CHAPTER XXX. There shall they rot-ambition's honoured fools! The broken tools, which tyrants cast away!" OUR brig was upwards of three weeks beating up to Marti nique. On our arrival, we found the preparations for the expedition to Trinidad in a forward state, and the troops tolerably healthy: our commander-in-chief was an enemy to useless parade, and seldom had the garrison out when their exposure could be avoided. My forenoons were generally employed in the quarter-master-general's office; my evenings in private musical and dancing parties, or an occasional lounge into the grand gaming saloon; the bank of which, belonging to the same parties, had been transferred from St. Pierre to Fort Royal, and was then established at the house of the celebrated Madame Chassevent, originale fabricateur of the no less celebrated veritable Martiniqus noyau. It was under her auspices that the French fabricateur Granmaison became initiated in the mysteries of the manufacture of this delicious liqueur, and gained that knowledge, which rendered his name and his noyau so famous, not only throughout Europe, but in every civilized portion of the habitable globe. This venerable old lady, then about eighty years of age, was a beauty in wrinkles; her head was quite a study,-every feature of a face, that must have been lovely in its day, preserved in its regularity-her eye emitting in its last twinkling spark a portion of that brilliancy for which it had been once so celebrated. In a rich lace dress, of the age of the fifteenth Louis, with high coiffe and pendant lappets of Brussels point, this aged coquette would take her seat at the table of fortune, and game with an avidity which proved the inveteracy of her passion for this all-prevailing vice. Her suppers were splendid, and refreshments were, during the hours of play, profusely distributed; yet her profits were, I was told, considerable, the drawer into which fortunate gamesters placed their douceur, after a certain number of winnings, VOL. II. 11 frequently producing one hundred joes a night, and which sum became the joint profit of the bankers and hostess. I had now been nearly two seasons in the West Indies, and had not as yet had an hour's serious illness. My habits of temperance, however they might have proved a general safeguard, could not wholly have been relied on as my ægis of health; for some of the most abstemious, of all ages fell victims to those horrid diseases of the country which baffle all medical speculation, either for prevention, or specific treatment, the physician being generally obliged to vary his mode of treatment, according to the habit of the sufferer. Thus I have known bottled porter administered profusely, and with the best effect, by a medical man of eminence, to a brother of the profession (his junior, be it remarked,) during the progress of a bilious fever and flux; while the exhibition of poison could not have been more strictly prohibited than this seducing beverage to patients of a different temperament, afflicted with the same disease, and the same general symptoms, and whose only diluent was toast and water or ptisan. The great havoc in these climates, it must be confessed, falls on the regimental officers, whose duties, even under the mild administration of the most humane and considerate commander-in-chief, are at all times necessarily severe and trying in all the islands. The enemy had, at the period referred to, a considerable force in the West Indies, and their emissaries were active in their attempts to incite the coloured population of the lately conquered islands to rise against their new masters. To counteract these machinations, every measure which a humane and sound policy could suggest was adopted by those prudent and vigilant officers, to whom the safety of these important conquests was intrusted. The arrangements being complete, the grand expedition to the Spanish Main (as it was understood by the troops) sailed from Martinique and Barbadoes, joined by other forces from islands to leeward. I have already declared that it forms no part of my plan to enter into the details of battles by land or sea; the events of the late war have heen historically detailed by a variety of persons better qualified for the task than a young subaltern of my then standing in the service, who could only speak of those circumstances coming within that circumscribed sphere of action which added Trinidad to the British transatlantic dominions. It will suffice in closing this slight mention of this expedition, to state, that ir the portion of it which bears on the operations against that island, the measures were planned with prudence, conducted with spirit, and crowned with complete success; whilst those undertaken against Porto Rico presented a humiliating contrast. My humble share in the danger, honour, and profit of these expeditions, may be summed up in a few sentences-a large hole in the sleeve of my jacket, and as small a one as an ounce ball generally makes in the fleshy part of my left arm, a captain lieutenantcy in the -th West India regiment, and about fourteen pounds (net after all drawbacks) prize money! which I esteemed myself fortunate in realising a year after the affair from a London Jew. On the return of the expedition to Martinique, some weeks were passed in replacing garrisons temporarily reduced or withdrawn, forming the