We were incapable of shouting or cheering, so great was our emotion, and many of us burst into tears when we saw the sheets let fly and the fore-yard thrown in the wind, while, as an additional token that we were seen and that succour was coming, the Stars and Stripes of America were run up to the gaff-peak, and a boat was instantly lowered and manned. She proved to be the _President_, whaler, who, fishing in that lonely sea, had by chance come near the isle, where her morning watch had at dawn seen the fragment of our tattered blanket waving in the wind. We were speedily taken off, after having spent--as a tally kept by Joe Rudderford showed--exactly one hundred and fifty-nine days (a little more than five months) on an isle of the Crozets; and, with one accord, we all stood bareheaded, and thanked God for all His goodness to us, when we found ourselves safe on the deck of the American. Her captain made us all welcome and comfortable; but as we were what he called 'a tight fit' on board, with his own ample crew, he landed us at the Cape of Good Hope. There I parted company with Joe Rudderford and his brother, who shipped on board a Scotch clipper to return to their own home, while I, with the rest of the survivors, came back by a passenger steamer to London, and found that my people had long since given me up as dead. [Illustration: Chapter 6 headpiece] A TALE OF THE RETREAT FROM CABUL [Illustration: Chapter 6 tailpiece] A TALE OF THE RETREAT FROM CABUL. 'In the month of October--I won't mention the year, it seems so long ago--my then regiment, the gallant old 13th Light Infantry, with the rest of Her Majesty's troops who had the ill-luck to accompany us, were in the cantonments of Cabul. 'I can see them yet, in memory, on the plain in front of the mountain city, enclosed by walls and hedges, and bordered by those pretty villas which, in their perfect confidence in the people, among whom we had come to replace Shah Sujah on his throne, our officers had built for themselves and families; on one hand the hills of the Siah Sung, on the other the haunted heights of Beymaroo, for it was affirmed that a demon of some kind did haunt them, and in the distance the city of Cabul, with its walls and streets of sun-dried bricks, the towering outline of its Balahissar, and in the background far away the summit of the Hindoo Kush, mantled with snows that never melt.