Still the “red flag at the fore,” like a will-o’the-wisp, lured me on. I conducted one of the fire-ships at Lord Cochrane’s attack upon the French fleet in Basque Roads; had the command of a gun-boat at the storming of St. Sebastian, and was with the army at the sortie from Bayonne, in which I got a crack on the head--not big enough to jump in, to be sure, but it set my brains spinning for a month. I commanded a fast-sailing schooner charged with despatches for Wellington, when he was expected to occupy Bordeaux, and entered the Garonne in the dead of the night, lighted on my way by the flames of a French eighty-gun ship that had been set on fire to prevent her falling into the hands of the English; and having anchored in a secure position, left my vessel in a four-oared boat, passed the batteries undiscovered, and executed my orders as the brave marshal stood in the great square, with white flags and beauty greeting his arrival. Peace came: Bonaparte was elbowed off to Elba, and the “red flag at the fore” was as far off as ever. My vessel was paid off, and after many years of activity, I entered upon a life of indolence. But as Dr. Watts very wisely observes, in one of the hymns which I was compelled to learn at school when a child,-- “Satan finds some mischief still, For idle hands to do;”-- so I e’en got married. The fair lady (she is now peeping over my shoulder) attracted my attention at church by the broad and bright ribands that graced the front of her bonnet. They reminded me of the “red flag at the fore,” and an inglorious sigh escaped. Now every body knows that a sigh is the beginning of love, for Byron says, “Oh, love! what is it in this world of ours That makes it fatal to be loved? Ah, why With cypress dost thou wreath thy bowers, And make thy best interpreter a sigh?” Well, but to make short of it, I got married; but no sooner had Napoleon returned from Elba, than I was again at my duty. I was sent by Sir Pulteney Malcolm, then naval commander-in-chief at Ostend, with a party of seamen to man the great guns in the army under Wellington on the plains of Waterloo, and the “red flag at the fore” once more opened on my view. It was on the very morning after the decisive battle, that between Brussels and Bruges, I met the first detachment of prisoners coming down from the field, and was ordered to take charge of them to Ostend. There were about two thousand officers and men, most of them wounded and without a single application or dressing to the mangled parts; yet their devotion to Napoleon was unabated, and with their stiffened limbs sore with laceration, and their bodies gashed and scored with sabre cuts, they still shouted, “_Vive l’Empereur!_”