The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous Volume I Part 8

"I am no kitchen-wench, I," answers the Maid of the Wagon, tossing her head. "Cicely o' the Cinders yonder will bring you to your umble-pie, and a Jack of small-beer to cool you, I trow. Was it live Charcoal or Seacoal embers that you swallowed last night, Captain, makes you so dry this morning?"

"Never mind, Goody Slack Jaw," says Captain Night. "I shall be thirstier anon from listening to your prate. Will you hurry now, Gadfly, or is the sun to sink before we get hounds in leash?"

Thus admonished, the girl takes me by the arm, and, without more ado, dips a rag in the pot of black pigment, and begins to smear all my hands, and face, and throat, with dabs of disguising shade. And, as she bade me do the same to my Garment, and never spare Soot, I fell to work too, making myself into the likeness of a Chimney-boy, till they might have taken me into a nursery to Frighten naughty children.

Captain Night sat by himself on the side of the bed, idly clicking a pistol-lock till such time as he proceeded to load it, the which threw me into a cold tremor, not knowing but that it might be the Custom among the Gentlemen Blacks to blow out the brains in the morning of those they had feasted over-night. Yet, as there never was Schoolboy, I suppose, but delighted in Soiling of his raiment, and making himself as Black as any sweep in Whetstone Park, so did I begin to feel something like a Pleasure in being masqueraded up to this Disguise, and began to wish for a Pistol such as Captain Night had in his Hand, and such a Diamond Ring as he wore on his finger.

"There!" cries the Maid of the Wagon, when I was well Blacked, surveying me approvingly. "You're a real imp of Charlwood Chase now. Ugh! thou young Rig! I'll kiss you when the Captain brings you home, and good soap and water takes off those mourning weeds before supper-time."

She had clapped a great Deerskin cap on my head, and giving me a friendly pat, was going off, when I could not help asking her in a sly whisper what had become of the Pewterer of Pannier Alley.

"What! you remember him, do you?" she returned, with a half-smile and a half-sigh. "Well, the Pewterer's here, and as black as you are."

"But I thought you were to wed," I remarked.

"Well!" she went on, almost fiercely, "cannot one wed at the Stag o'

Tyne? We have a brave Chaplain down-stairs,--as good as a Fleet Parson any day, I wuss."

"But the Pewterer?" I persisted.

"I'll hang the Pewterer round thy neck!" she exclaimed in a pet. "The Pewterer was unfortunate in his business, and so took to the Road; and thus we have all come together in Charlwood Chase. But ask me no more questions, or Captain Night will be deadly angry. Look, he fumes already."

She tripped away saying this, and in Time, I think; for indeed the Captain was beginning to show signs of impatience. She being gone, he took me on his knee, all Black as I was, and in a voice kind enough, but full of authority, bade me tell him all my History and the bare truth, else would he have me tied neck and heels and thrown to the fishes.

So I told this strange Man all:--of Hanover Square, and my earliest childhood. Of the Unknown Lady, and her Behaviour and conversation, even to her Death. Of her Funeral, and the harsh bearing of Mistress Talmash and the Steward Cadwallader unto me in my Helplessness and Loneliness.

Of my being smuggled away in a Wagon and sent to school to Gnawbit, and of the Barbarous cruelty with which I had been treated by that Monster.

And finally, of the old Gentleman that used to cry, "Bear it! Bear it!"

and of his giving me a Guinea, and bidding me run away.

He listened to all I had to say, and then putting me down,

"A strange story," he thoughtfully remarks, "and not learnt out of the storybooks either, or I sorely err. You have not a Lying Face, my man.

Wait a while, and you'll wear a Mask thicker than all that screen of soot you have upon you now." But in this he was mistaken; for John Dangerous ever scorned deception, and through life has always acted fair and above-board.

"And that Guinea," he continued. "Hast it still?"

I answered that I had, producing it as I spoke, and that I was ready to pay my Reckoning, and to treat him and the others, in which, meseems, there spoke less of the little Runaway Schoolboy that had turned Sweep, than of the Little Gentleman that was wont to be a Patron to his Grandmother's lacqueys in Hanover Square.

