“The two sergeants were young lads, barely twenty-two years of age. They had married shortly before the battalion embarked at Kingstown, and their wives (quite girls) were clinging to them for support and comfort when the ship parted from her anchors. The guards were ordered to be doubled, and additional sergeants were posted to each. This brought Sergeants Philips and Murray on duty. Without a murmur they left their wives and joined the guards of the lower deck. Their example of perfect obedience and discipline was eminently useful. “And, if an officer’s name may be mentioned, the conduct of Assistant-Surgeon Stubbs well deserves notice. He was in wretched health; but on the first announcement of danger he repaired to the sick-bay, and never left his charge until they were all safely landed. “And, though last in this narrative, the beautiful calmness and resignation of the soldiers’ wives ought to be ranked among the first of those ingredients of order which contributed to our safety. Confusion, terror, and despair, joined to the wildest shrieks, were fast spreading their dangerous influence from the women’s quarter when Captain Gordon first descended among the people on the lower decks. A few words sufficed to quiet them, and from that moment their patience and submission never faltered. “By half-past three P.M. the bilged and broken wreck was abandoned with all the stores and baggage—public and regimental—to the fast-increasing gale, and to the chances of the approaching night.” The excellent conduct of the Ninety-first throughout the Kaffir Wars of 1846–47, and again in 1850–53, received, with the army, the grateful thanks of the country, conveyed through the Government, in these expressive terms, to Lieutenant-General the Hon. Sir George Cathcart:—“The field of glory opened to them in a Kaffir war and Hottentot rebellion, is possibly not so favourable and exciting as that which regular warfare with an open enemy in the field affords, yet the unremitting exertions called for in hunting well-armed yet skulking savages through the bush, and driving them from their innumerable strongholds, are perhaps more arduous than those required in regular warfare, and call more constantly for individual exertion and intelligence. The British soldier, always cheerfully obedient to the call, well knows that, when he has done his duty, he is sure to obtain the thanks and good opinion of his gracious Queen.” The subsequent foreign service of the Ninety-first has been in the Mediterranean, and in September, 1858, it proceeded overland to India. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE SCOTS BRIGADE; OR, THE OLD NINETY-FOURTH FOOT. ---------- CHAPTER XXIII.