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fiercely. "You may do that, Captain Finch," I said, "as soon as possible; but, in the meantime, you can't be sure of what may turn up of a dark night, and a couple of lights at your main-yard-arm, or anywhere, will bring the schooner down in half-anhour, or so, if there's a breeze. As for a calm,” said I, turning round-but such a strange white look had come over Finch's face as he glanced after me, that, thinking he was beside himself with rage, I went down the side without another word. "Take your own way!" I fancied I heard him mutter betwixt his teeth; but next moment we were pulling off.

Well, the breeze ere this time was steady, though light, and we drew gradually to windward of the Indiaman, till by the afternoon the white band on her hull was just awash with the water, and there I kept her, with a little variety, pretty near the whole night, and most of the following day.

The next night came on almost as dark as it had been that night of the calm; but the breeze freshened again pretty strong, and accordingly I kept the schooner down to get nearer the ship, which we had seen in the first dog-watch dead to leeward. I was rather uneasy for a while at not being able to make out her lights, and we slipped fast through the water, when all at once both Jones and Westwood called out from forward that they saw them, and I walked to the bows. "All right," said I; "but no-by heaven! That's the signal I named to the captain! Set stunsails, Mr Jones, and make her walk, for godsake!" Two lights it was, aloft in the gloom, right to leeward as before: there was something wrong, or else she wanted to speak us; so away we flew before the wind, under everything that could be set. I looked and looked, when a thought struck me; not another light was to be seen below, and they weren't high enough from the heave of the sea for even a ship's lower-mast.

"Yes, by George!" said I hurriedly to Westwood and Jones, "that's a trick! The fellow means to give us the slip. Clap the helm down, Mr Snelling, and haul aft the sheets there -luff, luff!" We were losing our weather-gage; in fact, the Indiaman

must actually be to windward of us ere then, and if the breeze freshened we might lose them altogether. The thing that troubled me most was, that I couldn't believe the man bad thought of such a plan himself; and if he once took a hint from any of the scoundrels I knew were aboard, why, there was no saying what might be the upshot in the end. Finch was a common enough character at bottom; but with such notions as I was sure were working in his head about Miss Hyde, one step might lead him on to another, till any chance occasion might make a desperate villain of him, especially if he suspected myself of aught like good fortune with the young lady. It wasn't much past midnight, the air was wonderfully heavy and sweltering, and the swell going down, when we heard a murmur amongst the men on the forecastle, and saw a red fire-ball pass high over to nor'ard for half a minute, leaving a trail in the dark sky beyond the headsails. A queer ghastly sort of ruddy grey streak opened out in the black of the horizon, where some of them thought they made out the ship; but soon after we could hear a low hollow kind of a hum, rushing as it were from east to west, till it grew almost like the sound of waves on a beach; which made us begin to look to ourselves. There was a bright line of light directly in the opposite quarter, and the sea far away seemed getting on fire, with a noise and a hubbub coming along below, that nobody appeared to know the meaning of; while aloft it was as still as a church. For a moment I saw the Seringapatam quite plainly several miles off; but from the confusion, I never could say whether it was north or east; in fact, we kept watching the canvass, expecting to have a hurricane into it next minute. Suddenly the sea came gleam-gleaming and flickering on, as it were, with a washing bubble and a hissing smother of foam, till it splashed right against our larboard bulwarks, heaping up like perfect fire upon the schooner's side, and running past both stern and bows, away with a long rolling flash to the other horizon. All was pitch-dark again after that, and a whisper went about our decks and round the binnacle lamp, of

"The ripples!-It's the ripples!"* "Nothing more, sir!" said Jones, even he seeming taken by surprise at first. Twice again we had it, though each time fainter, right out of the midst of the gloom; after which it was as calm as before. "Thank God!" said I, breathing hard, "we'll have that Indiaman in the morning, at any rate!" "Why, sir," answered Jones thoughtfully, "after this we are likely to have the south-west monsoon upon us ere long-'tis just the place and the season for it."