"Keep thy piece of Gold," he answers, with a smile. "Thou shalt pay thy footing soon enough. Or wilt thou go forth with thy Guinea and spend it, and be taken by thy Schoolmaster to be whipped, perchance to death?"

I replied that I had the much rather stay with him, and the Gentlemen.

"The less said of the 'Gentlemen' the better. However, 'tis all one: we are all Gentlemen at the Stag o' Tyne. Even thou art a Gentleman, little Ragam.u.f.f."

"I am a Gentleman of long descent; and my fathers have fought and bled for the True King; and Norman blood's better than German puddle-mud," I replied, repeating well-nigh Mechanically that which my dear Kinswoman had said to me, and Instilled into me many and many a time. In my degraded Slavery, I had _well_-nigh forgotten the proud old words; but only once it chanced that they had risen up unbidden, when I was flouted and jeered at as Little Boy Jack by my schoolmates. Heaven help us, how villanously cruel are children to those who are of their own age and Poor and Friendless! What is it that makes young hearts so Hard? The boys Derided and mocked me more than ever for that I said I was a Gentleman; and by and by comes Gnawbit, and beats me black and blue--ay, and gory too--with a furze-stub, for telling of Lies, as he falsely said, the Ruffian.

"Well," resumed Captain Night, "thou shalt stay with us, young Gentleman. But weigh it soberly, boy," he continued. "Thou art old enough to know black from white, and bra.s.s from gold. Be advised; know what we Blacks are. We are only Thieves that go about stealing the King's Deer in Charlwood Chase."

I told him that I would abide by him and his Company; and with a grim smile he clapped me on the shoulder, and told me that now indeed I was a Gentleman Black, and Forest Free.

FOOTNOTES:

[K] "_My_ Flag" in the original MS.; but I put it down as a slip of the pen, and altered it--G. A. S.

[L] Madam Drum, so far as I can make out the _argot_ of the day, here insinuated that her opponent had been corrected at the cart's tail for stealing swords out of the scabbards, and conveying wigs from the heads of their owners, two crimes which have become obsolete since the Quality have ceased to wear swords and periwigs.--G. A. S.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.

THE HISTORY OF MOTHER DRUM.

DURING the long nights I remained at the Stag o' Tyne ere I was thought Worthy to join the Blacks in their nocturnal adventures, or was, by my Hardihood and powers of Endurance--poor little mite that I was--adjudged to be Forest Free, I remained under the charge of Ciceley of the Cindery, and of the corpulent Tapstress whom the Blacks called Mother Drum. These two women were very fond of gossiping with me; and especially did Mother Drum love to converse with me upon her own Career, which had been of the most Chequered, not to say Amazing nature. I have already hinted that at one time this Remarkable Woman had professed the Military Profession, in which she had shone with almost a Manly Brilliance; and from her various confidences--all delivered to me as they were in shreds and patches, and imparted at the oddest times and seasons--I was enabled to shape her (to me) diverting history into something like the following shape.

"I was born, I think," quoth Mother Drum, "in the year 1660, being that of his happy Restoration to the throne of these Realms of his late Sacred Majesty King Charles the Second. My father was a small farmer, who fed his pigs and tended his potato gardens at the foot of the Wicklow Mountains, about twelve miles from the famous city of Dublin.

