The Trumpet-Major

Their excitement was merely of a piece with that of all men at this critical juncture. Everywhere expectation was at fever heat. For the last year or two only five-and-twenty miles of shallow water had divided quiet English homesteads from an enemy’s army of a hundred and fifty thousand men. We had taken the matter lightly enough, eating and drinking as in the days of Noe, and singing satires without end. We punned on Buonaparte and his gunboats, chalked his effigy on stage-coaches, and published the same in prints. Still, between these bursts of hilarity, it was sometimes recollected that England was the only European country which had not succumbed to the mighty little man who was less than human in feeling, and more than human in will; that our spirit for resistance was greater than our strength; and that the Channel was often calm. Boats built of wood which was greenly growing in its native forest three days before it was bent as wales to their sides, were ridiculous enough; but they might be, after all, sufficient for a single trip between two visible shores.

The English watched Buonaparte in these preparations, and Buonaparte watched the English. At the distance of Boulogne details were lost, but we were impressed on fine days by the novel sight of a huge army moving and twinkling like a school of mackerel under the rays of the sun. The regular way of passing an afternoon in the coast towns was to stroll up to the signal posts and chat with the lieutenant on duty there about the latest inimical object seen at sea. About once a week there appeared in the newspapers either a paragraph concerning some adventurous English gentleman who had sailed out in a pleasure-boat till he lay near enough to Boulogne to see Buonaparte standing on the heights among his marshals; or else some lines about a mysterious stranger with a foreign accent, who, after collecting a vast deal of information on our resources, had hired a boat at a southern port, and vanished with it towards France before his intention could be divined.

In forecasting his grand venture, Buonaparte postulated the help of Providence to a remarkable degree. Just at the hour when his troops were on board the flat-bottomed boats and ready to sail, there was to be a great fog, that should spread a vast obscurity over the length and breadth of the Channel, and keep the English blind to events on the other side. The fog was to last twenty-four hours, after which it might clear away. A dead calm was to prevail simultaneously with the fog, with the twofold object of affording the boats easy transit and dooming our ships to lie motionless. Thirdly, there was to be a spring tide, which should combine its manoeuvres with those of the fog and calm.

Among the many thousands of minor Englishmen whose lives were affected by these tremendous designs may be numbered our old acquaintance Corporal Tullidge, who sported the crushed arm, and poor old Simon Burden, the dazed veteran who had fought at Minden. Instead of sitting snugly in the settle of the Old Ship, in the village adjoining Overcombe, they were obliged to keep watch on the hill. They made themselves as comfortable as was possible in the circumstances, dwelling in a hut of clods and turf, with a brick chimney for cooking. Here they observed the nightly progress of the moon and stars, grew familiar with the heaving of moles, the dancing of rabbits on the hillocks, the distant hoot of owls, the bark of foxes from woods further inland; but saw not a sign of the enemy. As, night after night, they walked round the two ricks which it was their duty to fire at a signal – one being of furze for a quick flame, the other of turf, for a long, slow radiance – they thought and talked of old times, and drank patriotically from a large wood flagon that was filled every day.

Bob and his father soon became aware that the light was from the beacon. By the time that they reached the top it was one mass of towering flame, from which the sparks fell on the green herbage like a fiery dew; the forms of the two old men being seen passing and repassing in the midst of it. The Lovedays, who came up on the smoky side, regarded the scene for a moment, and then emerged into the light.

‘Who goes there?’ said Corporal Tullidge, shouldering a pike with his sound arm. ‘O, ’tis neighbour Loveday!’

‘Did you get your signal to fire it from the east?’ said the miller hastily.

‘No; from Abbotsea Beach.’

‘But you are not to go by a coast signal!’

‘Chok’ it all, wasn’t the Lord-Lieutenant’s direction, whenever you see Rainbarrow’s Beacon burn to the nor’east’ard, or Haggardon to the nor’west’ard, or the actual presence of the enemy on the shore?’

‘But is he here?’

‘No doubt o’t! The beach light is only just gone down, and Simon heard the guns even better than I.’

‘Hark, hark! I hear ’em!’ said Bob.

They listened with parted lips, the night wind blowing through Simon Burden’s few teeth as through the ruins of Stonehenge. From far down on the lower levels came the noise of wheels and the tramp of horses upon the turnpike road.

‘Well, there must be something in it,’ said Miller Loveday gravely. ‘Bob, we’ll go home and make the women-folk safe, and then I’ll don my soldier’s clothes and be off. God knows where our company will assemble!’

They hastened down the hill, and on getting into the road waited and listened again. Travellers began to come up and pass them in vehicles of all descriptions. It was difficult to attract their attention in the dim light, but by standing on the top of a wall which fenced the road Bob was at last seen.

‘What’s the matter?’ he cried to a butcher who was flying past in his cart, his wife sitting behind him without a bonnet.

‘The French have landed!’ said the man, without drawing rein.

‘Where?’ shouted Bob.

‘In West Bay; and all Budmouth is in uproar!’ replied the voice, now faint in the distance.

Bob and his father hastened on till they reached their own house. As they had expected, Anne and her mother, in common with most of the people, were both dressed, and stood at the door bonneted and shawled, listening to the traffic on the neighbouring highway, Mrs. Loveday having secured what money and small valuables they possessed in a huge pocket which extended all round her waist, and added considerably to her weight and diameter.

‘’Tis true enough,’ said the miller: ‘he’s come! You and Anne and the maid must be off to Cousin Jim’s at King’s-Bere, and when you get there you must do as they do. I must assemble with the company.’

‘And I?’ said Bob.

‘Thou’st better run to the church, and take a pike before they be all gone.’

