After this was read out a ringing cheer was sent up, and renewed again and again; knots of soldiers and civilians standing by joined in the general rejoicings. The bands played us down to our steamer, the _Benares_, and we left shortly afterwards on our way down the river. Here was a pleasant ending to all our work. The Governor-General was right in stating that “we left with the satisfaction of seeing peace restored.” It was indeed a proud moment to be told that: a reward to us to see that accomplished which we had done our best to bring about. I hope I may be excused for writing thus much. We had had very arduous work, fighting with a small force against vastly superior numbers, whatever they were made of. We never knew, especially in the early days of the Mutiny, what a day might bring forth: we might even find our whole force annihilated. We had very scanty information about the rebels, and often our spies were not to be trusted. The whole country was up in arms; villages were forsaken, either for fear of us or because they had joined the rebels; the incessant marching and countermarching, and entrenching our camp after a long day’s march in a hot climate, were no joke; and I felt very proud of our force, especially of the Brigade, so well commanded by Captain Sotheby. The action of Amorrah had great effect on the mutineers in that part of India. It broke their spirit: so much so, that they never were able to mass in any large force afterwards, with the exception of that final stand at Toolsepore. The rebels as a rule fought badly; but there were occasions when we were hard put to it--not so much by the actual fighting as by the constant state of unrest into which they put us. Then, there was always the feeling that if retreat had been forced on us we should have nothing to fall back upon: neither position nor reinforcements. To me, a boy, it was naturally a most exciting and interesting period. Between sixteen and eighteen troubles and work do not seem to weigh heavily. The Brigade had altogether twenty-six engagements with the rebels. I saw seventeen of them. The others I missed because of severe fever, or because I was left behind on camp guard. On one occasion during my illness, while we were on the line of march at night, our doolie-bearers and the spare horses endeavoured to make a short-cut to avoid the dust of the road on which the column was marching. As bad luck would have it, some rebels swooped down on us and stole several horses. Luckily, my doolie-bearers did not skiddaddle with the rest. A horse which was being led just in front of my doolie was captured; but I escaped, doolie and all. I was so ill that it would not have taken much to kill me.