"As Shakespeare has it—
"'That in the captain's but a choleric word
Which in the soldier is rank blasphemy.'
And so it came to pass that whenever Ernslie ventured to remonstrate, his oppressor invariably sent him to his room under arrest, and twice—a great insult to a sergeant—to the guard-house; but though the charges of mutiny and insubordination were always 'quashed' by the colonel, poor Ernslie felt, as he told me, 'that he was a doomed man, and safe to come to grief some day, for the sergeant-major had sworn an oath to smash him!'
"His son Philip, a private in the troop, saw and felt all this. The lad's smothered hatred and fear of the sergeant-major were great; but he did his duty well and steadily, and contrived to elude notice. Ernslie was proud of his handsome boy, and thanked heaven in the inmost recesses of his heart when the war was over in the Crimea, for there father and son had ridden side by side in the famous charge of the Heavy Brigade, and both had escaped almost scatheless; but when we were ordered to India, to stem with our swords the great tide of the terrible mutiny, the father's anxieties were revived again.
"When our transport was off the Cape de Verd Islands, Ernslie came to my cabin in great distress, to announce that his wife had just died. I knew that the poor woman had been ailing for some time past, and the sickness incident to the rough weather we encountered put an end to her sufferings, and she died in the arms of her son, for her husband was with his watch on deck, and the sergeant-major would not permit him to go below.
"She had died at daybreak, and by noon that day the body, swathed in her bedding, and lashed round with spun-yarn, lay on a grating to leeward, with a twenty-pound shot at the feet, and a Union Jack spread over it. By sound of trumpet, our men fell into their ranks, and, like the sailors, all stood bare-headed, silent, and grave, for a funeral at sea is the most sad and solemn of all. There was a heavy breeze at the time, and the ship was flying before it with her courses and head-sails only, and the bitter spray swept over us in drenching showers.
"The adjutant read the burial service. At a given signal the grating was lifted, and the body vanished with a splash under the ship's counter. Close by me stood Sergeant Ernslie and his son. Clutching the mizen shrouds with one hand, and Philip by the other, he bent his pale face over the quarter, as if to give a farewell glance at the corpse; but it was gone—gone for ever!
"Ernslie was barely forty; but now he looked quite old and haggard, and his hair was streaked with gray. He saw Pivett standing near him, as the men were dismissed, and passing forward or below; and as if he felt and knew that the original cause of enmity had passed away, he held forth his hand, and said, in a choking voice, for grief had softened his heart—
"'You'll shake hands with me now, sergeant-major, won't you?'
"But Matthew Pivett answered only by a scowl, and crossed to the windward side of the deck. So even by the side of that vast and uncouth grave their hatred was not quenched; and I had twice to interfere for Ernslie's protection before our transport ran up the Hooghly, and landed us at Calcutta, from whence the river steamers took us up country to Allahabad, where our remount awaited us, and we took the field at once, under Brigadier-General R——.