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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of George Alfred Henty, by George Manville Fenn
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: George Alfred Henty
+       The Story of an Active Life
+
+Author: George Manville Fenn
+
+Release Date: July 29, 2011 [EBook #36893]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE ALFRED HENTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+George Alfred Henty
+The Story of an Active Life
+By George Manville Fenn
+Illustrations by Photographs
+Published by Blackie and Son Limited, London.
+George Alfred Henty, by George Manville Fenn.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+GEORGE ALFRED HENTY, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+G.A. Henty occupied so large a place in the hearts of boys that, when
+his active life all too soon came to a close, it seemed desirable that
+those readers whom he had entertained for so many years should have an
+opportunity of knowing something more of the man himself than was
+contained in his books.  Every writer, consciously or unconsciously,
+reveals himself in his work, but nevertheless it cannot fail to be
+interesting to boys to read of the actual experiences of the sturdy war
+correspondent--those experiences which furnished him with many a vivid
+background for his romances.  It was at once the fascination and the
+value of his tales that, while nominally fiction, they were built up on
+a solid substratum of fact.  When the present writer, however, was asked
+to undertake this memoir of his old and valued friend, he was confronted
+with a grave difficulty.  Of few men of George Henty's eminence is less
+known about their private lives.  A staunch and loyal friend, he yet
+strongly believed, to use the old Cockney phrase, in "keeping himself to
+himself."  His letters were never autobiographical, and about himself he
+was never very communicative.  Little more than his vivid letters from
+foreign countries exist to give an insight into the man and his
+character.
+
+In his many absences from England during his career as a war
+correspondent, Henty contented himself with the briefest of home
+communications, and these told little more than where he was and what
+was the state of his health.  He always said that those he loved could
+refer to the newspaper he represented for the rest.
+
+To the courtesy of Mr C. Arthur Pearson, the present proprietor of _The
+Standard_, who placed the whole of the files of that paper unreservedly
+at his disposal, the writer is very greatly indebted, while for much
+valuable information he would like to thank the editors of _The
+Captain_, _Chums_, _The Boy's Own Paper_, _Great Thoughts_, _Young
+England_, and _Table Talk_.
+
+G.M.F.
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+EARLY DAYS.
+
+We might know very little of the life of the late George Alfred Henty--
+writer for and teacher of boys, novelist, and one of the most virile of
+our war correspondents--but for one fortunate fact.  His busy pen soon
+made him popular, and in course of time this popularity was sufficient
+to make editors of journals for the young realise that their readers
+would gladly learn something of the early life of the man whose vivid
+tales of adventure were being read with avidity wherever the English
+language had spread.  In these days few are content to know a man only
+by his work, and even boys like to know something about the personality
+and experiences of the writers who have given them keen pleasure.  As a
+result the inevitable came to pass, and the modern chronicler of
+personal details sought out the author.  To his interviewers Henty told
+fragments of his past life, and these reminiscences were taken down in
+short or long hand, and built up into articles, and have remained, to
+bring before us vividly what would otherwise never have been known save
+perhaps by tradition.
+
+It is strange now to reflect that the big, robust, heavy, manly-looking
+Englishman of whom these lines are written, was once a puny, sickly boy
+who was looked upon by his relatives as one who could never by any
+possibility attain to man's estate; but so it was.  Here are his own
+words: "I spent my boyhood, to the best of my recollection, in bed."
+
+Descended from an old Sussex family, George Alfred Henty was born at
+Trumpington, near Cambridge, on December 8, 1832, and it would appear
+that he was a confirmed invalid.  This ill-health was the more
+unfortunate because it was in the days when doctors were inclined to be
+narrow-minded, and parents and guardians in almost every household had
+intense belief in the virtues of physic.  Most mothers then were given
+to doctoring, and at spring-time and fall considered it to be their duty
+to administer filthy infusions, decoctions, and very often concoctions,
+to unhappy boyhood; and a powder at night, to be followed by a nightmare
+of the draught that was to be taken in the morning, is a painful
+recollection to some of us.