And so it was. Instead of sighting the Seringapatam at daybreak, I had a strong suspicion she had gone to eastward; but of course the faster the schooner was, why if it were the wrong way, we should only get from her the farther, and miss her altogether, without ever knowing how matters went, even if she got quietly into port; so, being the best plan I could think of for the meantime, away we drove northwestward, sweeping the horizon with the glass every morning. We had run so far, indeed, without success, that I was sure she couldn't be ahead; when one day I asked Mr Jones to bring me up the chart for those parts, as we took the latitude. We were a long way to westward of our own course at the

time, and Jones's finger went along eastward till it stopped right upon the Maldive islands, while he looked up with a sudden sharp glance. "By heaven," said I, "yes -I forgot that story altogether-be so good as send that man there, Jacobs, to me!" "Jacobs," said I, "which of the officers' clothes did that fellow Foster use to scrub lately, in the Indiaman ?" Jacobs gave his hair a rub, recollected a moment, and answered, " Why, sir, the captain's own." "Oh!" I said, "well, that'll do, Jacobs" and Jacobs walked forward again. "Mr Jones," said I, quickly, that chart belonged to the captain!-I'll have a look at that said desert island, sir!" We found something answering to it on the chart; and in a few minutes the schooner was bowling before the dregs of the monsoon to eastward. "At all events," added I, "we'll see if these vagabonds mean to keep their word and turn hermits-either we catch them there, Mr Jones, or else we must find that Indiaman, though she were in sight of Colabaht lighthouse!" Jones's eye lighted, and he turned his nostrils to the monsoon as if he snuffed it in; in fact, he was that sort of man that needed somewhat out of the common way to keep him right."

* The 'Ripples'-a marine phenomenon peculiar, apparently, to the Indian Ocean. Outside the harbour of Bombay.

SKETCHES AND EPISODES OF A CAMPAIGN IN SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN.

Ir is almost unnecessary to remind the reader that, in the beginning of April 1848, some days after proclamation had been made of the independence of Schleswig and Holstein, but before Germany had time to inundate the duchies with her armies, a sharp action was fought at Bau, in which the malcontents were utterly defeated -their very severe loss falling especially upon the students from Kiel and other universities. It will also be remembered that this disaster, occurring simultaneously with the countenance given to the SchleswigHolstein revolutionists by the timid and popularity-seeking sovereign of Prussia, caused a strong sensation in Germany, and led to the formation of numerous free corps, which forthwith hurried northwards, irregularly armed, totally undisciplined, bedecked with tricolor, and yelling for Fatherland. Those were the insane days when Germany dreamed of a fleet, coveted a seaboard, and vowed that her limits should extend, in the words of Arndt's rhapsodical ditty—

"So weit die Deutsche Zunge klingt," forgetting that, if her boundary were thus to include every land in which her language is spoken, it must take in, not only a portion of Schleswigwhich a gross abuse of brute force might certainly wrench from Denmark-but a considerable slice of northern France, whose acquisition would be rather less easy. But the revolutionary fever then raged in Europe, and such considerations were much too rational to be for a moment entertained by Germany's enthusiastic youth. We phlegmatic Islanders are quite incapable of appreciating the effect upon excitable Continentals of an old song and a new cockade. The word was passed through Germany for succour to their northern brethren, in arms for liberty and revenge; and the cry was responded to by three or four thousand desultory individuals, cager for adventure, thirsty for plun

Freischaar-Novellen. Schilderungen Schleswig-Holstein. Von WILHELM HAMM.