His name was O' something, which it concerns you not to know, youngster, and he had the misfortune to be a Papist. I say the misfortune; for in those days, O well-a-day, as in these too, and more's the shame, to be a Papist meant being a poor, unfortunate creature continually Hunted up and down, Hara.s.sed and Harried far worse than any leathern-skinned Beast of Venery that the Gentlemen Blacks pursue in Charlwood Chase. He had suffered much under the iron rule" (these were not exactly Mother Drum's words, for her language was anything, as a rule, but well chosen; but I have polished up her style a little,) "of the cruel Usurper, Oliver Cromwell; that is to say the Redcoated Ironsides of that Bad Man had on three several occasions burnt his Sh.e.l.ling to the ground, stolen his Pigs, and grubbed up his potato ground. Once had they ran away with his wife, (my dear Mother), twice had they half-hanged him to a tree-branch, and at divers intervals had they tortured him by tying lighted matches between his fingers. When, however, His Sacred Majesty was happily restored there were hopes that the poor Romanists would enjoy a little Comfort and Tranquillity; but these Fond aspirations were speedily and cruelly dashed to the ground; for the Anglican Bishops and Clergy being put into possession of the Sees and Benefices of which they had been so long deprived, occupied themselves much more with Hounding Down those who did not live by the Thirty-nine Articles and the Liturgy, than in preaching Peace and Goodwill among all men. So the Papists had a worse time of it than ever. My Father, honest man, tried to temporise between the two parties, but was ever in danger of being shot by his own friends as a Traitor, even if he escaped half-hanging at the hands of the Protestants as a Recusant. Well, after all, Jack high or Jack low, the days must come to an end, and Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter must follow upon one another, and boys and girls were born to my father, and the pigs littered, and were sold at market, and the potatoes grew and were eaten whether Oliver Cromwell, or his son d.i.c.kon, or Charles Stuart--I beg pardon, His Sacred Majesty--was uppermost. Thus it was I came into the world in the Restoration year.

"I was a bold, strapping, fearless kind of a girl, much fonder of Romping and Horse-play of the Tomboy order than of the Pursuits and Pastimes of my own s.e.x. The difference was more remarkable, as you know the Irish girls are distinguished above all other Maidens in creation by an extreme Delicacy and Coyness, not to say Prudishness of Demeanour.

But Betty--I was christened Elizabeth--was always gammocking and tousling with the Lads instead of holding by her Mother's ap.r.o.n, or demurely sitting by her spinning-wheel, or singing plaintive ballads to herself to the music of the Irish Harp, which, in my time, almost every Farmer's Daughter could Play. Before I was seven years old I could feed the pigs and dig up the potato ground. Before I was ten, I could catch a colt and ride him, barebacked and without bridle, holding on by his mane, round the green in front of my Father's Homestead. Before I was twelve, I was a match for any Boy of my own age at a bout of fisticuffs, ay, and at swinging a blackthorn so as to bring it down with a thwack on the softest part of a gossoon's crown. I knew little of spinning, or playing, or harping; but I could land a trout, and make good play with a pike. I could brew a jug of Punch, and at a jig could dance down the lithest gambriler of those parts, Dan Meagher, the Blind Piper of Swords. Those who knew me used to call me 'Brimstone Betty;' and in my own family I went by the name of the 'Bold Dragoon,' much to the miscontentment of my father, who tried hard to bring me to a more feminine habit of Body and frame of mind, both by affectionate expostulation, and by a.s.siduous larruping with a stirrup leather. But 'twas all of no use. At sixteen I was the greatest Tearcoat of the Country side; and Father Macana.s.ser, the village priest, gave it as his opinion that I must either be married, or sent to Dublin into decent service, or go to Ruination.

