On the return voyage to India, a new enemy awaited the gallant Seventy-eighth, threatening even more fatal results—the sea, the ever-devouring sea. Six companies of the regiment which had embarked in the “Frances Charlotte,” transport, when twelve miles from the small island of Preparos, on the 5th November, 1816, struck upon a sunken rock. In this awful crisis, when the grim King of Terrors confronted our soldiers, and this living freight of brave men, women, and children, seemed about to be engulfed in a watery grave, amid the consternation and wild dismay inseparable from such a scene, the firm courage of our Highlanders sustained them equally as amid the roar and excitement of the battle-field. With heroic gallantry, the soldiers, caring for the weakness of woman and the helplessness of childhood, nobly hazarding, prepared to sacrifice their own lives that these might be saved, and so their duty fulfilled. Instances of manly courage and true heroism like these, tell us, in unequivocal language, that such are the fruit of no mere idle sentiment and flitting emotion, but the result of inborn, genuine character. Whilst the women and children were conveyed in boats to the island, the men crowded upon a small rocky islet, occasionally dry at low water, and situated about 150 yards from the wreck. The ship, full of water, soon after went to pieces, and disappeared beneath the waves. The miseries of the ship-wrecked, from hunger and thirst, were very grievous, and so cruel, that, although saved from becoming the prey of the sea, they seemed but preserved for a more terrible doom. The gaunt visage of famine appeared to torment the perishing multitude with the pangs of an unutterable woe, and every ray of hope seemed eclipsed by the lowering darkness of despair and the dismal shroud of the grave. But a merciful Providence was nearer to save. A vessel hove in sight, and, responding to the hail of the men on the rock, sent a boat to their aid, which took forty of the survivors on board, but by a strange, unaccountable want of feeling, sailed away without affording further assistance; leaving behind one of its own boats, which, gone on the mission of mercy, and whilst loading with a second instalment, had been upset by over-crowding. Fortunately, all escaped safely, scrambling back upon the rock. On the 10th of November, a large ship, the “Prince Blucher,” attracted by the vestiges of the wreck which had floated seaward across her course, was drawn towards the island, and embarking as many as possible, sailed for Calcutta; from whence, on news of the disaster, other vessels were immediately dispatched, which brought off in safety the remainder of the survivors, who had endured the severest pinchings of hunger with soldier-like stedfastness for upwards of a month upon the island. It is interesting to note how both the Seventy-fourth and Seventy-eighth Highlanders should thus have encountered the disasters of the deep, and in these vicissitudes evinced