the men at first, and they laughed at him for it;

but when they came to know him better they found that he was not a good

man to laugh at, and then they dropped it.

We were early risers at that time, and the whole brigade was usually

under arms at the flush of dawn.  One morning--it was the sixteenth of

June--we had just formed up, and General Adams had ridden up to give

some order to Colonel Reynell within a musket-length of where I stood,

when suddenly they both stood staring along the Brussels road.  None of

us dared move our heads, but every eye in the regiment whisked round,

and there we saw an officer with the cockade of a general's aide-de-camp

thundering down the road as hard as a great dapple-grey horse could

carry him.  He bent his face over its mane and flogged at its neck with

the slack of the bridle, as though he rode for very life.

"Hullo, Reynell!" says the general.  "This begins to look like business.

What do you make of it?"

They both cantered their horses forward, and Adams tore open the

dispatch which the messenger handed to him.  The wrapper had not touched

the ground before he turned, waving the letter over his head as if it

had been a sabre.

"Dismiss!" he cried.  "General parade and march in half-an-hour."

Then in an instant all was buzz and bustle, and the news on every lip.

Napoleon had crossed the frontier the day before, had pushed the

Prussians before him, and was already deep in the country to the east of

us with a hundred and fifty thousand men.  Away we scuttled to gather

our things together and have our breakfast, and in an hour we had

marched off and left Ath and the Dender behind us for ever.  There was

good need for haste, for the Prussians had sent no news to Wellington of

what was doing, and though he had rushed from Brussels at the first

whisper of it, like a good old mastiff from its kennel, it was hard to

see how he could come up in time to help the Prussians.

It was a bright warm morning, and  as the brigade tramped down the broad

Belgian road the dust rolled up from it like the smoke of a battery.

I tell you that we blessed the man that planted the poplars along the

sides, for their shadow was better than drink to us.  Over across the

fields, both to the right and the left, were other roads, one quite

close, and the other a mile or more from us.  A column of infantry was

marching down the near one, and it was a fair race between us, for we

were each walking for all we were worth.  There was such a wreath of

dust round them that we could only see the gun-barrels and the bearskins

breaking out here and there, with the head and shoulders of a mounted

officer coming out above the cloud, and the flutter of the colours.

It was a brigade of the Guards, but we could not tell which, for we had

two of them with us in the campaign.  On the far road there was also

dust and to spare, but through it there flashed every now and then a

long twinkle of brightness, like a hundred silver beads threaded in a

line; and the breeze brought down such a snarling, clanging, clashing

kind of music as I had never listened to.  If I had been left to myself

it would have been long before I knew what it was; but our corporals and

sergeants were all old soldiers, and I had one trudging along with his

halbert at my elbow, who was full of precept and advice.

"That's heavy horse," said he.  "You see that double twinkle?

That means they have helmet as well as cuirass.  It's the Royals, or the

Enniskillens, or the Household.  You can hear their cymbals and kettles.

The French heavies are too good for us.  They have ten to our one, and

good men too.  You've got to shoot at their faces or else at their

horses.  Mind you that when you see them coming, or else you'll find a

four-foot sword stuck through your liver to teach you better.  Hark!

Hark!  Hark! There's the  old music again!"

And as he spoke there came the low grumbling of a cannonade away

somewhere to the east of us, deep and hoarse, like the roar of some

blood-daubed beast that thrives on the lives of men.  At the same

instant there was a shouting of "Heh!  heh!  heh!" from behind, and

somebody roared, "Let the guns get through!" Looking back, I saw the

rear companies split suddenly in two and hurl themselves down on either

side into the ditch, while six cream-coloured horses, galloping two and

two with their bellies to the ground, came thundering through the gap

with a fine twelve-pound gun whirling and creaking behind them.

Behind were another, and another, four-and-twenty in all, flying past us

with such a din and clatter, the blue-coated men clinging on to the gun

and the tumbrils, the drivers cursing and cracking their whips, the

manes flying, the mops and buckets clanking, and the whole air filled

with the heavy rumble and the jingling of chains.  There was a roar from

the ditches, and a shout from the gunners, and we saw a rolling grey

cloud before us, with a score of busbies breaking through the shadow.

Then we closed up again, while the growling ahead of us grew louder and

deeper than ever.

"There's three batteries there," said the sergeant.  "There's Bull's and

Webber Smith's, but the other is new.  There's some more on ahead of us,

for here is the track of a nine-pounder, and the others were all

twelves.  Choose a twelve if you want to get hit; for a nine mashes you

up, but a twelve snaps you like a carrot."  And then he went on to tell

about the dreadful wounds that he had seen, until my blood ran like iced

water in my veins, and you might have rubbed all our faces in pipeclay

and we should have been no whiter.  "Aye, you'll look sicklier yet, when

you get a hatful of grape into your tripes," said he.

And then, as I saw some of the old soldiers laughing, I began to

understand that this man was trying to frighten us; so I began to laugh

also, and the others as well, but it was not a very hearty laugh either.

The sun was almost above us when we stopped at a little place called

Hal, where there is an old pump from which I drew and drank a shako

full of water--and never did a mug of Scotch ale taste as sweet.

More guns passed us  here, and Vivian's Hussars, three regiments of

them, smart men with bonny brown horses, a treat to the eye.  The noise

of the cannons was louder than ever now, and it tingled through my

nerves just as it had done years before, when, with Edie by my side, I

had seen the merchant-ship fight with the privateers.  It was so loud

now that it seemed to me that the battle must be going on just beyond

the nearest wood, but my friend the sergeant knew better.

"It's twelve to fifteen mile off," said he.  "You may be sure the

general knows we are not wanted, or we should  not be resting here at

Hal."

What he said proved to be true, for a minute later down came the colonel

with orders that we should pile arms and bivouac where we were; and

there we stayed all day, while horse and foot and guns, English, Dutch,

and Hanoverians, were streaming through.  The devil's music went on till

evening, sometimes rising into a roar, sometimes sinking into a grumble,

until about eight o'clock in the evening it stopped altogether.  We were

eating our hearts out, as you may think, to know what it all meant, but

we knew that what the Duke did would be for the best, so we just waited

in patience.

Next day the brigade remained at Hal in the morning, but about mid-day

came an orderly from the Duke, and we pushed on once more until we came

to a little village called Braine something, and there we stopped; and

time too, for a sudden thunderstorm broke over us, and a plump of rain

that turned all the roads and the fields into bog and mire.  We got into

the barns at this village for shelter, and there we found two

stragglers--one from a kilted regiment, and the other a man of the

German Legion, who had a tale to tell that was as dreary as the weather.

Boney had thrashed the Prussians the day before, and our fellows had

been sore put to it to hold their own against Ney, but had beaten him

off at last.  It seems an old stale story to you now, but you cannot

think how we scrambled round those two men in the barn, and pushed and

fought, just to catch a word of what they said, and how those who had

heard were in turn mobbed by those who had not.  We laughed and cheered

and groaned all in turn as we heard how the 44th had received cavalry in

line, how the Dutch-Belgians had fled, and how the Black Watch had taken

the Lancers into their square, and then had killed them at their

leisure.  But the Lancers had had the laugh on their side when they

crumpled up the 69th and carried off one of the colours.  To wind it all

up, the Duke was in retreat in order to keep in touch with the

Prussians, and it was rumoured that he would take up his ground and

fight a big battle just at the very place where we had been halted.

And soon we saw that this rumour was true; for the weather cleared

towards evening, and we were all out on the ridge to see what we could

see.  It was such a bonny stretch of corn and grazing land, with the

crops just half green and half yellow, and fine rye as high as a man's

shoulder.  A scene more full of peace you could not think of, and look

where you would over the low curving corn-covered hills, you could see

the little village steeples pricking up their spires among the poplars.

But slashed right across this pretty picture was a long trail of

marching men--some red, some green, some blue, some black--zigzagging

over the plain and choking the roads, one end so close that we could

shout to them, as they stacked their muskets on the ridge at our left,

and the other end lost among the woods as far as we could see.  And then

on other roads we saw the teams of horses toiling and the dull gleam of

the guns, and the men straining and swaying as they helped to turn the

spokes in the deep, deep mud.  As we stood there, regiment after

regiment and brigade after brigade took position on the ridge, and ere

the sun had set we lay in a line of over sixty thousand men, blocking

Napoleon's way to Brussels.  But the rain had come swishing down again,

and we of the 71st rushed off to our barn once more, where we had better

quarters than the greater part of our comrades, who lay stretched in the

mud with the storm beating upon them until the first peep of day.