"It chanced that one fine summer day, I was gammocking in a hayfield with another la.s.s, a friend of mine, whom I had made almost as bold as myself. We had a cudgel apiece, and were playing at single-stick, in our mad-cap fas.h.i.+on, laughing and screaming like Bedlamites, meanwhile. Only a hedge separated us from the high-road to Dublin, which ran up hill, and by and by came toiling up the hill, sticking every other minute in a rut, or jolting into a hole--for the roads were in infamous condition about here, as, indeed, all over the kingdom of Ireland--a grand coach, all over painting and gilding, drawn by six grey horses, with flowing manes and tails. The two leading pair had postilions in liveries of blue and silver, and great badges of coats-of-arms, and the equipage was further attended by a couple of outriders or yeomen-p.r.i.c.kers in the same rich livery, but with cutla.s.ses at their sides, petronels in their holsters, and blunderbusses on their hips, to guard against Tories and Rapparees, who then infested the land, and cared little whether it was Daylight or Moonlight--whether it was in the Green tree or the Dry that they went about their thievish business. The personage to whom this grand coach belonged was a stout, Majestic old Gentleman with a monstrous black periwig, a bright star on his breast, and a broad blue ribbon crossing his plum-coloured velvet doublet. He had dismounted from his heavy coach, while the horses were f.a.gging up hill, and by the help of a great crutch-staff of ebony, ornamented with silver, was toiling after them. Hearing our prattling and laughing, he looked over the hedge and saw us in the very thick of our mimic Combat. This seemed to divert him exceedingly; and although we, seeing so grand a gentleman looking at us, were for suspending our Tomfoolery, and stood, to say the truth, rather shamefaced than otherwise among the hayc.o.c.ks, he bade us with cheery and encouraging words to proceed, and laughed to see us so sparring at one another, till his sides shook again. But all the fire was taken out of our combat, by the presence of so unwonted a Spectator, and after a brief lapse we dropped cudgels, and stood staring and blus.h.i.+ng, quite dashed and confused. Then he beckoned us towards him in a most affable manner, and we came awkwardly and timorously, yet still with great curiosity to know what was to follow, through a gap in the hedge, and so stood before him in the road. And then cries out one of the Yeomen-p.r.i.c.kers--'Wenches! drop your best curtsey to his Grace the Duke of O----.' It was, indeed, that famous n.o.bleman, lately Lord Lieutenant, and still one of the highest, mightiest, and most puissant Princes in the Kingdom of Ireland. To be brief, he put a variety of questions to us, respecting our belongings, and at my answers seemed most condescendingly pleased, and at those of my playmate (whose name was Molly O'Flaherty, and who had red hair, and a cast in her eye), but moderately pleased. On her, therefore, he bestowed a gold piece, and so dismissed her; telling her to take care of what her Tom Boy pranks might lead her to. But to me, while conferring the like present, he was good enough to say that I was a spirited la.s.s fit for better things, and that if my Father and Mother would bring me shortly to his House in Dublin, he would see what could be done, to the end of bettering my condition in life. Whereupon he was a.s.sisted to his seat by one of four running footmen that tramped by his side, and away he went in his coach and six, leaving me in great joy and contentment. In only a few minutes came after him, not toiling, but bursting up the hill, a whole plump of gallant cavaliers in buff coats, bright corslets, and embroidered bandoliers over them, wearing green plumes in their hats, and flouris.h.i.+ng their broadswords in the suns.h.i.+ne. These were the gentlemen of his bodyguard. They questioned me as to my converse with his Grace, and when I told them, laughed and said that I was in luck.

"The Duke of O---- meant me no harm, and I am sure did me none; and yet, my dear, I must date all my misfortunes from the time I was introduced to his Grace. You see that these gentlefolks have so much to think of, and are not in the habit of troubling their heads much as to what becomes of a poor peasant girl, after the whim which may have led them to patronize her has once pa.s.sed over. My mother made me a new linsey woolsey petticoat, and a snood of scarlet frieze, and I was as fine as ninepence, with the first pair of stockings on that ever I had worn in my life, when I was taken to Dublin to a grand house by the Quay side, to be presented to his Grace. He had almost forgotten who I was, when his Groom of the Chamber procured us an audience. Then he remembered how he had laughed at my gambols with Molly O'Flaherty in the hayfield, and how they amused him, and how he thought my Romping ways might divert My Lady d.u.c.h.ess his Consort, who was a pining, puling, melancholic Temperament, and much afflicted with the Vapours, for want of something to do. So he was pleased to smile upon me again, and to give my mother five pounds, and to promise that I should be well bestowed in his household as a waiting-woman, or Bower-maiden, or some such like capacity; and then he made me a present, as though I were a puppy-dog, to Her Grace the d.u.c.h.ess, and having affairs of state to attend to, thought no more about 'Brimstone Betty.' My sprightly ways and random talk amused her Grace for awhile; but she had too many gewgaws and playthings, and I found, after not many days, that my popularity was on the wane, and that I could not hope to maintain it against the attractions of a French waiting-maid, a monkey, a parrot, a poodle, and a little Dwarfish boy-attendant that was half fiddler and half buffoon.

