It was here in the Crimea that, carrying that letter to post to his brother, as already told in "The Bettesworth Book," he met his "mate," and, opening the letter, took out the "dollar" it contained, and spent it on a bottle of rum, tossing the letter away. "In those days," said he, "I could drink as much rum as I can beer now. We had rum twice a day: rum and limejuice. That was to keep off the scurvy. Never had no cups nor nothing. We had knives, same as that old clasp-knife I got now, and used to knock off the necks o' the bottles with they." He remembered well the hard times, and the privations our troops endured. "Sixteen of us in one o' they little tents. We had a blanket and a waterproof sheet--not the fust winter, though; and boots that come up to your thigh, big enough to get into with your shoes on. There was one little chap named Tickle, he got into his boots with his shoes on, and couldn't git 'em off again. He was put under stoppages for 'em. Fifty shillin's for a pair o' they boots. You got into 'em--they was never made to fit no man--and bid in 'em for a month together--freezed on to ye." Again, "It was starvation done for so many of our chaps out there. Cold an' starvation. I've bin out on duty forty-eight hours at a stretch; then march back three mile to camp; and then some of us 'd have to march another seven mile to fetch biscuit from the sea. And _then_ you only got your share, same as the rest.... Sometimes the biscuit was dry; and then again you'd on'y git some as had bin trod to death by mules or camels.... That was the way to git a appetite.... But there was plenty o' rum; good rum too; better 'n what you gits about here." The system of pay, or rather the want of system, appears to have made this abundance of rum a more than usually doubtful blessing. The men went sometimes "weeks together without gettin' any pay; and then when we got it, it was very soon all gone." Sixpence a day--four and twopence a week--(Bettesworth figured it out)--a very handy sum was this week's pay, I gathered, for buying rum by the bottle. The price of a bottle of stout was half a crown. Reverting to the terrible weather, Bettesworth told how he had seen "strong men, smoking their pipe," and four hours afterwards beheld them carried by on a stretcher, to be buried. Ill-fed, I inferred, they succumbed thus suddenly to the fearful cold. Green coffee was provided, and the men had to hunt about for roots to make a fire for cooking it. And then, just as they had got their coffee into their mess-tins, they would be called out, perhaps, to stand on duty for eight hours together.