Having, at length, obtained a very formidable statement of my ‘case’ from the Doctor, and a strong letter from the Colonel, deploring the temporary loss of so promising a young officer, I committed myself and my portmanteau to the inside of his Majesty’s mail, and started for Dublin with as light a heart and high spirits, as were consistent with so much delicacy of health, and the directions of my Doctor.

CHAPTER IX.

THE ROAD—­TRAVELLING ACQUAINTANCES—­A PACKET ADVENTURE.

I shall not stop now to narrate the particulars of my visit to the worthies of the medical board; the rather, as some of my “confessions to come” have reference to Dublin, and many of those that dwell therein.  I shall therefore content myself here with stating, that without any difficulty I obtained a six months’ leave, and having received much advice and more sympathy from many members of that body, took a respectful leave of them, and adjourned to Bilton’s where I had ordered dinner, and (as I was advised to live low) a bottle of Sneyd’s claret.  My hours in Dublin were numbered; at eight o’clock on the evening of my arrival I hastened to the Pidgeon House pier, to take my berth in the packet for Liverpool; and here, gentle reader, let me implore you if you have bowels of compassion, to commiserate the condition of a sorry mortal like myself.  In the days of which I now speak, steam packets were not —­men knew not then, of the pleasure of going to a comfortable bed in Kingstown harbour, and waking on the morning after in the Clarence dock at Liverpool, with only the addition of a little sharper appetite for breakfast, before they set out on an excursion of forty miles per hour through the air.

In the time I have now to commemorate, the intercourse between the two countries was maintained by two sailing vessels of small tonnage, and still scantier accommodation.  Of the one now in question I well recollect the name—­she was called the “Alert,” and certainly a more unfortunate misnomer could scarcely be conceived.  Well, there was no choice; so I took my place upon the crowded deck of the little craft, and in a drizzling shower of chilly rain, and amid more noise, confusion, and bustle, than would prelude the launch of a line-of-battle ship, we “sidled,” goose-fashion, from the shore, and began our voyage towards England.

It is not my intention, in the present stage of “my Confessions,” to delay on the road towards an event which influenced so powerfully, and so permanently, my after life; yet I cannot refrain from chronicling a slight incident which occurred on board the packet, and which, I have no doubt, may be remembered by some of those who throw their eyes on these pages.