CHAPTER XVII.
Thetransactions of the three days from the 8th to the 11th of January, resembled so completely in all particulars the transactions of other days during which it fell to our lot to keep guard beside the mayor's house, that I will not try the patience of my reader by narrating them at length. He will accordingly take it for granted that the ordinary routine of watching and labour was gone through, that no attempt was made on the part of the enemy to surprise or harass us, and that, with the exception of a little suffering from extreme cold, and the want of a moderate proportion of sleep, we had no cause to complain of our destiny. When we first came to our ground we found the redoubt in a state of considerable forwardness—quite defensible, indeed, in a case of emergency; and we left it even more perfect, and capable of containing at least a thousand men. It was not, however, with any feeling of regret that we beheld a brigade of Guards approaching our encampment about two hours afternoon on the 11th; nor did we experience the slightest humiliation in surrendering to them our tents, our working tools, and the post of honour.
Now, then, we looked forward, not only with resignation, but with real satisfaction, to a peaceable sojourn of a few weeks at Gauthory. We had never, it is true, greatly admired these cantonments; but the events of the last eight or ten days had taught us to set its true value upon a settled habitation of any description, and we accordingly made up our minds to grumble no more. But just as the line of march was beginning to form, intelligence reached us that the place of our abode was changed. Other troops, it appeared, had been introduced into our former apartments; and we were in consequence commanded to house ourselves in the village of Bidart. I mean not to assert that the order was received with any degree of dissatisfaction; but feeling as at that moment we did, it was, in truth, a matter of perfect indifference where we were stationed, provided only we had a roof over our heads and an opportunity was granted of resting from our labours.
The village of Bidart is built upon an eminence, immediately in rear of the large common on which the advanced brigade lay encamped. It consists of about thirty houses, some of them of a tolerable size, but the majority cottages. Into one of thelargest my friend and myself were fortunate enough to be ushered; and as we found chimneys and windows already formed, the former permitting us to keep fires alight without the attendant misery of smoke, and the latter proof against the weather, we sincerely congratulated ourselves on our change of abode. Nor was it only on account of the superiority of these over our former quarters that we rejoiced in this migration. The country round proved to be better stocked with game, especially with hares, than any which we had yet inhabited: and hence we continued, by the help of our guns and greyhounds, not only to spend the mornings very agreeably, but to keep our own and our friends' tables well supplied.
I have mentioned, in a former chapter, that the little town of Biaritz stands upon the sea-shore, and that it was, at the period of which I now write, regarded as a sort of neutral ground by the French and British armies. Patrols from both did indeed occasionally reconnoitre it; the French, in particular, seldom permitting a day to pass without a party of their light cavalry riding through it. Yet to visit Biaritz became now the favourite amusement amongst us, and the greater the risk run of being sabred or taken, the more eager were we to incur and to escape it. But there was a cause for this, good reader, and I will tell thee what it was.
In peaceable times Biaritz constituted, as we learned from its inhabitants, a fashionable watering-place to the wealthy people of Bayonne and its vicinity. It was, and no doubt is now, a remarkably pretty village, about as large perhaps as Sandgate, and built upon the margin of the water. The town itself lies in a sort of hollow, between two green hills, which, towards the sea, end in broken cliffs. Its houses were neatly whitewashed, and above all it was, and I trust still is, distinguished as the residence of two or three handsome women. These ladies had about them all the gaiety and liveliness of Frenchwomen, with a good deal of the sentimentality of our own fair countrywomen. To us they were particularly pleasant, professing, I know not how truly, to prefer our society to that of any persons besides; and we, of course, were far too gallant to deny them that gratification, because we risked our lives or our freedom at each visit. By no means. Two or three times in each week the favoured few mounted their horses and took the road to Biaritz, from which, on more than one occasion, they with difficulty returned.
With the circumstances attending one of these escapes I may as well make my reader acquainted. We were for the most part prudent enough to cast lots previously to setting out, in order to decide on whom, among the party, the odious task shoulddevolve of watching outside to prevent a surprise by the enemy's cavalry, whilst his companions were more agreeably employed within. So many visits had, however, been paid, without any alarm being given, that one morning, having quitted Bidart fewer in number than usual, we rashly determined to run all risks rather than that one of the three should spend an hour cheerlessly by himself. The only precaution which we took was to picket our horses, ready saddled and bridled, at the garden gate, instead of putting them up, as we were in the habit of doing, in the stable.
