Life on board a troopship does not offer much material for graphic description, and none but a Kipling could give to its ordinary incidents an absorbing interest for general readers. Nevertheless, it has charms for those who look at it with eyes fresh to such scenes, and for Lumsden’s Horse, at any rate, there was a novelty in the situation not wholly unpleasant in spite of the many discomforts they had to endure and the distasteful duties necessarily imposed upon them. They were learning there a harder lesson than any of which their experiences in camp on the Maidan could have given the slightest conception. It is one thing to go a long voyage on board a liner as first-, second-, or even third-class passenger, but quite another to be penned up between decks in a crowded transport with native servants and Lascars, eating coarse Government rations served in the roughest fashion, doing the work of grooms and lackeys, and sleeping on bare planks in an atmosphere odorous with exhalations from stables and galleys. They had enlisted for a soldier’s life, however, prepared to take the rough with the smooth, and, being in for it, they made the best of their circumstances after the first rude shock of feeling what military service really means had worn off. Discipline may become a property of easiness anywhere else, but on board ship the line that separates rank from rank must be sharply drawn even in the case of a Volunteer company. Comradeship and interchange of friendly greetings between officers and men may still go on as of old; but they cannot make a trooper forget for a moment that certain privileges follow rank, and disabilities cling to those who have it not, while these facts are thrust upon him insistently at every turn and dinned into his ears by every bugle call to duty or to meals. It is well that we also should remember these things in estimating the sacrifices that Volunteers make when they give up the comforts, if not luxuries, of home life and go forth to fight for country and for empire as private soldiers. The privations, the rough fare, the hard marches in all weather, exposure to rapid alternations of heat and cold, fierce sunshine where there is no shelter by day, and pitiless rain from which there is no escape at night, hunger, wounds, and sickness—all these may be cheerfully borne because they are the lot of all ranks alike. Not so, however, with the petty humiliations and drudgery inseparable from many duties on board a transport, where the mere trooper finds that a soldier’s uniform is a badge of distinction truly, but the distinction at times brings with it something closely akin to a sense of humiliation. The company or regimental officers may do all they can to take the keen point off this goading sentiment, but it will wound where there is the least protection against it and rankle too. One must say to the credit of Lumsden’s Horse that they did not allow such considerations to trouble.