+
+Happy boys of the present generation!  Why, who among them now know the
+meaning of words which must almost seem like cabalistic characters?
+Jalap, rhubarb, magnesia, salts and senna, gamboge, James's powder--
+these were all in constant request, without taking into consideration
+the secrets promulgated by the wicked writers of books on domestic
+medicine.
+
+It was in those days that George Henty was born.  He tells of an early
+removal at the age of five to Canterbury, to a fine old house whose
+garden ran down to the River Stour.  Here for the next five years his
+mind became stored with those most wholesome of recollections connected
+with boy life.  It was the bird, bee, and butterfly time, brightened by
+the presence of a grand trout stream, to whose banks he would creep, so
+as not to send the spotted beauties darting off in a flash of ruddy gold
+to seek some hiding-place from the gigantic shadow that had suddenly
+been cast athwart the stream.  He tells, too, in many a page of his
+later life, how the influences of this good old garden were a solace and
+delight to him during many a weary tramp or journey in the saddle far
+away; in the course of his journeys through Europe, the wilds of Asia,
+and the savage mountains and dense tropic forests and swamps of Africa.
+
+The boy was fortunate, too, in his leanings towards natural history, for
+he speaks of a grandfather who was always ready to play the part of
+instructor to the young enquiring mind in regard to scientific matters,
+and explain the why and the wherefore of such objects as he collected.
+
+When not confined to his bed, Henty attended a Dame school, where the
+love of reading was started, and grew and grew so that the sick boy's
+lot was softened to the extent that the weariness and suffering of
+confinement to his bed became almost pleasant in the forgetfulness
+begotten by books.  That which was wanting in the way of education was
+made up in these long hours by reading.  To use his own words, he "read
+ravenously"--romance, adventure, everything--perfectly unconscious, of
+course, of the fact that he was laying in a mighty store for the future,
+preparing himself, in fact, for the great work of his life, the broad
+and wide education of the boys of a generation to come.
+
+In those days, though the classics hardly had place (there was little of
+Latin or Greek), he was piling up general knowledge such as comes to the
+lot of few lads now, in spite of the boasted advance in educational
+matters and all the elaborate apparatus and routine.  And yet it must
+not be supposed that the boy's regular education was neglected.  When
+ten years old there was an end to his simple country life, for though
+far from well he was sent to London to begin life in a private
+boarding-school, a life sadly interfered with by sickness and relapses
+into ailments more or less severe, among them being that terrible
+disease whose sequelae have shattered many lives--rheumatic fever.  One
+of his ailments seems to have been near akin to that of the late Prince
+Leopold, namely, a tendency to profuse bleeding.  For this he was
+attended by a well-known specialist of the time, whose great remedy for
+the boy's complaint was camphine, this being the popular term in those
+days for one of the refinements of the so-called rock oils, nowadays
+known as petrol or paraffin.
+
+Henty recorded to one of his interviewers that he was so thoroughly
+dosed with this peculiar medicine that the specialist warned the nurse
+in these words: "I don't say that if you put a light to the boy he will
+catch fire, but I advise you not to risk it."  This was accompanied with
+further counsel that the future chronicler of boys' adventures should
+not be allowed to handle sharp instruments, lest a cut or puncture
+should result in his bleeding to death.
+
+Much reading in these early days had so influenced the boy that he had
+already become a story-teller, and, as is often the case with first
+attempts at writing, pleased with the jingle and flow of words, he had
+dropped into poetry.  Now a young poet, as soon as he has satisfied
+himself with his lines and has carefully copied them in his best
+penmanship, burns to see himself in print.  He then imagines, or is
+flattered into the belief, that numbers of people are as anxious as he
+to see his work become public; and it appears to have been so here, for
+owing to the well-meant kindness of a friend, certain of his early verse
+was printed, and it would appear to have been extremely sentimental and
+remarkably mild.
