Through Three Campaigns: A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti

by G. A. Henty

"Oh, don't be a duffer," the latter said, "and drop that eyeglass. You know perfectly well that you see better, without it, than with it."

"Well, you are a rum chap, Bullen. You are always doing something unexpected. I have been hearing how you and a Sikh started to swim the Ordah, when it was in flood, with a wire; how you were washed away; how you were given up for lost; how, two days later, you returned to camp and went straight out again, with a party of twenty Sikhs, took a little stroll for ten miles into the bush--and of course, as much back--to carry in the Sikh soldier you had had with you, but who had been wounded, and was unable to come with you. I don't know why such luck as this is always falling to your lot, while not a bit of it comes to me."

"It is pure accident, Hallett. You will get a chance, some day. I don't know that you would be good for a thirty-mile tramp, but it must be a consolation to you that, for the last five miles, I had to be carried."

"It is a mercy it is so," Hallett said, in an expression of deep thankfulness, "for there would have been no holding you, if you had come in on your feet."

[Chapter 16]: The Relief Of Coomassie.

"I certainly should not have volunteered for this work, Bullen, if I had known what it was like. I was mad at not being able to go out to the Cape, and as my regiment was, like yours, stationed in India, there was no chance of getting away from there, if I had once returned. Of course, I knew all about the expeditions of Wolseley and Scott; but I forgot that these were carried on in the dry season, and that we should have to campaign in the wet season, which makes all the difference in the world. We are wet through, from morning till night--and all night, too--and at our camping places there is no shelter. The low-lying land is turned into deep swamps, the little streams become great unfordable torrents, and the ground under our feet turns into liquid mud. It is really horrible work, especially as we get very little food and less drink. It is not work for dogs."

"It is all very well for you to grumble, Hallett, but you know just as well as I do that, if the offer were made to you to go home, at once, you would treat it with scorn."

"Oh, of course I should! Still, one may be allowed to have one's grumble and, after all, I think we are pretty sure of some stiff fighting, which makes up for everything. I am not afraid of the enemy a bit, but I do funk fever."

"I don't think we are likely to get fever, so long as we are on the move; though I dare say a good many of us will go down with it, after the work is done. We have only to think of the starving soldiers and people, in Coomassie, to make us feel that, whatever the difficulties and dangers may be, we must get there in time. The great nuisance is, that we can get no news of what is doing there. We constantly hear that the governor, with a portion if not all of the force, has broken out, some days since; and we begin to look out for them; and then, after a time, comes the news that there has been no sortie whatever. It is really most annoying, and I am often kept awake at night, even after a day's fight, thinking of the position of the garrison."

"I don't think, if there were a hundred garrisons in danger," Hallett laughed, "it would affect my sleep in the slightest. I lie down as soon as I have eaten what there is to eat, which certainly is not likely to affect my digestion; and however rough the ground, I am dead asleep as soon as my head touches it, and I do not open an eye until the bugle sounds in the morning. Even then I have not had enough sleep, and I always indulge in bad language as I put on my belts, at the unearthly hour at which we are always called. I don't begin to feel half awake till we have gone some miles."