der, obnoxious to the police, or-but these, we suspect, constituted a very small minority-really zealous in the cause. In this last category, so he assures us, must be included a certain Mr William Hamm, who, as far as we can make out-for he is not very explicit as to his antecedents-was a jolly student at Leipzig university, when he had the misfortune to be infected with the prevalent malady, during one of whose paroxysms he quitted the academic groves, with their fountains of cool beer, for the field of danger and renown. In other words, he left his profitable and respectable studies to join one of the bands of freebooters then assembling upon German soil, for the purpose of an unjustifiable aggression upon Danish territory. For some time previously, it would appear from his own account, he had felt restless and uncomfortable. He was evidently sickening for the democratic fever; and he admits as much in a tirade of the metaphorical slang commonly affected by shallow-pated libertymongers of his class. "The revolutions of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin," he says, "had implanted in every breast a combustible, which, impatiently heaving, waited but the spark to explode. Every man was eager to be doing; fists convulsively clenched themselves; even the weakest thought himself called upon to grasp with his own hand the spokes of the wheel of time." We have no patience to translate more of such rhodomontade-the common drivel of Radical propagandists. Mr Hamm, whose weak brain has evidently not yet recovered from the excitement of his two months' campaign, declares himself to have felt as if he were walking over a mine, with momentary expectation of a blow-up. His condition seems to have been that which the American describes as wolfish. He was full of fight, or fancied himself so; he longed for a set-to with somebody, but could not make up his

und Episoden aus einem Kriegszug in Leipzig, 1850.

mind upon whose devoted head he should discharge his superfluous electricity. His suspense was soon relieved. Suddenly came news of the battle of Ban, and of the dressing received by the insurgents. This was the spark required to kindle the inflammable Hamm. His "combustible" instantly blew up. He felt he should never enjoy peace of mind until he had offered his mite upon the altar of the holy German cause, and aided in the rescue of the "sea-surrounded” provinces of Schleswig from the tyranny of faithless Denmark. He published a summons to the youth of Leipzig to form a free corps, and march to help the duchies. On the 17th April, the band thus collected proceeded by railway to Altona. Although Hamm had officiously contributed to their coming together, he does not appear to have held higher rank amongst them than that of full private. Perhaps when he saw the regiment assembled, he felt little ambition to march at its head. Certain it is that, although he misses no opportunity of vaunting the virtues and utility of the free corps in general, and his own in particular, the account he gives of their composition inspires but little respect. Every state of Germany had its representatives in the motley cohorts, whose elements he thus describes:

"Bearded hunters and gamekeepers in greenwoodsman's garb, and with capital rifles; black-redgold students, with rusty muskets and enormous swords amongst them young lads who had likely enough left home through distaste for the paternal rod; shopmen weary of the counter; fashionable journeyman barbers with self-bestowed diplomas of doctors of medicine; school-ushers out of place, who thought they could handle a cutlass as well as a ferula; mechanics and artisans of every sort; and not a few honest peasants, muscular figures, whose hard fists were certainly better adapted to the heavy musket-butt than to the light goad-in short, there was not a class unrepresented. Many, particularly of the more educated and intelligent sort-and of these there were not a few-were assuredly impelled solely by enthusiasm for the endangered cause; others were stimu

lated by the thirst for action natural to youth, and which the stirring times had awakened; the majority, however, came, it must honestly be admitted, from no other motive than a love of adventure, or because at home their account was closed with society and the laws."

Through the delicate phraseology of this report, it is easy to discern that the composition of the free corps was what might have been expectednamely, scamps, outcasts, and criminals, with a sprinkling of hair-brained boys and wrong-headed politicians. From such a mob, sent suddenly into the field, without previous drill or training, no very great feats of arms were to be anticipated; and, had they been unsupported, the Danes would soon have made examples of them. But, fighting under the shadow and protection of the regular Prussian troops, they got off with few hard knocks, but, we dare to say-notwithstanding Mr Hamm's energetic protestationswith a very handsome share of whatever plunder was going. Their chief occupation, as it appears to us, judging from the frequently-recurring gastronomic passages in the Sketches and Episodes, was looking after provender.

