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The ladies had been stripped of their jewels, the officers of their watches and money; and every corner of the ship was ransacked for plate and other valuables, while clothes and private property of all sorts were laid hold of and carried off; and the men, even in the midst of their pillage, amused themselves by putting on officers' coats, silk waistcoats, and cocked-hats.
Stopping a whole train at an imaginary boundary to examine fifteen hundred passports, is beyond even the French capacity for official minutiæ. A hurried glance, or no glance at all a sham inspection at the best is all that the gentlemen with moustaches and cocked-hats can manage. The very attempt to look at bushels of passports is becoming an absurdity.
We were of course prepared to receive him in our full uniforms, with our cocked-hats and swords, with the marine guard under arms. He came alongside at half-past twelve o'clock, when the men were at dinner, an unusual hour to select, as it is not the custom ever to disturb them at their meals if it can be avoided.
It is well known that, in the troublous revolutionary times, cocked-hats were worn of a considerable size. He passed a considerable part of his life in Germany; was confined there for thirty years in the dungeons of Spielberg; and, escaping thence to England, was, under pretence of debt, but in reality from political hatred, imprisoned there also in the Tower of London.
Caterina did not expect the Mule to return that evening, which was his night away from home at Puente de Rey. She hurried to the door, therefore, when she heard, after nightfall, the clatter of hoofs in the narrow street, and the shuffling of iron heels at her very step. She opened the door, and in the bright moonlight saw the cocked-hats and long cloaks of the Guardia Civil.
In my room there were oval engravings of the months ladies haymaking in short waists and large hats tied under the chin, for June; smooth-legged noblemen pointing with cocked-hats to village steeples, for October.
He is so great that he spends much of his time learning the exact number of buttons, tags and laces, and the cut of all the cocked-hats, pigtails, and gaiters in his army. Oh, yes, he is so great that he is always meddling in other people's affairs. He pokes his red face into every cottage for miles around.
Worden had declined travelling in a cap, as unsuited to his holy office. Accordingly he wore his clerical beaver, which differed a little from the ordinary cocked-hats, that we all wore as a matter of course, though not so much so as to be very striking.
But, examined closely, that group was far from insignificant; for the eldest, who was reading in the newspaper the last portentous proceedings of the French parliaments, and turning with occasional comments to his young companions, was as fine a specimen of the old English gentleman as could well have been found in those venerable days of cocked-hats and pigtails.
To compensate for this simple fare, and at the same time to cool the close atmosphere of the berth, the table was covered with a large green cloth with a yellow border, and many yellow spots withal, where the colour had been discharged by slops of vinegar, hot tea, etcetera, etcetera; a sack of potatoes stood in one corner, and the shelves all round, and close over our heads, were stuffed with plates, glasses, quadrants, knives and forks, loaves of sugar, dirty stockings and shirts, and still fouler table-cloths, small tooth-combs, and ditto large, clothes brushes and shoe brushes, cocked-hats, dirks, German flutes, mahogany writing-desks, a plate of salt butter, and some two or three pairs of naval half-boots.
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