I was not long in
recognising an old friend of mine in the person of Captain Bayer,
an aide--de--camp of Morillo, amongst the company. He was very kind and
attentive, and rather startled me by speaking very tolerable English now,
from a kindly motive I make no question, whereas, when I had known him
before in Kingston, he professed to speak nothing but Spanish or French.
He was a German by birth, and lived to rise to the rank of colonel in the
Spanish army, where he subsequently greatly distinguished himself, but he
at length fell in some obscure skirmish in New Granada; and my old ally
Morillo, Count of Carthagena, is now living in penury, an exile in Paris.
After being, as related, furnished with food and raiment, we retired to
our quatres, a most primitive sort of couch, being a simple wooden frame,
with a piece of canvass stretched over it. However, if we had no
mattresses, we had none of the disagreeables often incidental to them,
and, fatigue proved a good opiate, for we slept soundly until the drums
and trumpets of the troops, getting under arms, awoke us at daylight. The
army was under weigh to occupy Carthagena, which had fallen through
famine, and we had no choice but to accompany it.
I knew nothing of the misery of a siege but by description; the reality
even to me, case--hardened as I was by my own recent sufferings, was
dreadful. We entered by the gate of the raval, or suburb. There was not
a living thing to be seen in the street; the houses had been pulled down,
that the fire of the place might not be obstructed in the event of a
lodgment in the outwork.
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