"AN ELEPHANT LOADED WITH MY STORES AND BAGGAGE."
On the drill ground a flagstaff had been erected, from which flew the Union Jack. The two companies of the detachment, officers and men in their full-dress uniform of scarlet and blue, were drawn up in line facing it. Captain Balderston rode a pony recently purchased from a planter, which strongly objected to soldiers and refused to go near the troops. No persuasions of its rider could induce it to approach the line; and when Balderston called the men to attention on my arrival and the rifles were brought smartly to the "slope," his disobedient charger swung round and bolted with him off the parade ground, jumping a ditch and nearly ending both their careers in a deep nullah. I was mounted on a country-bred pony which I had brought from Darjeeling and trained to troops. Deprived of the assistance of my second in command I started the parade. After the royal salute had been given, the men fired the feu de joie, when the rifles are discharged one by one along the front rank from right to left and back again in the opposite direction down the rear rank. Then taking off my helmet I gave the command "Three cheers for the King Emperor!"; and the hills re-echoed the shouts of the sepoys. A useless ceremony this, to the Little Englander; yet one fraught with deep meaning and stirring the heart to the core; for at that moment throughout the Indian Empire from the Himalayas to Colombo, from Aden to Mandalay, the cheers of His Majesty's soldiers, white and black, were ringing in loyal chorus.
Fifty years ago, in the dark days of the Mutiny, the revolted sepoy regiments faced their erstwhile comrades in battle; but the guilt of that black crime has long ago been purged in blood and obliterated by faithful service; and to-day the Kaiser-i-Hind has no more loyal soldiers than the men of his Indian Army. Until a few years ago the Sovereign was only a name to the warrior races that fill its ranks. But King George by his visits to India has made them realise his existence. He has given his Indian subjects what Orientals always desire, the knowledge that they have a living monarch. And by so doing he has changed the vague loyalty of the sepoys into a real and affectionate attachment to the person of their ruler. The native troops whom he reviewed, who lined the streets or formed his Guards of Honour in Bombay, Delhi and Calcutta, rejoice to have actually seen their "Badshah" (Emperor) and proudly boast of it to others who have not been so fortunate. Only we officers of the Indian Army can fully realise how much this means, how wise were the councils that dictated his visits to India.
For, despite the politician and the civil servant, we hold the land, as we won it, by the sword. No concessions to the clamour of the babus of Bengal will retain the loyalty of this country. It rests on the weapons and in the hearts of the gallant warrior races that aided us to conquer India and help us to retain it. Would that the Englishman in England could realise the fact!
Shortly after the departure of our guests who had come for the Christmas shoot, I received a long-expected visit from an American officer, Captain Brees, 1st United States Cavalry. Years before, in China, Japan, and California I had foregathered with a cheery Irish subaltern of his regiment, Lieutenant Coghlan, who had won his commission in the fierce fighting in Luzon. And when Captain Brees, their corps being then in the Philippine Islands, arranged to visit India on his way home on leave to his native country, Lieutenant Coghlan guaranteed him a warm welcome from me. For I felt that I owed a debt of gratitude to every officer of the American Army for the kindly hospitality I had received from them in the United States—from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Before I landed in San Francisco, Coghlan, then stationed in Los Angeles and unable to come to meet me, had written to friends of his in regiments quartered in the Army Post in the Presidio, the Golden City's splendid park, and asked them to welcome me in his stead. As soon as I arrived not only they, but a score of other officers of the garrison, had made their way through the ruins of the city not long before devastated by earthquake and fire to give me that welcome to their country. They offered me all the hospitality of their camp and clubs. A Cavalry regiment on the point of departing for their summer training in the famous Yosemite Valley extended a cordial invitation to accompany them and promised me a horse, a tent, and rations. The Field Battery offered to mount me whenever I liked to march out with them. I was asked to every military entertainment; and at every regimental dance my hosts saw that I had my programme full.
One night at a magnificent entertainment at the Fairmont Hotel in celebration of the first anniversary of the earthquake and San Francisco's phœnix-like rising again from the flames, a civilian asked me if I belonged to the Indian Army. On my replying in the affirmative he begged to be allowed to introduce me to two friends of his present that night, American officers on leave from another Station, as they were anxious to meet an officer of my Service. As I shook hands with them, one said:
"We've been looking for a fellow in the Indian Army."
"Which one?" I asked.
"Anyone. It doesn't matter who. We want to kill him," was the alarming reply.