Part 22 (2/2)

children often are, for the Gordons were stationed in Dublin and near Edinburgh before they went out to the island of Corfu when Charles was seven During the three years he spent there Charles grew big and strong and full of daring; gunsato ier than hi about in the beautiful clear water, he would throw hi quite sure that soe and confidence are the two chief qualities necessary to ood swimmer, by the time he left Corfu he was as much at home in the sea as any of his friends

After his tenth birthday his life at Corfu caht home by his mother and sent to school at Taunton, where he stayed for five years He is sure to have been liked by his schoolfellows, for he was a very lively,so the punishht At Woolwich, which he entered as a cadet at fifteen, it was just the saood-humoured way, those ere set over hi his career cut short by dismissal

At this period his father held the appointe departreatly froue of mice which overran the house they lived in

After putting up with it for some time, Charles and his brother Henry, also a cadet, laid traps and caught vast nuht they carried them stealthily across the road in baskets to the co a door which they felt pretty sure of finding unlocked, they emptied the baskets one by one, and let the mice run where they would Then the boys crept back softly to their own rooht of the co

The two youths were great favourites with the workmen in the arsenal, who used often to leave off the work they should have been doing to make squirts, crossbows, and other weapons for Charles and Henry They must have trembled sometimes when they heard that the s of the storehouse had been mysteriously broken, or that an officer as known to be disliked by the cadets had received a deluge of water down his neck fro the road But the culprits never betrayed each other, and the young Gordons soon grew so bold that they thought they ht venture on a piece of mischief which very nearly ended their military career

Some earthworks had been newly thrown up near a room where the senior cadets, known as 'pussies,' attended lectures on certain evenings in the week One night the two Gordons hid the to rey the cadets were startled by a crash of glass and a shower of s about their ears In an instant they were all up and out of the house, dashi+ng about in the direction from which the shots had come; and so quick were they that if Charles and Henry had not known every inch of the ground and dodged their pursuers, they would certainly have been caught and expelled, as they richly deserved

In June 1852 Charles Gordon was given a coineers, and was sent to Chatham for two years In spite of the s, he had gained several good conduct badges, for he had worked hard, and was noted for being clever both at fortifications and at surveying

Matheood-bye to his father, as thankful to see hi the four years his son had passed at Woolwich he had, as he expressed it, 'felt hi on a powder barrel'--and set out on the career in which he was to earn a nahout three continents

It hile Gordon was learning in Pe of what fortifications really were that the Crimean war broke out, and in Decee of thewooden huts for the troops He went down to Portss on board soe, he started for Marseilles, and there took a steamer to Constantinople He arrived in the harbour of Balaclava on January 1, 1855, and heard the guns of Sebastopol boo six miles away The cold was bitter, men were daily frozen to death in the trenches, food was very scarce, and the streets of Balaclava were full of 'swell English cavalry and horse-artillery carrying rations, and officers in every conceivable costuineer was sent down to the trenches before Sebastopol, where he and his comrades were always under fire and scarcely ever off duty It was here that his friendshi+p began with a young captain in the 90th Foot, now lord Wolseley, who has many stories to tell of what life in the trenches was like Notwithstanding all the suffering and sadness around theed to laugh in the midst of their work At Christmas-time captain Wolseley and two of his friends deterht feel as if they were eating their Christland It is true that they only had di whatever tothat eant, who told hiht it would need some flour and sos could be got, they used instead butter which had gone bad, dry biscuits which they pounded very fine, and a handful of raisins so thisit would have to boil--in one of captain Wolseley's three tohich he sacrificed for the purpose--so that they ht be able to enjoy it at a moment when they would all be off duty Five hours, they fancied, itone when the suo back to their work Resolved not to lose the fruits of sofro out to their posts But Wolseley had hardly reached his place before he was seized with such frightful pains that he felt as if he would die His co his face looking positively green, ordered him back to his hut But a little rest soon cured hiht in the trenches

You will have read in the story of the 'Lady in Chief' solish, French, and Turks went through during the ith the Russians, so I will not repeat it here

Gordon, whose quick eye saw everything, was greatly struck with the way the French soldiers bore their sufferings 'They had nothing to cover them,' he says, 'and in spite of the wet and cold they kept their health and their high spirits also' Our ed determination, but, as a rule, they could not be called lively True, till Miss Nightingale and her nurses canorant, however kindly, comrades, while the French had always their own Sisters of Charity to turn to for help But it is pleasant to think that the sons of the e of the Berezina forty years before orthy of their fathers, and could face death with a smile and a jest as well as they

As the ent on and the assaults on the town of Sebastopol becaenerals learned to knohat stuff their young officers were made, and what special duties they were fit for

They , al--a quality that rendered hi energy and eagerness--forty times he was in the trenches for twenty hours--he never overlooked the details that were necessary to ensure the success of any work he was entrusted with, and he never relaxed his watchfulness till the post to be as actually taken In his leisureas far as he could without running into danger, and writes ho and the crocuses that were flowering outside the careat harbour on the north side of which the Russians were entrenched, and listen to thea, or watch the merrily all the while

At last the forts of the Mamelon and the Malakoff were stormed, and the Russians abandoned Sebastopol Gordon, who had often narrowly escaped death, was enerals in despatches; but he did not receive promotion, and, except a scar, the only token he carried away of those long ion of Honour bestowed on him by the French But he was a ht from the Cri fresh frontiers for Russia south-west along the river Pruth and on the shores of the Black Sea

Wherever he went, whether he was on the borders of Turkey, in Armenia, or in the Caucasus, where he proceeded after a winter in England, he made the best of his opportunities and saw all he could of the country and the people He was as fond as ever of expeditions and adventures, and cliuides refused to proceed In the Caucasus he dined out whenever he was asked, and was equally surprised at the beauty of the srained dirt of their clothes and their houses On the whole, though he thoroughly enjoyed the good dinners they gave hi expeditions into the mountains with their husbands and sons

At the end of 1858 he was ordered hoain, and a few months later obtained his captaincy, and was made adjutant and field-work instructor at Chatha, for in a year's tireat missions of his life

Early in 1860 a ith China broke out, and in this also the French were our allies More soldiers were needed, and volunteers were asked for Gordon was one of the first to send in his name, but before he reached Pekin the Taku forts, at the mouth of the Tientsin River--forts of which in the year 1900 ere to hear so much--had been taken

However, the famous Summer Palace was still to be captured, and this, which indeed hth wonder of the world, lay out in the country, eightmore than twelve miles, were laid out with lakes, fountains, tea-houses, waterfalls, banks of trees, and beds of flowers, while scattered about were palaces belonging to different s--china of the oldest and rarest sorts, silks, lacquer, cabinets, and an imlish envoy this gorgeous place was given over to pillage, in revenge for the ill-treatment of some French and British prisoners One can form a little idea of the vast a scattered in houses a watch or a lacquer box or a china bowl that, we are told, had once decorated the Summer Palace; they really seem to be endless Lord Wolseley tells how he happened to be standing by the French general in the gardens while the looting was going on, and as a French soldier caht expressly for hilish officer, he held out a beautifula dress of the time of Louis XIV