"The wild warriors," (what a very big word this sounds, applied to a set of ragamuffin recruits, whom Falstaff himself, to judge from Hamm's own revelations, might have been ashamed to marshal)" the wild warriors," their comrade ingenuously observes,

66

were always thirsty, and almost always hungry." We inferred as much before coming to this admission, from the constant mention made in Mr Hamm's volume of substantial breakfasts, savoury dinners, succulent suppers, and "exquisite grogs." Indeed, the state of the larder seems to have been the barometer by which these voracious liberators estimated the patriotism of the lucky natives upon whom they quartered themselves. Thus we find one Hagemann lauded as a "noble patriot," because he welcomes a German detachment with a good meal and racy wine; whilst an unfortunate farmer is stigmatised as an inhospitable and knavish peasant, because he declines opening his storeroom to the assaults of some hundred ravenous volunteers. His refusal

availed him little, for the door was broken open and an abundant stock of provisions discovered, whence the intruders helped themselves, giving in exchange an acknowledgment, which we may fairly presume is still unhonoured, and likely to continue so. In short, the German free corps, like many bad soldiers, seem to have been famous foragers, perfect heroes amongst ben-roosts, and with noses that led them direct to the brandy bottle, however secret the nook in which it might be bestowed. We can discover nothing, even in Mr Hamm's somewhat highly-coloured account of their proceedings, to induce us to believe that they were as formidable to the enemy as they must have been to the peasant. If we credit their chronicler's bare assertion, their undisciplined and impetuous valour was far more dreaded by the Danes than were the serried charges of the Prussian Guards; but none of the skirmishes he records (and which were mostly of a very unimportant description) seem to us to prove this statement, and various circumstances are strongly opposed to its probability. "There was no time for drill," he says; "the most part of them hardly knew how to form front, or the difference between 'right-face' and left-face'; it sufficed that we could fire our muskets, charge bayonets, and shout a lusty hurrah. With only that amount of instruction we managed to achieve many wonderful things, and the Danish red-coats feared our irregular, impetuous attacks far more than the batteries of the German artillery. Tüdsk Früskar!' (German free corps) was a cry of terror which made every Danish heart to quake." The heroic band of Dane-devourers which was so happy as to bear upon its muster-roll the name of William Hamm, dispensed with the luxury of trumpets-whose notes would certainly have conveyed small meaning to the ears of soldiers who could not even go through their facings-otherwise there can be no question that the man who now so modestly recounts their exploits would have been selected by acclamation to sound the brazen instrument. He is a glorious fellow at a flourish, and a very fit historian of the band of deboshed students, bankrupt barbers, seedy patriots, and

escaped galley-slaves, who-be it spoken to the disgrace of the Government that permitted it-swarmed, in the spring of 1848, to assist in the spoliation of Denmark. He cannot expect, however, that we should take him exactly at his own price, or without obtaining a valuation from parties less interested. On a careful perusal of his volume, we have hit upon a passage which throws some light upon the estimation in which the German free corps in Schleswig-Holstein were held by the Prussian regular army and military authorities. There was the worst possible understanding, it appears, between the troops of the line and the bands of volunteers.

"The officers of the former, particularly those of the Guard, sneered at, despised and depreciated us, whenever and wherever they could and dared. We deserved this disgraceful treatment so much the less, that we always willingly and loudly recognised and proclaimed the valour of the Prussian Guard. But the foundation of their antipathy lay deeper; it dated from the days of March in Berlin. The Guards still fostered feelings of bitter exasperation, and classed all the free-corps men in the same category with the Berliners. Thence arose constant collisions, not unfrequently duels, in which the students' swords gallantly played their part. The men of the barricades always had to be quartered full six miles away from the Guards; for, at an interval of only three miles, it would have been impossible to keep them from rushing to measure themselves with their implacable foes. The fury of the volunteers was excited to the very highest pitch by the treatment some of them had to endure at Kolding. The Guard lay there in garrison; not one of us was permitted to enter the town: those who had, and could prove that they had, indispensable business there, were disarmed and allowed to go in under close escort, like criminals. With reference to this revolting treatment, the free corps sent from Hadersleben an energetic address and demand for satisfaction to General Wrangel, the commander-in-chief, who had the reputation of a severe but just man. No satisfaction, however, was obtained, nor even an answer."

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