So my consequence faded and faded, and I was sneered at and flouted as a young Savage and a young Irish by the English lacqueys about the House, and I sank from my Lady's keeping-room to the antechamber, and thence to the servant's hall, and thence, after a very brief lapse, to the kitchen, where I was very little better than a Scullish and Plate-washer, and not half so well entreated as Cicely of the Cinders is here. I pined and fretted; but time went on, and to my misfortune I was growing taller and shapelier. I had a very clear skin, and very black hair and eyes, and, though I say it that shouldn't, as neat a leg and foot as you would wish to see in a summer's day, and the men folk told me that I was comely. They only told me so, the false perfidious hounds, for my destruction.

"Well, child, you are too young to understand these things; and I hope that when you grow up, you will not do to poor forlorn girls as I was done by. A dicing soldier fellow that was a hanger-on at my Lord Duke's house, and was called Captain, ran away with me. Of course I was at once discarded from the Great House as a good-for-nothing Light o' love, and was told that if ever I presumed to show my face on the Quay-side again I should be sent to the Spinning House, and whipped. They had better have taken care of me while I was with them. The Captain dressed me up in fine clothes for a month or so, and gave me paint and patches, and took me to the Playhouse with a mask on, and then he got stabbed in a broil after some gambling bout at a China House in Smock Alley, and I was left in the wide world with two satin sacques, a box of cosmetiques, a broken fan, two spade guineas, and little else besides what I stood upright in. Return to my Father and Mother I dared not; for I knew that the tidings of my misconduct had already been conveyed to them, and had half broken their hearts, and my offence was one that is unpardonable in the children of the poorest and humblest of the Irishry. There was Bitter Bread before me, if I chose to follow, as thousands of poor, cozened, betrayed creatures before me had done, a Naughty Life; but this, with unutterable Loathing and Scorn, I cast away from me; and having, from my Dare-devil Temper, a kind of Pride and High Stomach made me determine to earn my livelihood in a bold and original manner. They had taught me to read at the Great House (though I knew not great A from a bowl's foot when I came into it) and so one of the first things I had spelt out was a chap-book ballad of Mary Ambree, the female soldier, that was at the siege of Ghent, and went through all the wars in Flanders in Queen Bess's time. 'What woman has done, woman can do,'

cries I to myself, surveying my bold and masculine lineaments, my flas.h.i.+ng black eyes, and ruddy tint, my straight, stout limbs, and frank, das.h.i.+ng gait. Ah! I was very different to the fat, pursy, old ale-wife who discourses with you now--in the gla.s.s. Without more ado I cut off my long black hair close to my head, stained my hands with walnut juice, (for they had grown white and soft and plump from idling about in the Great House), and went off to a Crimp in the Liberty that was enlisting men (against the law, but here many things are done against both Law and Prophets), for the King of France's service.

"This was in the year '80, and I was twenty years of age. King Louis had then no especial Brigade of Irish Troops--that famous corps not being formed until after the Revolution--and his Scotch Guards, a pinchbeck, purse-proud set of beggarly cavaliers, would not have any Irishry among them. I scorned to deny my lineage, and indeed my tongue would have soon betrayed me, had I done so; and the name I listed under was that of James Moriarty. One name is as good as another when you are going to the wars; and no name is, perchance, the best of any. As James Moriarty, after perfecting myself in musket-drill, and the pike-exercise, in our winter quarters at Dunkirk, I was entered in the Gardes Francais, a portion of the renowned Maison du Roy, or Household Troops, and as such went through the second Rhenish campaign, taking my share, and a liberal one too, in killing my fellow-Christians, burning villages, and stealing poultry. Nay, through excessive precaution, lest my s.e.x should be discovered, I made more pretensions than the rest of my Comrades to be considered a lady-killer, and the Captain of my Company, Monsieur de la Ribaldiere, did me the honour to say that no Farmer's Daughter was safe from 'Le Bel Irlandais,' or Handsome Irishman, as they called me.

Heaven help us! From whom are the Farmer's daughters, or the Farmers themselves safe in war time?

"When peace was declared, I found that I had risen to the dignity of Sergeant, and carried my Halberd with an a.s.sured strut and swagger, n.o.body dreaming that I was a wild Irish girl from the Wicklow Mountains.