+
+It was soon after this, when Henty was fourteen, that he went to
+Westminster School.  Liddell was head-master then, and the boy became a
+half-boarder, and in a very little while, in his boyish and very natural
+vanity, he let his tongue run a little too fast.  He had written verse,
+and consequently esteemed himself something of a poet, so it was not
+long before he mentioned the fact of his having his work in print.  He
+quickly began to wish he had held his tongue.  He had not counted upon
+the mischievous delight a pack of schoolboys would take in their special
+poet.  If he had written Latin verses it would have been a different
+thing; but a love-tale with threatened difficulties to a lady was too
+much for them, and a long and continuous "roasting" ensued.  Chaff flew,
+indirect and covert allusions were made, and then came bullying.  Henty
+says: "It seemed as if the whole school bore a personal animosity
+towards poets, and as if they looked upon my publishing the unlucky book
+as a bit of `side' unworthy of a Westminster scholar."
+
+This particular poem was unfortunately lost, and the same fate befell
+another attempt written later, for the school banter did not crush out
+the rhyming faculties.  The later work was written upon a more serious
+occasion, and, devoted to his future wife, it was cared for and
+preserved for long years as a valued treasure; indeed, only about ten
+years before his death, Henty was taking it up to town and accidentally
+left it in the railway carriage.  Attempts to recover it proved vain,
+and though he offered a large sum of money as a reward, he never heard
+of it again.
+
+As the lad's education progressed at Westminster it was not long before
+he began to realise that the curriculum was not complete, and that no
+boy's studies were perfect without a thorough knowledge of the noble
+science of self-defence.  Indeed, he had not been long at the great
+school before he came in contact with one of the regular school bullies,
+who began to tyrannise until young Henty awoke to the fact that he
+possessed a high spirit and an absence of that weak pusillanimity which
+makes men slaves.  He was no mute inglorious Milton, though he aimed at
+being a poet.
+
+The boy was father to the man he became, and he bore little before he
+turned in defiance and challenged his tyrant.  The natural result was
+that he was thrashed out of hand and sent smarting with pain and
+mortification to where he could ponder over his defeat.  But he was not
+of the mettle to sit down painfully under humiliation, and, to use his
+own words, "I soon changed all that."
+
+It was something to learn, something to study; how to acquire the power,
+the science, which makes a comparatively weak man the equal of one far
+stronger, and, judging the boy by what he was as a man, it was from no
+desire to become bully in his turn that he took lessons in boxing, but
+from a genuine ambition to hold his own in the matter of self-defence
+and to be able to protect those who looked to him for help.  It was with
+this desire that, later, when he left Westminster for Cambridge, at a
+time when the so-called noble art was at its highest tide, and when
+professors of the science had quite a standing at the universities, he
+continued its study, and one of the first professors to whom he applied
+for lessons (out of college) was the once celebrated Nat Langham, who,
+by the way, was the only man who ever vanquished Tom Sayers.  Not
+contented with this, but being then in the full burst of his growing
+youth and strength--a sort of young athlete thirsting for power like a
+boyish Hercules--he took to wrestling, perfectly unconscious then of the
+good stead in which it might stand him in the future.  In this sport he
+chose as his instructor a Newcastle man, one Jamieson, famed in his way
+as being champion of the Cumberland style as opposed to the Cornish.  It
+must be borne in mind that all this was prior to the days of the Great
+Exhibition, when pugilism was considered no disgrace, and before young
+men had begun to foster athleticism in other forms.
+
+It was a strange reaction in the youth who had passed the greater part
+of his early life upon a sickbed, and it seemed as if the brave nature
+within him was exerting itself to throw off his natural weakness.
+
+That thrashing he received in his early days at Westminster seemed to
+have roused him, spurred him on to gain strength, and he was encouraged
+too by the stirring times in which he found himself.  Boating and
+cricket were all-important at Westminster.  The studies were hard, but
+the masters, wisely enough, encouraged all sports; for the Westminster
+boys, as our chronicles have shown us, learned there to hold their own
+the wide world round.  One need not here point to the long roll of
+famous names.  These pages are devoted to one alone.
+
+Henty takes a very modest view of his own prowess, and says of his life
+at Westminster: "Boating or cricket--you had your choice; but once made,
+you had to be perfect in one or the other.  Fellows rowed then and
+played cricket then.  They had to."
