Then we left China altogether, and steamed into far Lochaber, with a climate to correspond. Good people under the punkah, think for a moment of cloud-veiled headlands running out into a steel-grey sea, crisped with a cheek-rasping breeze that makes you sit down under the bulwarks and gasp for breath. Think of the merry pitch and roll of a small craft as it buzzes from island to island, or venturously cuts across the mouth of a mile-wide bay, while you mature amid fresh scenery, fresh talk, and fresh faces, an appetite that shall uphold the credit of the great empire in a strange land. Once more we found a village which they called Stanley; but it was different from Aberdeen. Tenantless buildings of brownstone stared seaward from the low downs, and there lay behind them a stretch of weather-beaten wall. No need to ask what these things meant. They cried aloud: "It is a deserted cantonment, and the population is in the cemetery." I asked, "What regiment?" "The Ninety-second, I think," said the General. "But that was in the old times--in the Sixties. I believe they quartered a lot of troops here and built the barracks on the ground; and the fever carried all the men off like flies. Isn't it a desolate place?" My mind went back to a neglected graveyard a stone's throw from Jehangir's tomb in the gardens of Shalimar, where the cattle and the cowherd look after the last resting-places of the troops who first occupied Lahore. We are a great people and very strong, but we build Our empire in a wasteful manner--on the bones of the dead that have died of disease. "But about the fortifications, General? Is it true that etc., etc.?" "The fortifications are right enough as things go; what we want is men." "How many?" "Say about three thousand for the Island--enough to stop any expedition that might come. Look at all these little bays and coves. There are twenty places at the back of the island where you could land men and make things unpleasant for Hong-Kong." "But," I ventured, "isn't it the theory that any organised expedition ought to be stopped by our fleet before it got here? Whereas the forts are supposed to prevent cutting out, shelling, and ransoming by a disconnected man-of-war or two." "If you go on that theory," said the General, "the men-of-war ought to be stopped by our fleets, too. That's all nonsense. If any Power can throw troops here, you want troops to turn 'em out, and--don't we wish we may get them!" "And you? Your command here is for five years, isn't it?" "Oh, no! Eighteen months ought to see me out. I don't want to stick here for ever. I've other notions for myself," said the General, scrambling over the boulders to get at his tiffin.