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Updated: June 29, 2025
There was an officer at their head, encouraging his men, a courageous, handsome, gallant officer of five-and-thirty, whom Doubledick saw hurriedly, almost momentarily, but saw well. He particularly noticed this officer waving his sword, and rallying his men with an eager and excited cry, when they fired in obedience to his gesture, and Major Taunton dropped.
He dropped his own surname on the road down, and took up that of Doubledick. He was passed as Richard Doubledick; age, twenty-two; height, five foot ten; native place, Exmouth, which he had never been near in his life.
Rejoicing troops marched into Brussels, and marched out; brothers and fathers, sisters, mothers, and wives, came thronging thither, drew their lots of joy or agony, and departed; so many times a day the bells rang; so many times the shadows of the great buildings changed; so many lights sprang up at dusk; so many feet passed here and there upon the pavements; so many hours of sleep and cooler air of night succeeded: indifferent to all, a marble face lay on a bed, like the face of a recumbent statue on the tomb of Lieutenant Richard Doubledick.
Private Richard Doubledick began to find a film stealing over the floor at which he looked; also to find the legs of the Captain's breakfast-table turning crooked, as if he saw them through water. "I am only a common soldier, sir," said he. "It signifies very little what such a poor brute comes to."
The Ensign understood him. He smiled again when he saw that, and, gently turning his face over on the supporting arm as if for rest, died, with his hand upon the breast in which he had revived a soul. No dry eye looked on Ensign Richard Doubledick that melancholy day. He buried his friend on the field, and became a lone, bereaved man.
"'Come in! "Private Doubledick pulled off his cap, took a stride forward and stood in the light of the dark bright eyes." From that moment until the end of the interview, the two men alternately were standing there distinctly before the audience upon the platform. "Doubledick! do you know where you are going to?" "To the devil, sir!" "Yes, and very fast."
From the date to them both of this memorable interview he followed the two hither and thither among the battle-fields of the great war between England in coalition with the other nations of Europe and Napoleon. Wherever Captain Taunton led, there, "close to him, ever at his side, firm as a rock, true as the sun, brave as Mars," would for certain be found that famous soldier Sergeant Doubledick.
In the returns sent home appeared these words: "Severely wounded, but not dangerously, Lieutenant Richard Doubledick." At Midsummer-time, in the year eighteen hundred and fourteen, Lieutenant Richard Doubledick, now a browned soldier, seven-and-thirty years of age, came home to England invalided. He brought the hair with him, near his heart.
That year saw such wonders done by a Sergeant-Major, who cut his way single-handed through a solid mass of men, recovered the colours of his regiment, which had been seized from the hand of a poor boy shot through the heart, and rescued his wounded Captain, who was down, and in a very jungle of horses' hoofs and sabres, saw such wonders done, I say, by this brave Sergeant-Major, that he was specially made the bearer of the colours he had won; and Ensign Richard Doubledick had risen from the ranks.
"Doubledick," said the Captain, "do you know where you are going to?" "To the Devil, sir?" faltered Doubledick. "Yes," returned the Captain. "And very fast." Private Richard Doubledick turned the straw of the Black hole in his month, and made a miserable salute of acquiescence.
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