BARRACKS BIVOUACS AND BATTLES BARRACKS BIVOUACS AND BATTLES BY ARCHIBALD FORBES, LL.D. London MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1891 _All rights reserved_ All the pieces in this little volume are reprints. I have to express my obligations to the proprietors and editors of the periodicals to which they were originally contributed, for the permission to reproduce them. A. F. CONTENTS PAGE HOW “THE CRAYTURE” GOT ON THE STRENGTH 1 THE FATE OF “NANA SAHIB’S ENGLISHMAN” 31 THE OLD SERGEANT 56 THE GENTLEMAN PRIVATE OF THE “SKILAMALINKS” 72 JELLYPOD; ALIAS THE MULETEER 89 THE DOUBLE COUP DE GRÂCE 112 BILL BERESFORD AND HIS VICTORIA CROSS 129 LA BELLE HÉLÈNE OF ALEXINATZ 151 AN OUTPOST ADVENTURE 175 THE DIVINE FIGURE FROM THE NORTH 190 A YARN OF THE “PRESIDENT” FRIGATE 206 FIRE-DISCIPLINE 218 A CHRISTMAS DINNER DE PROFUNDIS 242 ABSIT OMEN! 251 A FORGOTTEN REBELLION 291 MY CAMPAIGN IN PALL MALL 307 HOW “THE CRAYTURE” GOT ON THE STRENGTH Mick Sullivan was a private soldier in G troop, 30th Light Dragoons, of some six years’ service. Since the day old Sergeant Denny Lee ’listed him in Charles Street, just outside the Cheshire Cheese, close by where the Council door of the India Office now is, Mick had never been anything else than a private soldier, and never hoped or needed hope to be anything else if he served out his full twenty-four years, for he could neither read nor write, and his regimental defaulter sheet was much fuller of “marks” than the most lavish barrack-room pudding is of raisins. Nevertheless the Queen had a very good bargain in honest Mick, although that was scarcely the opinion of the adjutant, who was a “jumped-up” youngster, and had not been in the Crimea with the regiment. The grizzled captain of G troop, who was a non-purchase man, and had been soldiering for well on to twenty years, understood and appreciated Mick better. Captain Coleman knew that he had come limping up out of that crazy gallop along “the valley of death” with a sword red from hilt to point, a lance-thrust through the calf of his leg, and a wounded comrade on his back. He had heard Mick’s gay laugh and cheery jest during that dreary time in the hollow inland from Varna, when cholera was decimating the troop, and the hearts of brave men were in their boots. He remembered how Mick was the life and soul of the gaunt sorry squad inside the flimsy tent on the bleak slope of Kadikoi during