I might have risen, in time, to a commission and the Cross of St. Louis; but the piping times of peace turned all such brave grapes sour. I was glad enough, when the alternative was given me, of accompanying my Captain, Monsieur de la Ribaldiere, to Paris, as his Valet de Chambre, or of mouldering away, without hope of Promotion, in some country barrack, to choose the former, and led, for a year or two, a gay, easy life enough in the French Capital. But, alas! that which I had hidden from a whole army in the field, I could not keep a secret from one rubbis.h.i.+ng, penniless, popinjay of a Captain in the Gardes Francaises. I told this miscreant, de la Ribaldiere, that I was a woman; for I was mad and vain enough to Love him. These are matters again, child, that you cannot understand; but I have said enough when I declare that if ever there was power in the Curse of Cromwell to blight a Wicked Man, that curse ought to light upon Henri de la Ribaldiere.

"I took a disgust to the male attire after this; but being yet in the prime of my womanhood, and as fond as ever of athletic diversions, I engaged myself to a French mountebank posture-master to dance Corantoes on the Tight and Slack Rope, accompanying myself meanwhile by reveilles on the Drum, an instrument in which I had become a proficient. The Posture Master, finding out afterwards that I was agile and Valiant, not only at Dancing but at Fighting, must needs have me wield the broadsword and the quarterstaff against all comers on a public platform; and, as the Irish Amazon, I achieved great success, and had my Employer not been a thief, should have gained much money. He was in the habit, not only of robbing his woman-performers, but of beating them; but I promise you the first time the villain offered to slash at me with his dog-whip, I had him under the jaw with my fist in the handsomest manner, and then tripping up his heels, and hurling him down on his own stage, and (having a right piece of ashplant in my grip) I did so curry his hide in sight of a full audience, that he howled for mercy, and the groundlings, who thought it part of the show, clapped their hands till they were sore and shouted till they were hoa.r.s.e. Our engagement came to an end after this, and in a somewhat disagreeable manner for me; for the Posture-Master happened to be the by-blow of a Doctor of the Sorbonne, who was brother to an Abbe, who was brother to an opera-dancer, who had interest with a cardinal, who was uncle to a gentleman of the Chamber, who was one of Pere la Chaise's pet penitents; and this Reverend Father, having the King's ear, denounced me to his Majesty as a Spy, a Heretic, a Jansenist, a _Coureuse_, and all sorts of things; and by a _lettre de Cachet_, as they call their warrants, I was sent off to the prison of the Madelonettes, there to diet on bread and water, to be herded with the vilest of my s.e.x, to card wool, and to receive, morning and evening, the Discipline (as they call it) of Leathern thongs, ten to a handful, and three blood-knots in each. I grew sick of being tawed for offences I had never committed, and so made bold one morning to try and strangle the Mother of the Workroom, who sat over us with a rattan, while we carded wool. Upon which I was bound to a post, and received more stripes, my lad, in an hour than ever your Schoolmaster gave you in a week. That same night I tried to burn the prison down; and then they put me in the dark dungeon called La Grande Force, with six inches of water in it and any number of rats. I was threatened with prosecution at their old Bailey, or Chatelet, with the Question (that is, the torture) ordinary and extraordinary, with the galleys for life as a wind-up, even if I escaped the gibbet in the place de Greve. Luckily for me, at this time the Gentleman of the Chamber fell into disgrace with Father la Chaise for eating a Chicken Sausage in Lent; and to spite him and the Minister, and the Cardinal and the Opera Dancer, and the Abbe and the Doctor of the Sorbonne, and the Posture Master all together, His Reverence, having his Majesty's ear, moves the Most Christian King to Clemency, and a Royal warrant comes down to the Madelonettes, and I was sent about my business with strict injunctions not to show myself again in Paris, under penalty of the Pillory, branding on the cheek with a red-hot iron, and the galleys in perpetuity.

