Gatacre held this command for more than three years--from January 1894 to July 1897--but for eight months in the summer of the second year, 1895, he was on active service in Chitral, and for the same period in 1896 he was officiating at Quetta. Owing to the difference in climate he thus served for five drill seasons in succession. Although these two short episodes will be dealt with separately, the fact that he did duty through the cold weather for three seasons in Bombay seems to justify also a study of the conditions peculiar to that command. So far as the passenger traffic is concerned, Bombay is the port of India. It is the quickest route to all the provinces, even as far east as Calcutta. All the transports between England and India call at Bombay, and the vast majority of troops are there embarked and disembarked. In consideration of the work entailed in arranging the transport service, an extra Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General was allowed on the staff; practically this department of the staff office was the shipping agency for all the reliefs {113} throughout India. Not only had the transhipping and railway arrangements to be made for every regiment on its arrival and departure, and for drafts of men from every branch of the service, but privilege passages had to be allotted to the innumerable officers and their families who, when going home on leave, hoped to avail themselves of the chance of a vacancy on a transport. The rule in allotting these passages was that the junior officer should take precedence, Government having apparently in mind that their scale of pay gave them the first title to consideration. At the same time, senior officers were often needed to take command of a ship full of details, and sometimes had to be searched for, Army nursing sisters, too, had special claims. All these conflicting interests gave rise to almost as many private letters as there were official applications. Ladies and children would come and live in Bombay in the hope of securing a vacancy at the eleventh hour--a device which was often successful. There were numberless hard cases and jealousies over these passages, and many funny stories were told. It was whispered that if an applicant called in person on the General, her chances would be in direct proportion to her personal attractions. The amount of baggage allowed was also a source of infinite vexation. Once a nursing sister, who had recently married an army surgeon, asked to be allowed to send her effects under her maiden name, as the scale of baggage allowed in her professional capacity {114} was slightly higher than that considered sufficient for a captain's wife.