The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Track of the Troops, by R.M. Ballantyne

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: In the Track of the Troops

Author: R.M. Ballantyne

Release Date: June 6, 2007 [EBook #21705]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE TRACK OF THE TROOPS ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

IN THE TRACK OF THE TROOPS, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.

CHAPTER ONE.

A TALE OF MODERN WAR.

REVEALS THE EXPLOSIVE NATURE OF MY EARLY CAREER.

The remarkable--I might even say amazing--personal adventures which I am
about to relate occurred quite recently.

They are so full of interest to myself and to my old mother, that I
hasten to write them down while yet vivid and fresh in my memory, in the
hope that they may prove interesting,--to say nothing of elevating and
instructive--to the English-speaking portions of the human race
throughout the world.

The dear old lady to whom I have just referred--my mother--is one of the
gentlest, meekest, tenderest beings of my acquaintance. Her regard for
me is almost idolatrous. My feelings towards her are tinged with
adoration.

From my earliest years I have been addicted to analysis.

Some of my younger readers may not perhaps know that by analysis is
meant the reduction of compound things to their elements--the turning of
things, as it were, inside out and tearing them to pieces. All the
complex toys of infancy I was wont to reduce to their elements; I turned
them inside out to see what they were made of, and how they worked. A
doll, not my own, but my sister Bella's, which had moveable eyelids and
a musical stomach, was treated by me in this manner, the result being
that I learned little, while my poor sister suffered much. Everything
in my father's house suffered more or less from this inquiring tendency
of my mind.

Time, however, while it did not abate my thirst for knowledge, developed
my constructive powers. I became a mechanician and an inventor.
Perpetual motion was my first hobby. Six times during the course of
boyhood did I burst into my mother's presence with the astounding news
that I had "discovered it at last!" The mild and trustful bei