And as the dawn stole in the men of the 1st West Indian Regiment, who escorted the party of sick in hammocks, seemed to Jerry's eyes most ghastly in their light grey clothing and white helmets; and it was said that 'the negro so dressed looked like a convict who had been hung until black in the face and cut down.'
And often as he tossed in his hammock, which was slung on a pole dhooley-wise, he would mutter,
'Oh, if Dalton had only let that —— beetle alone!'
Cape Coast Castle was reached by the entire force in pretty good condition; but, as an idea of the extent to which fever had raged among them, we may mention that of the Naval Brigade, which, including marines, landed two hundred and seventy-eight strong, there came back only one hundred and nineteen men.
All the rest had found their last homes in the awful solitude of the untrodden bush.
Apart from sorrow lest he should never more see Laura and his little daughter so lately found and known, Dalton had a great horror of finding such a tomb, and being left so far away; and the funeral of a brother officer, Captain H——, who had died at Essiman of fever, haunted him like a dream.
He remembered how the forest re-echoed to the three death volleys over the lonely grave, which lay in a beautiful spot, certainly so far as tropical flowers and foliage went, and had as a headstone a stately cotton-tree; but ages may elapse ere the foot of a white man treads near it again.
All the fire of the soldier seemed to have gone out of Tony Dalton; and for a time only the ailing and pitiful invalid remained; and he longed intensely for the presence and the ministering tenderness of the brilliant Laura—more perhaps to feel in his the little white hand of Netty—the enfant terrible of the past time at Chilcote Grange.
Genuine hope first expanded the hearts of Dalton and Jerry, and in the hearts of many more, when they heard the pipes of the Black Watch strike up—
'Oh, why left I my hame?
Why did I cross the deep?'