There is a touch of boyish imagination about that sketch, but it is not altogether fanciful. Some of the Volunteers who joined first were by no means experienced horse-masters, and, to nearly all, the equipments for Mounted Infantry in full campaigning kit were not less strange than military technicalities. There was a rich fund of amusement for Lumsden’s Horse in the unauthorised version of ordinary commands as one trooper construed them. When sections in line were crowding too much upon him he would say, ‘Fall off, man! Fall off to the left.’ The comrade thus admonished would murmur, ‘Hang it all, man, that is just what I am trying not to do.’ Still, young Malaprop would repeat, in defiance of the Sergeant-Major’s peremptory request for silence in the ranks, ‘Fall off! fall off!’ meaning all the time ‘Ease off.’ These simple incidents of every day gave a piquancy to camp ‘gup,’ and were the cause of more mirth than the elaborate jokes concocted by literary troopers could arouse. One civilian, in a playfully prophetic mood, devised a new coat of arms for Lumsden’s Horse, which was published in the ‘Indian Daily News’ as a clever play upon the cant of Heraldry; though the Earl Marshal and all the Kings-at-Arms and all the learned pursuivants of Heralds’ College might have been puzzled if called upon to emblazon the quaint conceit with its complicated quarterings, its proper shield of pretence, and its lurid crest of augmentation. ----- Footnote 1: Hindustani for ‘cavalier.’—ED. ----- CHAPTER II _PREPARING FOR THE FRONT—DEPARTURE FROM CALCUTTA_