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.