H.H. the Khedive wrote to me, kindly expressing his sense of my services, and at the same time offering me an appointment upon his staff, in which capacity I was to go to the front. Lord Granville and the Admiralty having signified their permission that I should accept the post, I left Alexandria for Ismailia, together with several members of the Khedival staff. We went by steamer, which towed a huge iron lighter carrying horses. A beam ran from stem to stern of the lighter, and to it the horses were tethered with halters. I remarked to the captain of the steamer that it would be advisable, in order to avoid injuring the lighter, to take every precaution to prevent the steamer from having to go astern. But in Ismailia Bay, which was crowded with shipping, a vessel crossed the steamer's bows, the steamer was forced to go astern, and she cut a hole in the lighter with her propeller. One of the ship's officers instantly descended the Jacob's ladder into the lighter with me, and we cut the halters of the horses, just in time to free them before the lighter sank, and there we were swimming about among the wild and frightened stallions. By splashing the water into their faces, we turned one or two shorewards, when the rest followed and came safely to land. Upon discussing the matter of my appointment to the staff of the Khedive with Sir Garnet Wolseley, to my {207} surprise he declined to permit me to accept it. Discipline is discipline, and there was nothing for it but to acquiesce. I was about packing up my things, when Mr. Cameron, the war correspondent of _The Standard_, informed me that he was authorised to appoint a correspondent to _The New York Herald_, and also that he had permission to send the said correspondent to the front, where I particularly desired to go. The notion attracted me. I applied to the military authorities for permission to accept the offer. Permission was, however, refused. So there was nothing to do but to go home. But before starting, I consoled myself by sending some provisions, privately, to the unfortunate officers at the front, who, owing to the substitution by the transport people of tents for food, were short of necessaries. I obtained from the Orient four large boxes filled with potted lobster, salmon, sardines, beef, tins of cocoa, and so forth, and sent one box each to the 1st Life Guards, the Blues, the Guards, and the Royal Marines. The orders were that no private supplies were to go up. These I ventured to disregard; got up bright and early at three o'clock in the morning; and had the boxes stowed under the hay which was being sent up in railway trucks, before officialdom was out of bed. Then I went home.