Generals Dupuis and Windham, and many other officers, were of the party; and from Cairo we had to cross the desert (about ninety miles) in uncomfortable carriages like bathing machines. There was no steamer at Suez, and we were detained a week at that dismal village of the desert, receiving occasional news that matters were becoming worse and worse in India. The only hotel was crowded with English officers, with little to eat and not a drop of water except what was brought in skins on camels from the Nile, nearly 100 miles away. At last, however, the 'Bentinck' arrived, carried us slowly down the Red Sea, with the thermometer at 96 degrees; in a week we were at Aden, thermometer still rising, and ten days afterwards at Galle. At Madras we heard of the fall of Delhi, and on October 5 our long voyage in the 'Bentinck' came to an end, and we steamed up the Hoogly to Calcutta. Several years afterwards, when inspecting the defences of the river with Sir William Mansfield, the Commander-in-Chief, we came across the wreck of the 'Bentinck' lying in a field at some distance from shore, and found that a short time previously she had been caught by a tidal wave called 'a great bore,' and was thrown up high and dry in the field. In the course of my career I have occasionally met a great bore, but never to be so completely stranded as was the case with the old steamer. Matters were in a somewhat critical condition on our arrival at Calcutta, for although the fall of Delhi had given a severe blow to the mutineers, still we had no force of much strength to take the field; and the garrison of Lucknow under Outram and Havelock, with many women and children, were entirely surrounded, mere scraps of intelligence only arriving from them occasionally. I had several interviews with Sir Colin Campbell, who was very anxious to collect a sufficient force for the relief of Lucknow. During October troops of all arms arrived in quick succession after a three months' voyage round the Cape, but the great difficulty was transport. The railway extended to Raneegunge, 120 miles up country, but beyond that point our means only enabled us to push forward about 100 men a day, either in bullock carts or by march. Another difficulty was the provision of horses for the artillery. In fact, the whole of Central India from Delhi to Lucknow was practically in the possession of the mutineers, who fortunately had no generals to lead them, and were content for the most part to hover about and pillage as they could. Slowly, however, as our forces in a long thin line marched upwards towards Allahabad and Cawnpore, the tide began to turn, and on October 27 the Commander-in-Chief left Calcutta for the North.