permanent military establishments at the several islands; after which, it was generally understood, our highly esteemed commander-in-chief would return to England. An idea of a general peace (on what grounds I did not then probably take much trouble to inquire,) was prevalent at this period; and received strength from an order issued by his excellency on granting leave of absence to his adjutant-general, Brigadier GENERAL HOPE, to proceed to England, on which announcement an epigrammatical allusion was made to General PEACE. At length our good general-in-chief took leave of a command which was honoured in his hands, and was succeeded pro tempore in charge of the West Indies by General Moreshead, until the arrival of Lieutenant-General Cuyler, who arrived to take the command in the fall of the year 1797. CHAPTER XXXI. "When dire Disease, with all her host of pains, It was my rare good fortune hitherto never to have been obliged to keep my bed from illness for one day, except the short period that the wound in my arm confined me to my cabin in the Scipio, (an old rasee of 64,) where every comfort and the kindest attention were bestowed on me; but my hour of trial at last arrived. I was at a party at the house of the procureur du roi, in the highest spirits, when a frightful loss of memory or confusion of ideas suddenly oppressed me, attended with a degree of faintness which I had never in my life before felt. I find it impossible to describe this peculiarly horrifying sensation; it seemed as if the cold hand of death had been laid upon me, and the reeling world appeared fading away before my dim vision. My first impulse was to make a rush to the sideboard in order to obtain a draught of sangaree; but I fell prostrate on the floor before I had accomplished half the distance to it, when I became insensible. In this state I was borne by two officers of the regiment of Walstein (one, the accomplished Colonel Count Rouvre, the other, Captain Villeneuve, nephew to the late admiral,) across. the street to my quarters, as they refused to trust me to the care of the slaves in attendance. On being placed in my bed in a recumbent posture, my senses after some time became a little more collected. My first thoughts, as may be conjectured, brought me back to the recollection of that awful moment, when I beheld my poor general attacked in a manner so nearly similar, as to leave no other impression on my mind but that mine was the beginning of that dire disease, which left no hope be-. hind! Well, thought I, be it so; there are many others. whose loss would be more deeply felt by their friends and by. society. The symptom that inspired most hope within me was the total absence of that excruciating headach, with which the general's disorder commenced. Mine was in a great measure free from intense pain, and my senses were every moment acquiring their usual composure; so that when the surgeon who was nearest at hand appeared, they were sufficiently collected to enable me to explain all my feelings and symptoms with clearness and accuracy. The extreme coldness of my feet caused him to order them to be placed in hot water immediately, while he prepared some medicine. This process having been performed, and the icy feel at my lower extremities being exchanged for the usual glow of natural heat, I felt myself somewhat revived; but after another quarter of an hour's rest, a violent attack of cholera, which baffled all the surgeon's skill to subdue, brought me in twelve hours to the gates of death. The medical directorgeneral, who was called in, was with me every other hour during this alarming period, and the watchful surgeon scarcely ever quitted my bedside during the night. A sound sleep, preceded by syncope, which fell upon me towards morning, seemed to him, as he afterwards assured me, to be the sleep of death, previously to which he had, for the first time, succeeded in administering a small portion of medicine. With kind anxiety he attended from hour to hour, until satisfied that he had turned the tide of the disorder, when he began to entertain those hopes for the preservation of my life, which the previously convulsed state of my stomach had almost totally extinguished. But the exhaustion occasioned by the ravages of the disease, and the effect of powerful medicine, was so great, that I became in a few days a mere existing shadow, and my kind medical friend looked hourly for my dissolution. I had reason to hail it as a blessing that the powers of my mind had become enfeebled, even to perfect childishness, with the prostration of all my bodily faculties. I lay a poor, passive, helpless creature, in the hands of the attendants. On one occasion the signs of death were apparently so evident, that the old negress who nurse-tended me stretched my limbs; and after placing a quarter-dollar over each of my sunken eyeballs, she considered her task ended, and withdrew. I was partly sensible of what was passing, and indistinctly heard the shriek of the poor mulatto girl who had been so long my faithful attendant; but, in such a state of powerless inanity, as to be incapable of word or sign. Shortly after, the worthy surgeon paid his next visit, and saw the kind-hearted girl, as she sat weeping and murmuring the negro lament, (a low and pensive kind of whine,) outside the door of my chamber. A Captain Blake, of the Royal Irish |