board the patriot squadron commanded
by that marvellous seaman, in the cutting out and blockading operations
before Callao--an episode of unalloyed glory in the wars of Independence
and of endless honour in the fighting tradition of Englishmen. He was a
fair linguist, this ancient survivor of the Liberating armies. A trick
of smoothing his long white beard whenever he was short of a word in
French or English imparted an air of leisurely dignity to the tone of
his reminiscences.

III

"Yes, my friends," he used to say to his guests, "what would you have?
A youth of seventeen summers, without worldly experience, and owing
my rank only to the glorious patriotism of my father, may God rest his
soul. I suffered immense humiliation, not so much from the disobedience
of that subordinate, who, after all, was responsible for those
prisoners; but I suffered because, like the boy I was, I myself dreaded
going to the adjutant for the key. I had felt, before, his rough and
cutting tongue. Being quite a common fellow, with no merit except his
savage valour, he made me feel his contempt and dislike from the
first day I joined my battalion in garrison at the fort. It was only
a fortnight before! I would have confronted him sword in hand, but I
shrank from the mocking brutality of his sneers.

"I don't remember having been so miserable in my life before or since.
The torment of my sensibility was so great that I wished the sergeant to
fall dead at my feet, and the stupid soldiers who stared at me to
turn into corpses; and even those wretches for whom my entreaties had
procured a reprieve I wished dead also, because I could not face them
without shame. A mephitic heat like a whiff of air from hell came out of
that dark place in which they were confined. Those at the window who had
heard what was going on jeered at me in very desperation: one of these
fellows, gone mad no doubt, kept on urging me volubly to order the
soldiers to fire through the window. His insane loquacity made my heart
turn faint. And my feet were like lead. There was no higher officer to
whom I could appeal. I had not even the firmness of spirit to simply go
away.

"Benumbed by my remorse, I stood with my back to the window. You must
not suppose that all this lasted a long time. How long could it have
been? A minute? If you measured by mental suffering it was like a
hundred years; a longer time than all my life has been since. No,
certainly, it was not so much