We were still four miles from the end of our march, when it became evident that we were going to have a mountain storm; the lowering sky deepened into an intense indigo behind the distant mountains; eddying clouds of sand, dry grass, and leaves, caught by successive whirlwinds, came sweeping along our desolate track, until a bright blinding flash shot from behind the dark peak of the Didama, and the oppressive silence was suddenly broken by a terrific peal of thunder, followed, before its prolonged echoes had ceased among the crags, by a downpour of hail and rain, such as we never before witnessed. The hailstones were literally the size of walnuts, and fell with such force that the horses became frantic, and in a couple of minutes we ourselves were soaked to the skin. As we entered a narrow glen, down which foamed a genuine Highland stream, the road became much rougher, and was most trying to the wounded men, who yelled with agony as the waggon jolted over the rocks; seeing me removing the large loose stones out of the way of the wheels, a private, named M'Coll, with his left arm in a bandage, after amputation of the fingers, jumped out and walked the rest of the way, assisting me with his one hand.
At a turn in the narrow road, the little fort appeared about half a mile before us, standing dreary and lone on a rising ground in the centre of an amphitheatre of dark mountains half hidden in the clouds. As we approached it a detachment of the 12th came out to meet us, and helped to carry the sufferers into the hospital, already half full of wounded men. I was in time to take a last look at the bodies of our chief and poor Carey, which were laid out in the commissariat forage store, before the Sergeant-Major nailed down the hastily made coffins. The funeral will never be forgotten by those who were present. The thunder, mingled with the booming of the distant artillery, rolled grandly and solemnly among the mountains, as the motley groups from each regiment assembled in their worn and ragged uniforms. As the rough deal coffins were borne out, the "firing party," dripping wet, and covered with mud, "presented arms," the officers uncovered, and we marched in slow time out of the gate and down the road, the Pipers playing the mournful and touching "Highland Lament," to where the graves had been dug, a few hundred yards from the post, and close to three others newly made, the last resting place of our gallant men who had fallen on the 16th of October.
The funeral service was read by Captain Duff, the men with swarthy faces, and tattered dress, standing round, resting on their "arms reversed," while the thunder rolled unceasingly, and the inky black clouds threatened another downpour.
Captain Carey, C.M.R., stood by the grave side of his brave young kinsman, and as the bodies were lowered into the graves and solemnly committed to the earth, every one was visibly affected; the customary military honours were paid; three times the roar of a hundred muskets reverberated among the hills; the last faint echo died away in the distance; the hoarse word of command broke up the motionless group; one after another we stepped to the grave sides to take a farewell look; and marched back in silence to the Fort.
During our absence, a miserable barrack room with roughly paved floor, and smoke blackened rafters, had been hastily cleared for poor Gordon, into which we carefully bore him, and adding every obtainable blanket or plaid to the thin straw mattress, and doing all in our very limited power to cheer him and alleviate his sufferings, left him for the night with his trusty and attached servant Stuart.
On entering the crowded hospital, the groans of the wounded men were heart-rending, and their sufferings most acute, the heat of the climate and the loathsome flies and vermin (which no care can keep away from the smallest wound), adding to their misery. A Sergeant of the 12th and one of the 74th had each undergone amputation of the leg, and hardly appeared to understand our words of encouragement. We learned from one or two, who spoke feelingly of his kindness, that our late gallant chief had personally visited, and inquired into the wants of the sick, the very evening before he was killed (when it will be remembered he rode over from our camp), and the commissariat officer of the post showed us an order the Colonel had written on the spot, for every possible comfort for the wounded—wine, porter, sago, tea, milk, &c., to be provided at his own expense and responsibility. These were the last words he ever wrote.
We found Ricketts of the 91st, who was mentioned as dangerously wounded on the 14th of October, in the Waterkloof, lying alone in a small room in a very precarious state; he had no belief whatever in his danger, and talked gaily of what he should do when he got out again—though constantly interrupted by coughing and spitting blood, which bubbled out of the wound in his chest at every breath.
The hospitable detachment gave us, notwithstanding the great scarcity of provisions, a more substantial meal than we had seen for a long time, to which we sat down twenty-one in number, at a long deal table, in a bare whitewashed room; but as our kind entertainers had been unexpectedly sent up to the empty fort from the field in "patrol order," it was a much more difficult affair to provide a dinner service than a dinner. At night we lay in our blankets on the floor, side by side, and as we listened to the mountain storm raging without, congratulated ourselves on sleeping under a roof, a luxury we had only once before enjoyed since leaving Cork.