CHAPTER XLVI.

An adventure in Canada.

Towards the close of the last war with America, a small detachment of military occupied the little block house of Fort Peak, which, about eight miles from the Falls of Niagara, formed the last outpost on the frontier.  The Fort, in itself inconsiderable, was only of importance as commanding a part of the river where it was practicable to ford, and where the easy ascent of the bank offered a safe situation for the enemy to cross over, whenever they felt disposed to carry the war into our territory.

There having been, however, no threat of invasion in this quarter, and the natural strength of the position being considerable, a mere handful of men, with two subaltern officers, were allotted for this duty—­such being conceived ample to maintain it till the arrival of succour from head-quarters, then at Little York, on the opposite side of the lake.  The officers of this party were our old acquaintance Tom O’Flaherty, and our newly-made one Maurice Malone.

Whatever may be the merits of commanding officers, one virtue they certainly can lay small claim to—­viz. any insight into character, or at least any regard for the knowledge.  Seldom are two men sent off on detachment duty to some remote quarter, to associate daily and hourly for months together, that they are not, by some happy chance, the very people who never, as the phrase is, “took to each other” in their lives.  The grey-headed, weather-beaten, disappointed “Peninsular” is coupled with the essenced and dandified Adonis of the corps; the man of literary tastes and cultivated pursuits, with the empty headed, ill informed youth, fresh from Harrow or Westminster.  This case offered no exception to the rule; for though there were few men possessed of more assimilating powers than O’Flaherty, yet certainly his companion did put the faculty to the test, for any thing more unlike him, there never existed.  Tom all good humour and high spirits—­making the best of every thing—­never non-plussed—­never taken aback—­perfectly at home, whether flirting with a Lady Charlotte in her drawing-room, or crossing a grouse mountain in the highlands—­sufficiently well read to talk on any ordinary topic—­and always ready-witted enough to seem more so.  A thorough sportsman, whether showing forth in the “park” at Melton, whipping a trout-stream in Wales, or filling a country-house with black cock and moor-fowl; an unexceptionable judge of all the good things in life, from a pretty ancle to a well hung tilbury—­from the odds at hazard to the “Comet vintage.”  Such, in brief, was Tom.  Now his confrere was none of these; he had been drafted from the Galway militia to the line, for some election services rendered by his family to the government candidate; was of a saturnine and discontented habit; always miserable about some trifle or other, and never at rest till he had drowned his sorrows in Jamaica rum—­which, since the regiment was abroad, he had copiously used as a substitute for whiskey.  To such an extent had this passion gained upon him, that a corporal’s guard was always in attendance whenever he dined out, to convey him home to the barracks.