ten o'clock
And one or two of the crew laughed . The vessel to which they rowed me was the _ Bute _ transport , bound for Portugal with one hundred and fifty officers and men of the 52nd Regiment , one hundred and twenty of the third battalion 95th Rifles , and a young cornet and three farriers of the 7th Light Dragoons in charge of fifty remounts for that regiment . We weighed anchor at daybreak -LRB- the date , I may mention , was July 28th -RRB- , and cleared the Sound . At ten o'clock or thereabouts the wind fell , and for two days and nights we drifted aimlessly about the Channel at the will of the tides , while the sergeant -- a veteran named Henderson , who had started twenty-five years before by blowing a bugle in the 52nd , and therefore served me as index and example of what by patience I might attain to -- filled the most of my time between sleep and meals with lessons upon that instrument . From a hencoop abaft the mainmast -LRB- the _ Bute _ was a brig , by the way -RRB- I blew back inarticulate farewells to the shores receding from us imperceptibly , if at all ; and so illustrated a profound remark of the war 's great historian , that the English are a bellicose rather than a martial race , and by consequence sometimes find themselves committed to military enterprises without having counted the cost or made complete preparation . On the third day the wind freshened and blew dead foul , decimating the horses with sea-sickness , prostrating three-fourths of the men , and shaking the two regiments down into a sociability which outlasted their sufferings . To be sure my comrades of the 52nd -LRB- as , with a fearful joy , I named them to myself in secret -RRB- , being veterans for the most part , recovered or recovering from wounds taken in the land to which they were returning with common memories of Sir John Moore , of Benevente , Calcabellos and Corunna , treated the riflemen with that affable condescension which was all that could be claimed by third battalion youngsters with their soldiering before them .