The Phantom Regiment; or, Stories of "Ours"Grant, James
General
The Phantom Regiment; or, Stories of "Ours"
Grant, James
Adventure stories; British -- Foreign countries -- Fiction; Soldiers -- Fiction
The coach which bore away the old lady who rejoiced in the euphonious
cognomen of Donna Dominga de Lucena y Colmenar de Orieja, and her
daughter the pretty Paulina, was a genuine old Castilian contrivance
of the true caravan species; and, though still in use, in this our
age of luxury and invention, had been constructed, perhaps, before
folding steps were conceived; for a three-legged stool, to facilitate
ingress and egress, hung near the door. The roof was shaped like the
crust of an apple-pie, and the lower carriage, like that portion of a
triumphal car. It was drawn by a pair of fat sleek mules, which
seemed to have grown old with the vehicle, and with Pedrillo, the
little postilion, who floundered away on a demi-pique saddle, with a
gigantic cocked hat surmounting his dark visage; and his lean spindle
legs lost in two gigantic jack-boots, which belonged to the
beforesaid saddle rather than to his own person.
Such was the antediluvian vehicle which bore away the pompous old
Donna and her daughter the charming Paulina, who, for the past month
(during which she had resided in Gibraltar), had turned all the heads
of "Ours;" and was boasted by the Spaniards as the fairest belle in
las Cuatros Reinos--yes in the three mighty little kingdoms of
Seville, Cordova, Jaen, and Granada, which are now conglomerated into
the beautiful province of Andalusia.
And so, without other escort than the redoubtable Pedrillo, who wore
a trabujo or blunderbuss slung across his back, and strong in their
belief in the virtues of the Santa Faz of Jaen, a picture of which
was hung in the back of their coach, these two Spanish ladies, on the
conclusion of their visit, departed on their return to Seville, their
native city; and from the British fortifications, which frown in
solid tiers towards the Spanish lines, I watched the venerable
carrozzo as it rolled across the low sandy Isthmus, which is known as
the neutral ground; and it disappeared just as the sun began to fade
upon the beautiful masses of the Serrania de Rondo, which rose in
piles against the golden clouds, and as the evening gun pealed like
thunder among the Moorish peaks of Jebel Tarik; and then I turned
away with a sigh as I thought of the winning smile I should never see
again.
"It's all over now, Ramble," said my friend Jack Slingsby, who was
the subaltern of my company, and who had been my chum at Sandhurst;
"it is all over, Dick," he continued, with a laugh and one of those
rough slaps on the shoulder, which no one ventures to give but an
Englishman; "and so, instead of airing your sorrows here, 'sighing to
the evening breeze' and all that sort of thing, you may as well come
with me and knock the balls about a little--or join Shafton, the
colonel, and some of "Ours" who have proposed a pool to-night--and
meanwhile solace yourself with another of my 'very superior' cabanas."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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