The countryside had become too hot for him; and, as the
seventy-five shillings were wanting which might have carried him to
America, he took the only way handy of getting himself out of the way.
Seldom has Her Majesty had a less promising recruit, for his hot Celtic
blood seethed with hatred against Britain and all things British.
The sergeant, however, smiling complacently over his 6 ft. of brawn and
his 44 in. chest, whisked him off with a dozen other of the boys to the
depot at Fermoy, whence in a few weeks they were sent on, with the
spade-work kinks taken out of their backs, to the first battalion of the
Royal Mallows, at the top of the roster for foreign service.
The Royal Mallows, at about that date, were as strange a lot of men as
ever were paid by a great empire to fight its battles. It was the
darkest hour of the land struggle, when the one side came out with
crow-bar and battering-ram by day, and the other with mask and with
shot-gun by night. Men driven from their homes and potato-patches found
their way even into the service of the Government, to which it seemed to
them that they owed their troubles, and now and then they did wild
things before they came. There were recruits in the Irish regiments who
would forget to answer to their own names, so short had been their
acquaintance with them.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25