"My wound is nearly all right again. It was only a prick with a spear in my thigh—"
It is the very deuce editing these old letters without anything to guide one. As far as I can make out by myself (Jim being now down at Melton hunting, and not having answered my letter of inquiries), this letter must have come accompanied by an Indian newspaper containing the account of some battle or campaign in which he was engaged. Putting this and that together, I am inclined to believe that it refers to the defence of Jellalabad by Sir Robert Sale, in which I know he was engaged. I form this opinion from the fact of his mentioning that the fortifications were destroyed by an earthquake. And I very much fear that the individual so disrespectfully mentioned above as "Bobby," was no other than the great Hero himself. In my second (or if that goes off too quick, in my third) edition, I will endeavour to clear this point up in a satisfactory manner.
After this there was a long dull time with no news from him or from any one. Then Sam came down from New England, and paid us a visit, which freshened us up a little. But in spite of this and other episodes, there was little change or excitement for us four. We made common house of it, and never parted from one another more than a day. Always of an evening came the old friendly rubber, I playing with the Major, and Captain Brentwood with Mrs. Buckley. The most remarkable event I have to chronicle during the long period which followed, is, that one day a bushfire came right up to the garden rails, and was beaten out with difficulty; and that same evening I held nine trumps, Ace, Queen, Knave, Nine of hearts, and the rest small. I cannot for the life of me remember what year it was in, somewhere between forty-two and forty-five, I believe, because within a year or two of that time we heard that a large comet had appeared in England, and that Sir Robert Peel was distrusted on the subject of Protection. After all, it is no great consequence, though it is rather provoking, because I never before or since held more than eight trumps. Burnside, the cattle-dealer, claims to have held eleven, but I may state, once for all, that I doubt that man's statements on this and every other subject on which he speaks.— He knows where I am to be found.
My man Dick, too, somehow or another, constituted himself my groom and valet. And the Major was well contented with the arrangement. So we four, Major and Mrs. Buckley, Captain Brentwood and I, sat there in the old station night after night, playing our whist, till even my head, the youngest of the four, began to be streaked with grey, and sixteen years were past.
Chapter XLVIII
THE LATEST INTELLIGENCE.
It is March, 1856. The short autumn day is rapidly giving place to night; and darkness, and the horror of a great tempest is settling down upon the desolate grey sea, which heaves and seethes for ever around Cape Horn.
A great clipper ship, the noblest and swiftest of her class, is hurling along her vast length before the terrible west wind. Hour by hour through the short and gloomy day, sail after sail has gone fluttering in; till now, at night-fall, she reels and rolls before the storm under a single close reefed maintopsail.
There is a humming, and a roaring, and a rushing of great waters, so that they who are clinging to the bulwarks, and watching awe-struck this great work of the Lord's, cannot hear one another though they shout. Now there is a grey mountain which chases the ship, overtakes her, pours cataracts of water over her rounded stern, and goes hissing and booming past her. And now a roll more frantic than usual, nigh dips her mainyard, and sends the water spouting wildly over her bulwarks.