My friend the Surgeon-Major, who had been taken away from Wood’s Regiment a fortnight previously, to serve on Headquarters Staff, came to see me, and put a probe into the hole through which the head of the nail had passed. The first doctor who examined me had expressed an unfavourable opinion, based on his diagnosis of the very weak action of the heart. Noticing my friend’s face was unusually grave, I said, “I believe you know I am not afraid to die, so tell me frankly what my chances are.” He replied, “There is some foreign substance just over your heart; I cannot feel it with the probe, and do not like to try any farther, but as you are alive now, I can see no reason why you shouldn’t live;” and this satisfied me I was not to die that day. It, however, was not the opinion of the other Medical officers, and the Principal Medical officer of the Expedition, afterwards Sir William Mackinnon, Director-General of the Army Medical Department, a friend of mine, went to Sir Garnet, who was on the west side of the clearing, to ask him to say good-bye to me before I was carried back to a clearing at Quarman, three-quarters of a mile farther south, where it was intended to establish a hospital. Sir Garnet Wolseley has an optimistic temperament, which has carried him onward through his remarkable career, and he absolutely declined to say “good-bye” to me, alleging that he would see me again at the Head of the road within a week, as indeed he did; but Mackinnon said, “No, sir, you never yet saw a man live with a shot in his pericardium.”[125] The stretcher-bearers put me down in the clearing, and a man of the Army Hospital Corps dosed me with Brand’s Essence of Beef, and brandy, until I somewhat petulantly asked him to leave me alone, and attend to somebody who required assistance more. “But you are very bad, sir,” he said. Ten minutes later the Ashantis attacked the clearing. My Sierra Leone servant, putting my rifle between my feet, and revolver on the stretcher, sat down tranquilly alongside with his Snider. However, the measures for defence taken first by Captain C. Burnett,[126] and somewhat later by Colonel Colley[127] who managed to be present at every fight or skirmish from the time of his landing, repulsed the attack, which was never serious. Next day there was a skirmish, after which the Sailors paid me the compliment of asking Commodore W. N. W. Hewett,[128] my friend of the Crimea, to get them placed under my command, as they were not happy under a Military officer who did not understand them.