After His Review He Invited Himself
To Our Dinner-Party, And Honoured Our Repast With The Further Addition
Of A Kid Stew.
He turned out to be one of the ex-Company's officers,
a subaltern of eighteen years' service, FIFTEEN of which had been
spent away from his regiment on the staff.
He was with his corps,
however, when it mutinied, and escaped without much difficulty. The
unfortunate colonel of the regiment, finding that none of his men
would shoot him, had done so with his own hand. He gave it as his
opinion that the cartridges WERE the cause of the mutiny; but allowed
that his regiment was in a bad state of discipline some time before,
and that all the native corps were known to be disaffected years
before the event occurred, both by the officers present and those
absent upon staff employ. Altogether, after the Chota Sahib had
thoroughly discussed both the mutiny and the dinner, we were left
under the impression that there was quite sufficient cause for the
disaffection of the Bengal army without ever arriving at the vexed
question of greased cartridges at all.
OCTOBER 13. - Marched early into the Hill Station of Muree. Not being
yet quite in walking trim, I had pressed a mule into the service,
who carried me in good style as far as the entrance to the town. Here,
however, he seemed suddenly to remember that we had each a character
to support, and, stopping short, he utterly refused to budge another
step.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 209 of 303
Words from 56482 to 56735
of 82277
