“Take this to Brigadier Greathead. The 8th, the 2nd Punjaub Infantry, with the 150th Regiment will form the advance,” were the last words which reached his ears as he stepped forth into the night, to find his corps as best he might. A sentry, who had held his horse, pointed out the lines of the 150th, and taking his way to a large tent which he rightly conjectured to be the mess tent, the officers were soon roused, and flocking around him.
“Do you remember I said you were a lucky fellow, Major,” said Harris, as he shook his commanding officer warmly by the hand, “that night when we shot the tiger at Bellary?”
“I think you were the lucky fellow, then,” replied Major Hughes, laughing.
“Yes, but only fancy Colonel Desmond being sent home on sick leave. Colonel Sedley invalided from the effects of that ball through the lungs at Quatre Bras, and you joining just in time to take the command.”
“Well, it was lucky, I must own. And what has become of Major Ashley?”
“Hit in the neck at the storming of the Dilkhoosha House,”—replied Harris, now Lieutenant of the Light Company; “but here’s Curtis.”
“How are you, Curtis?”
“Glad to see you once more among us,” was the reply, as that officer, now the senior captain of the regiment, shook hands with him, “and where’s the Kaffir bride you promised to bring back?” he added, laughing.
And one after another flocked in, roused out of their well-earned slumbers by the hasty summons, glad to welcome an old comrade, and pleased to hear of the advance.
“I say, Biddulph, won’t we trounce those Gwalior chaps? They’d have done better to have stayed at Calpee, and they’ll know it when old Colin gets at them.”