“Hallo, Fairfax, what’s up?” they shouted as he approached. “Are the barracks ablaze, and are you going for the fire-engine?”
“Better than that,” he cried, clattering into the compound. “I have just come up from the general’s with glorious news—we start for the front this day week.”
CHAPTER II.
AFGHANISTAN.
True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field,
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
The Seventeenth Hussars were duly forwarded to the frontier, and found that their final destination was Dabaule, where there was a good supply of grass and water for their horses.
Owing to the approach of winter, there was an utter stagnation of military operations, and in spite of occasional small raids on, and from, the neighbouring Afridis, the time passed monotonously enough. The weather was cold and cheerless, but the officers of the Seventeenth, headed by their junior major, did their very best to provide exercise and entertainment for their men and for the camp in general.
Football, hockey, penny readings, and theatricals were set going with remarkable success, and helped to repel the encroachments of idleness and ennui. The surrounding scenery was quite different to the tiresome succession of parallel ridges presented by the ranges near the frontier. Here hill and valley were thrown together in the most admirable confusion, and clothed with short stunted shrubs and wild olives; gloomy pine-woods marked out some of the hills in bold black relief; the distant mountains were capped with snow, and the cold at times was most intense. During the suspension of hostilities there was ample leisure for correspondence, and letter-writing was a frequent resource on a dull gray afternoon. The following is one of Sir Reginald’s contributions to the mail-bag, written on his knee by the light of a small bull’s-eye lantern in the retirement of his seven-foot tent: