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Updated: May 21, 2025
Three days before starting they had met Captain Manley in the barrack-yard, and after saluting, Tom said, "If you please, sir, we wanted to ask you a question." "What is that, lads?" "If you please, sir, we understand that the boys of the band have their bags carried for them, but the company buglers carry knapsacks, like the men?" "Yes, boys; the company buglers carry knapsacks and muskets."
"I see that you have vacancies for buglers, sir," Tom said, "and my brother and myself want to enlist if you will take us." Captain Manley smiled. "You young scamps, you have got 'runaway from home' as plainly on your faces as if it was printed there. If we were to enlist you, we should be having your friends here after you to-morrow, and get into a scrape for taking you."
During this time the young buglers had no opportunity of calling upon Major-General Hill. The transport supplied by the Spanish Government had failed grossly, and the troops were badly fed at a time when, taking long marches, they most required support. The first day after they halted the boys determined that they would, as soon as they were off duty, call upon General Hill.
After having been a "pupil" among the buglers of a regiment, he had launched upon this life of continuous imprisonment, punctuated by brief periods of freedom, in which he lost his bearings, not knowing what to do with himself and wishing to return as soon as possible to jail. It was the perpetual chain, but finished link by link, as he used to say.
"You may be pretty sure of that; but I don't want to force you two wounded young fellows into taking part therein unless you are willing." "I am willing," said Pen decisively; "but it's only fair that I should ask my comrade, who is only one of the buglers of my regiment." "Oh, of course," said the smuggler captain, "a non-combatant. He carries a musket, I see, like yourself."
I am afraid you are too young, still there will be plenty more vacancies after we are once in the field, for a bullet has no respect for buglers; and you see the better you behave the better your chance of being chosen." "What is the difference exactly, sir?" Tom asked.
Then the two buglers blew out the general salute, time after time till, at six o'clock, the head of the relief column came in view. The gate was thrown open, and those of the little garrison who were able to stand went out, to welcome their rescuers. Five star shells were fired, to tell those left behind at Ekwanter that the relief was accomplished.
The Indians and thirty-four red-coats, concealed behind trees, lined the road. Before long was heard the tramp of cavalry and rumble of the field-guns. As they came within range the buglers, with all the vigour in their power, sounded a charge, the shrill notes ringing through the leafy forest aisles.
A fortnight later when the Anne had sailed, and the Little James had returned and gone again upon a luckless fishing trip, and the new-comers had settled into their appointed places, and the town was once more quiet, there came a fair September day when work was laid aside, and after breakfast the armies of the colony, at least a hundred souls in all, if we count the trumpeters, the buglers, the fifers, and the drummers, assembled on the Training Green just across the brook, and after some evolutions marched in orderly array back again past the spring and up the hill to the governor's house, where they were joined by him and the elder.
About a dozen people were assembled within, and we waited a half-hour beyond the time announced for the curtain to rise, during which the spectacle of a young man in black broadcloth, eating a cocoa-nut with his pen-knife, had a strange and painful fascination. At the end of this half- hour, our number was increased to eighteen, when the orchestra appeared, a snare-drummer and two buglers.
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