"I had been nearly ten years abroad, and having, by the charity of some Ladies of the Irish Convent in Paris, found means to quit France, landed one morning in the year '90 at Wapping, below London. I had never been in England before, and mighty little I thought of it when I became acquainted with that proud, belly-G.o.d country. I found that there was little enough to be done to make a poor Irishwoman able to earn her own living; and that there was besides a prejudice against natives of Ireland, both on account of their Extraction and their Religion, which made the high and mighty English unwilling to employ them, either as day-labourers or as domestic servants. For awhile, getting into loose company, I went about the country to wakes and Fairs, picking up a livelihood by Rope-dancing, back and broadsword fighting, and now and then sword swallowing and fire eating; but since my misadventure with the Posture Master I had taken a dislike to the Mountebank life, and could not settle down to it again. My old love for soldiering revived again, and being at Plymouth where a Recruiting Party was beating up for King William's service in his Irish wars, took a convenient opportunity of quitting my female apparel, resuming that of a man, and listing in Lord Millwood's Regiment of Foot as a private Fusilier. As I knew my drill, and made no secret of my having served in the Maison du Roy, I was looked upon rather as a good prize, for in war time 'tis Soldiers and Soldiers only that are of real value, and they may have served the very Devil himself so that they can trail a pike and cast a grenade: 'tis all one to the Recruiting Captain. He wants men--not loblolly boys--and so long as he gets them he cares not a doit where they come from.

"I suppose I fought as bravely as my neighbours throughout that last Irish Campaign, in which the unhappy King James made so desperate an effort to regain his crown. When King William and the Marshal Duke of Schomberg had made an end of him, and the poor dethroned Monarch had gotten away to St. Germains-en-Laye, there to eke out the remains of his days as a kind of Monk, Millwood's Foot was sent back to England, and put upon the Peace Establishment. That is to say the officers got half pay, and the private men were told that for the next eighteen months they should have sixpence a day, and that after that, unless another war came, they must s.h.i.+ft for themselves. I preferred s.h.i.+fting for myself at once to having any of their measly doles after valiant and faithful service; and so, having gathered a very pretty penny out of Plunder while with King William's army, I became a woman again, and opened a Coffee House and Spirit Shop at Chelsea. My curious adventures had by this time come to be pretty well known; and setting up at the sign of the Amazon's Head, with a picture of myself, in full fighting dress splitting an Irish Rapparee with my bayonet, I grew into some renown.

The Quality much frequented my house, and some of the book-making gentlemen about Grub Street were good enough to dish up my exploits in a s.h.i.+lling pamphlet, called 'The Life of Elizabeth O----, _alias_ James Moriarty, the new Mary Ambree, or the Grenadier.' At Chelsea I remained until the year 1704, but lost much by trusting the Quality, and bad debts among the Gentlemen of the Army. Besides this, I was foolish enough to get married to a worthless, drunken fellow, my own countryman, who had been Fence Master in the Life-Guards, and he very speedily ate me out of House and Home, giving me continual Black Eyes, besides.

"Thus, when the Great War of the Succession broke out, and the English army, commanded by the Great Duke of Marlborough, being allied with the Imperialists under Prince Eugene, and the forces of their High Mightinesses the Dutchmen, went at it Hammer and Tongs about the Spanish succession with King Lewis of France, I, who had always been fond of the army, resolved to give up pot-walloping and take another turn under canvas. It was, however, too late in the day for me to think of again taking the part of a bold Grenadier. I had become somewhat of a Character, and (my old proficiency with the Sticks remaining by me) had earned among the Gentlemen of the Army the cant name of Mother Drum--that by which, to my sorrow, I am now known. And as Mother Drum, suttler and baggage-wagon woman in the train of the great John Churchill, I drank and swore, and sold aquavitae, and plundered when I could, and was flogged when I was taken in the fact (for the Provost-Marshal is no respecter of s.e.x), at Blenheim and Ramilies, and Malplaquet and Oudenarde, and throughout those glorious Campaigns of which I could talk to you till doomsday. I came back to England at the Peace of Utrecht, and set up another Tavern, and married another husband, more worthless and more drunken than the first one, and then went bankrupt and turned washerwoman, and then got into trouble about a gentleman's silver-hilted Rapier, for which I lay long in hold, and was sent for five years to the Plantations; and at last here I am, old and fat and good for nothing, but to throw to the crows as carrion--Mother Drum, G.o.d save us all! as bold as bra.s.s, and as tough as leather, and 'the miserablest old 'oman that ever stepped.'"

This last part of her adventures I have not polished up, and they are Mother Drum's own.