Bread
Butter
Cocoa
Biscuits and Cheese
Gruel for Infants if required
Cocoa or Coffee with Biscuits at 6.30 a.m.
* * * * *
AN ECHO OF THE ZULU WAR.
Of two of the cooks with whom I talked, one had been twenty-three years in the service of the Orient Company and the other twenty-six years: and nearly all the ship's company had been in this ship four years, though their engagement only lasts for one voyage. So it looks as though the Orient were a satisfactory line to serve with.
One of the cooks had been a soldier in the Wiltshire Regiment, and had served in the Zulu War of 1879. He had been in the siege and defence of Etshowe.
This place was surrounded by the Zulus, and another British force tried to get into signalling communication with it by means of the heliograph, which at that time was quite a new invention.
I reminded my cook friend of this, and he told me this little yarn about it. He said:
"I was walking out on the ridge there close to the camp with a corporal in my company when we noticed a light flickering on a hill in the distance. He had been through a course of signalling, and said it looked as if somebody were trying to flash a signal to us, so we got a bit of looking-glass and flashed it in their direction.
"Suddenly he said to me:
"'Write down what I tell you.'