It was well for us that even this slender precaution had been taken. We had sat about half an hour with our fair friends, and had just ceased to joke on the probability of our suffering the fate of Sampson, and being caught by the Philistines, when on a pause in the conversation taking place, our ears were saluted with the sound of horses' hoofs trampling upon the paved street. We sprang to the window, and our consternation may be guessed at when we beheld eight or ten French hussars riding slowly from the lower end of the town. Whilst we were hesitating how to proceed, whether to remain quiet, in the hope that the party might retire without searching any of the houses, or expose ourselves to certain pursuit by flying, we observed a rascal, in the garb of a seaman, run up to the leader of thepatrol and lay hold of his bridle, enter into conversation with him, and point to the abode of our new acquaintances. This was hint enough. Without pausing to say farewell to our fair friends, who screamed, as if they, and not we, had been in danger, we ran with all haste to the spot where our horses stood, and, springing into the saddle, applied the spur, with very little mercy, to their flanks. We were none of us particularly well mounted; but either our pursuers had alighted to search the house, or they took at first a wrong direction, for we got so much the start of them before the chase fairly began, that possibly we might have escaped had we been obliged to trust to our own steeds as far as the pickets. Of this, however, I am by no means certain, for they were unquestionably gaining upon us, as a sailor would say, hand over hand, when, by great good fortune, a patrol of our own cavalry made its appearance. Then, indeed, the tables were turned. The enemy pulled up, paused for an instant, and took to their heels; whereupon our troopers, who had trotted forward as soon as they saw what was the matter, put their horses to the speed and followed. Whether they overtook their adversaries, and what was the issue of the skirmish, if indeed any skirmish took place, I cannot tell; for though we made an attempt to revenge ourselves upon our late pursuers, we soon found that we weredistanced by both parties, and were, perforce, contented to ride quietly home, congratulating each other by the way on our hairbreadth deliverance. From that time forward we were more prudent. Our visits were indeed resumed, and with their usual frequency; but we took care not again to dispense with the watchfulness of a sentinel, who, on the contrary, took his station henceforth on the top of one of the heights, from which he commanded a view of the surrounding country to the distance of several miles. Though, therefore, we were more than once summoned to horse because the enemy's dragoons were in sight, we generally contrived to mount in such time as to preclude the necessity of riding, as we had before done, for life or liberty.
By spending my mornings thus, or in a determined pursuit of game, and my evenings in such society as a corps of gentlemanly young men furnished, nearly a fortnight passed over my head before I was aware that time could have made so much progress. It seldom happens, however, that any period of human existence, whether extensive or contracted, passes by without some circumstance occurring calculated to awaken painful emotions. I recollect, in the course of this fortnight, an event which, though I was no farther concerned in it than as a spectator, made a deep and melancholy impression on my mind. I allude to the loss of a largevessel, during a tremendous storm, on the rocks which run out into the sea off Bidart.
The precise day of the month on which this sad shipwreck occurred I have forgotten; but I recollect being sent for by my friend, during the progress of one of the heaviest gales which we had witnessed, to come and watch with him the fate of a brig, which was in evident distress, about a couple of miles from the land. The wind blew a perfect hurricane on shore; and hence the question was—would the ship succeed in weathering the cape, or would she strike? If she got once round the headland, then her course to the harbour of Secoa was direct; if otherwise, nothing could save her. We turned our glasses towards her in a state of feverish anxiety, and beheld her bending under a single close-reefed topsail, and making lee-way at a fearful rate every moment. Presently a sort of attempt was made to luff up or tack; it was a desperate one. I cannot even now think without shuddering of the consequence. The sail, caught by a sudden squall, was torn into a hundred shreds: down, down she went before the surge; in five seconds she struck against a reef, and in ten minutes more split into a thousand fragments. One gun only was fired as a signal of distress; but who could regard it? We possessed no boats; and had the contrary been the case, this was a sea in which no boat could live.Powerless, therefore, of aid, we could only stand and gaze upon the wreck, till, piece by piece, it disappeared amid the raging waters. Not a soul survived to tell to what country she belonged, or with what she was freighted; and only one body was drifted to land. It was that of a woman apparently about thirty years of age, genteelly dressed, and rather elegantly formed; to whom we gave such sepulture as soldiers can give, and such as they are themselves taught to expect.
The impression which that shipwreck made upon me was not only far more distressing, but far more permanent, than the impression made by any other spectacle of which, during the course of a somewhat eventful life, I have been the spectator. For several days I could think of hardly anything besides, and at night my dreams were constantly of drowning men and vessels beating upon rocks; so great is the effect of desuetude, even in painful subjects, and so appalling is death when he comes in a form to which we are unaccustomed. Of slaughtered men I have of course seen multitudes, as well when life had just departed from them as when corruption had set its seal upon their forms; but such sights never affected me—no, not even at the commencement of my military career—as I was affected by the loss of that ship, though she went to pieces at too great a distance from the beach to permit morethan a very indistinct view of her perishing inmates. Yet there is nothing in reality more terrible in drowning than in any other kind of death; and a sailor will look upon it, I daresay, with precisely the same degree of indifference which a soldier experiences when he contemplates the prospect of his own dissolution by fire or steel.
In the course of my narrative I have not made any regular attempt to convey to the mind of the reader a distinct notion of the peculiar customs and language which distinguish the natives of this country. Two motives have guided me to this. In the first place, it is nowadays known to all who are likely to peruse what I write, that the inhabitants of those provinces which lie at the immediate base of the Pyrenees, are a race totally distinct, and essentially different in almost all respects, from either the Spaniards or the French. They speak a language of their own—namely, Basque—which is said by those who profess to be acquainted with it to resemble the Celtic more than any other known tongue. The dress of the men consists usually of a blue or brown jacket of coarse woollen cloth, of breeches or trousers of the same, with a waistcoat frequently of scarlet, grey worsted stockings, and wooden shoes. On their heads they wear a large flat bonnet, similar to the Lowland bonnet, or scone, of Scotland. They are generally tall, but thin; andthey present altogether an appearance as uncouth as need be fancied. The women equip themselves in many respects as the fishwomen of the good town of Newhaven are accustomed to do, with this difference, that they seldom cover their heads at all—and, like the men, wear wooden clogs. They are a singular race, and appear to take a pride in those peculiarities which keep them from coalescing with either of the nations among whom they dwell. But all this, as I said before, is too generally known to render it imperative upon me minutely to repeat it.
My second motive for keeping, in a great degree, silent on the head of manners and customs is one the efficiency of which the reader will not, I daresay, call in question—namely, the want of opportunity to make myself sufficiently master of the subject to enter,con amore, upon it. No man who journeys through a country in the train of an invading army ought to pretend to an intimate acquaintance with the manners and customs of its inhabitants. Wherever foreign troops swarm, the aborigines necessarily appear in false colours. The greater part of them, indeed, abandon their homes; while such of them as remain are servile and submissive through terror; nor do they ever display their real characters, at least in the presence of a stranger. Hence it is that nine-tenths of mybrethren in arms who write at all commit the most egregious blunders in those very portions of their books where they particularly aim at enlightening the reading public; and that the most matter-of-fact story, spun out by the most matter-of-fact man or woman who has visited the seat of the late war since the cessation of hostilities, contains, and must contain, more certain information touching the fire-side occupations of the people than all the 'Journals' or 'Letters to Friends at Home' which this age of book-making has produced. Frankly confessing, therefore, that any account which I could give of the manners and habits of the Basques would deserve as little respect as the accounts already given by other military tourists, I am content to keep my reader's attention riveted—if, indeed, that be practicable—upon my own little personal adventures, rather than amuse him with details which might be true as far as I know to the contrary, but which, in all probability, would be false.
Proceed we, then, in our own way. From the day of the shipwreck up to the 23d of the month, I have no recollection of any occurrence worthy to be recorded. Advantage was taken, it is true, of that period of rest to lay in a fresh stock of tea and other luxuries, with the means of accomplishing which an opportune disbursement of one month's pay supplied us. These we purchased in a marketwhich certain speculating traders had established, and which followed the movements of the army from post to post. The grand depot of all was, however, Secoa, between which port and England communication was regularly kept up; and thither I and my comrades resorted for such more curious articles as habit or caprice prompted us to purchase. Moreover, by coursing, shooting, and riding,—sometimes to Biaritz, and the house of our pretty French women; sometimes to St Jean de Luz, where, by the way, races were regularly established; and occasionally to the cantonments of a friend in another division—we found our days steal insensibly, and therefore agreeably, away; nor was it without a feeling somewhat akin to discontent that we saw ourselves again setting forth to take our turn of outpost duty at the old station beside Fort Charlotte.