‘Ye won’t, colonel, have any pairsonaylities, I hope,’ was his timid remark.
The Gazette came out, and was a great success. Some of my brother officers established a school on board, which was well attended by the men. We had a very good time, and all the officers were most friendly. I cannot say the same for the soldiers’ wives (there were no ladies on board), who appealed to me sometimes as colonel on subjects regarding which my legal knowledge was not sufficient to instruct or help them.
When our ship came to a certain latitude we were surrounded day and night by Cape pigeons, graceful, white angels they looked in the pale moonlight, but most unpleasant birds when brought on board, as they immediately became vulgarly sick. Albatrosses soared above, and sharks followed us. When we were in the latitude of the Cape, the sea was the finest spectacle I ever saw. It ran mountains high, but it was as if oil had been poured on its surface. Our vessel rose up to the summit of one of those unbroken hills, and then glided down the other side, just to rise up again. It was a wonderful sight.
In the month of November we anchored off the Sandheads, having left England on the 9th of July, and never having sighted land the whole way till we saw the shores of India. We now received the astounding intelligence of all the horrors of the mutiny, and the perplexing news that Delhi was taken. Taken by whom? We had been so long at sea we knew nothing. In a day or two we landed at Calcutta, and our gallant ship, which had brought us safely out, was wrecked on her way home. Fortunately, however, the captain and crew were saved.
When the Connaught Rangers first landed at Calcutta the great shock of the mutiny was being severely felt. Very few of us knew anything about the ways of the country, and we were, so to speak, cast adrift in a foreign land. We had great difficulty in procuring anything. I shall not enlarge on these troubled times. The generation that lived through them is passing away, and with them is fading the intense bitterness that the fearful atrocities of Cawnpore called forth—so utterly forgotten now that I read books that make high-minded remarks on the unforgiving spirit that actuated us in those days. It is better to forget; but the retribution was not too heavy for the crimes committed.
In this country good or bad servants seem a very minor consideration; not so in India, where comfort is so essentially in the hands of domestics. One of our greatest difficulties in landing was procuring any. All the good servants had vanished, and for some time we were obliged to be satisfied with a very inferior lot. One of my brother officers got a man called Paul, a miserable little man, who was always getting drunk. When we marched to Cawnpore after the capture of Calpee, a great many men of the regiment got fever, and, among other officers, Paul’s master was very ill. The wretched servant got drunk in the bazaar, and was made a prisoner—at least, so it was supposed, for he did not return to his master, and no one knew what had become of him. Time went on and my brother officer got better, and pour passer le temps either rode or drove into the town of Cawnpore to look at the place still stained with the blood of its victims. Either by chance or from a desire to see the sepoy prisoners, my friend arrived at the kotwallee or guard-house where these mutineers were incarcerated, and, to his great dismay, he saw among these ironed rebels a wretched little man, who shouted: ‘Me Paul! me poor Paul!’ Much surprised, he went to the kotwal and asked why the man was among the rebels, but could get no satisfactory reply. On explaining matters that most probably Paul had been locked up for drunkenness, and not rebellion, he got him released, as one of the policemen grimly observed, ‘just in time, for he would have been hanged in to-morrow’s batch.’
Paul left Cawnpore without much delay.
The story of the mutiny has been told over and over again. In time it was stamped out, but for a long period distant murmurings were still heard like those of a thunderstorm fading away. Gradually the air cleared, and Marochetti’s ‘Angel of Peace’ was placed on the Cawnpore Well. Beautiful flowers began to grow in a garden where once women and children were dragged to their death, and writers at home began to publish books to prove that all the horrors, murders, and atrocities were caused by the fault of the white inhabitants of India. So I pass over that sad and nearly forgotten time, and, leaping over several years, come to the year 1860, when the 88th Connaught Rangers proceeded to the Punjaub.
In the autumn of 1866 the Connaught Rangers, which I had then the honour to command, was ordered to proceed from Cawnpore, where we had been stationed for some time, to Rawul Pindee in the Punjaub. We were directed to halt, on our way up country, at Agra, to form part of a large camp there, to be assembled for the grand durbar to be held in honour of the installation of the Star of India. All the rajahs, princes, and begums of the empire were to be present, to meet Lord Lawrence, governor-general.
On our arrival at Agra, we found a very large force collected. We were nearly all under canvas, and so also were the princes of India, with their numerous retinues. The governor-general came into Agra the day after our arrival there, and from that hour the cannons of the fort and batteries had a hard time of it. As every prince went to wait on the viceroy a salute was fired, and, according to the number of rounds fired, we inferred the rank of the great man who sallied forth to cross the plain, followed by his marvellous suite of elephants, carrying gorgeously mounted howdahs, warriors riding on prancing pink-nosed horses, with tails and legs deeply dyed with red, to represent the blood of their enemies, down to the tag-rag and bobtail that are inseparable from the courts of those native princes.