The horse was put into the gig, and Mrs. Loveday, Anne, and the servant-maid were hastily packed into the vehicle, the latter taking the reins; David’s duties as a fighting-man forbidding all thought of his domestic offices now. Then the silver tankard, teapot, pair of candlesticks like Ionic columns, and other articles too large to be pocketed were thrown into a basket and put up behind. Then came the leave-taking, which was as sad as it was hurried. Bob kissed Anne, and there was no affectation in her receiving that mark of affection as she said through her tears, ‘God bless you!’ At last they moved off in the dim light of dawn, neither of the three women knowing which road they were to take, but trusting to chance to find it.

As soon as they were out of sight Bob went off for a pike, and his father, first new-flinting his firelock, proceeded to don his uniform, pipe-claying his breeches with such cursory haste as to bespatter his black gaiters with the same ornamental compound. Finding when he was ready that no bugle had as yet sounded, he went with David to the cart-house, dragged out the waggon, and put therein some of the most useful and easily-handled goods, in case there might be an opportunity for conveying them away. By the time this was done and the waggon pushed back and locked in, Bob had returned with his weapon, somewhat mortified at being doomed to this low form of defence. The miller gave his son a parting grasp of the hand, and arranged to meet him at King’s-Bere at the first opportunity if the news were true; if happily false, here at their own house.

‘Bother it all!’ he exclaimed, looking at his stock of flints.

‘What?’ said Bob.

‘I’ve got no ammunition: not a blessed round!’

‘Then what’s the use of going?’ asked his son.

The miller paused. ‘O, I’ll go,’ he said. ‘Perhaps somebody will lend me a little if I get into a hot corner?’

‘Lend ye a little! Father, you was always so simple!’ said Bob reproachfully.

‘Well – I can bagnet a few, anyhow,’ said the miller.

The bugle had been blown ere this, and Loveday the father disappeared towards the place of assembly, his empty cartridge-box behind him. Bob seized a brace of loaded pistols which he had brought home from the ship, and, armed with these and a pike, he locked the door and sallied out again towards the turnpike road.

By this time the yeomanry of the district were also on the move, and among them Festus Derriman, who was sleeping at his uncle’s, and had been awakened by Cripplestraw. About the time when Bob and his father were descending from the beacon the stalwart yeoman was standing in the stable-yard adjusting his straps, while Cripplestraw saddled the horse. Festus clanked up and down, looked gloomily at the beacon, heard the retreating carts and carriages, and called Cripplestraw to him, who came from the stable leading the horse at the same moment that Uncle Benjy peeped unobserved from a mullioned window above their heads, the distant light of the beacon fire touching up his features to the complexion of an old brass clock-face.

‘I think that before I start, Cripplestraw,’ said Festus, whose lurid visage was undergoing a bleaching process curious to look upon, ‘you shall go on to Budmouth, and make a bold inquiry whether the cowardly enemy is on shore as yet, or only looming in the bay.’

‘I’d go in a moment, sir,’ said the other, ‘if I hadn’t my bad leg again. I should have joined my company afore this; but they said at last drill that I was too old. So I shall wait up in the hay-loft for tidings as soon as I have packed you off, poor gentleman!’

‘Do such alarms as these, Cripplestraw, ever happen without foundation? Buonaparte is a wretch, a miserable wretch, and this may be only a false alarm to disappoint such as me?’

‘O no, sir; O no!’

‘But sometimes there are false alarms?’

‘Well, sir, yes. There was a pretended sally o’ gunboats last year.’

‘And was there nothing else pretended – something more like this, for instance?’

Cripplestraw shook his head. ‘I notice yer modesty, Mr. Festus, in making light of things. But there never was, sir. You may depend upon it he’s come. Thank God, my duty as a Local don’t require me to go to the front, but only the valiant men like my master. Ah, if Boney could only see ’ee now, sir, he’d know too well there is nothing to be got from such a determined skilful officer but blows and musket-balls!’

‘Yes, yes. Cripplestraw, if I ride off to Budmouth and meet ’em, all my training will be lost. No skill is required as a forlorn hope.’

‘True; that’s a point, sir. You would outshine ’em all, and be picked off at the very beginning as a too-dangerous brave man.’

‘But if I stay here and urge on the faint-hearted ones, or get up into the turret-stair by that gateway, and pop at the invaders through the loophole, I shouldn’t be so completely wasted, should I?’

‘You would not, Mr. Derriman. But, as you was going to say next, the fire in yer veins won’t let ye do that. You are valiant; very good: you don’t want to husband yer valiance at home. The arg’ment is plain.’

‘If my birth had been more obscure,’ murmured the yeoman, ‘and I had only been in the militia, for instance, or among the humble pikemen, so much wouldn’t have been expected of me – of my fiery nature. Cripplestraw, is there a drop of brandy to be got at in the house? I don’t feel very well.’

‘Dear nephew,’ said the old gentleman from above, whom neither of the others had as yet noticed, ‘I haven’t any spirits opened – so unfortunate! But there’s a beautiful barrel of crab-apple cider in draught; and there’s some cold tea from last night.’

‘What, is he listening?’ said Festus, staring up. ‘Now I warrant how glad he is to see me forced to go – called out of bed without breakfast, and he quite safe, and sure to escape because he’s an old man! – Cripplestraw, I like being in the yeomanry cavalry; but I wish I hadn’t been in the ranks; I wish I had been only the surgeon, to stay in the rear while the bodies are brought back to him – I mean, I should have thrown my heart at such a time as this more into the labour of restoring wounded men and joining their shattered limbs together – u-u-ugh! – more than I can into causing the wounds – I am too humane, Cripplestraw, for the ranks!’