+
+The Thames was their course.  There was no Saint Thomas's Hospital then,
+and the boat-houses were on the banks.  The river was pretty handy to
+the great school, and at the sight of the Westminster crews the boatmen
+used to come across to fetch the boys.  These were the days before the
+Thames Embankment, when the river sprawled, so to speak, at low water
+over long acres of deep mud, swarming with blood-worms, and though the
+river tides ran swirling to and fro the current was greatly quickened.
+Later the number of steamers increased and cut up the Westminster
+rowing, so that it went all to pieces.  It was so greatly affected that
+the Old Westminsters' Club tried to move the sport to Putney; but it
+never regained its old standing.  Westminster, however, though known
+best as a boating school, was a great cricketing one as well.  At one
+time five Westminster men played in the All England Eleven; but Henty
+was not a cricketer.  As a young athlete, he selected rowing.  Both
+sports could not be managed; the standard was too high.
+
+Henty describes himself in his growing days and at Cambridge as a sort
+of walking skeleton; but he was big-boned, and the life he led as
+manhood approached made him fill out and grow fast into the big,
+muscular, burly man that he was to the end of his life.  In fact, he has
+said that in later days, when he went down to the Caius College Annual
+Dinners, while he knew most of the men of his own standing, not one
+recognised him.  And this can easily be grasped when it is understood
+that in his college days at nineteen he weighed nine and a half stone,
+while as a man in vigorous health he was as much as seventeen.
+
+He does not forget to credit his school with the education his Alma
+Mater afforded him.  He says: "She did give me a good drilling in Latin.
+Perhaps not elegant classical Latin, but good, everyday, useful,
+colloquial stuff."  In his time the masters were great upon the old
+dramatic author whom so many of our modern dramatists have tapped right
+through Elizabethan, Restoration, and more modern times, down to the
+present.  In Henty's early days, just as is annually the custom now, one
+or other of Terence's comedies was chosen for a performance by the
+Queen's Scholars, while every other boy as a matter of course had to get
+up one play as the lesson of the year as well, and doubtless, as has
+been the case with many a schoolboy in turn, would fall a-wondering how
+it was that the great Latin poet possessed an Irish name.
+
+Latin verses and Latin colloquial phrases were hard enough to pile up,
+while parents and guardians, ready enough to complain, found fault at so
+much time being devoted to the dead languages to the exclusion of those
+which are spoken now.  Hear, ye grumblers, what George Henty says
+thereon to an interviewer:--
+
+"When I went out to the Crimea, and later, to Italy, I found that
+everyday Latin invaluable.  It was the key to modern Italian, and a very
+good key too.  But more than that, it meant that wherever I could come
+across a priest I had a friend and an interpreter.  Without my
+recollections of Terence I don't know where I should have been when I
+first tackled life as a war correspondent."
+
+He speaks of Westminster as giving him his first introduction to
+boating, not merely rowing, but boating with the use of the sail.  There
+was a man on the Surrey side in those days, named Roberts, from whom the
+boys used to hire their four-oared and eight-oared cutters, wager boats,
+and the occasional randan for three, two oars and sculls.  This man had
+a small half-decked boat which Henty first learned to handle.  In it he
+learned also the stern necessity of always being on the alert after
+hoisting sail--a necessity which doubtless gave rise to the good old
+proverbial warning, "Look out for squalls."  Yet, in spite of everyone
+knowing and often using this warning phrase, it is too often neglected
+by careless boating people, who will not realise what a duty it is never
+to make fast the sheet.
+
+Here at Westminster and in the little half-decked boat commenced the
+healthy passion of Henty's life, and he acquired something of the skill
+which enabled him through manhood to go to sea and feel no fear even in
+rough weather, strengthened as he was by the calm confidence that
+accompanied, in the broad sense of the term, "knowing the ropes."
+
+The days of a public-schoolboy came to an end, and with their conclusion
+arrived the feeling that he was a man.  But after all it was the
+schoolboy feeling of manhood, though it was very manly in one thing, for
+it brought with it the knowledge that he had spent too much time in
+play, and with it too the feeling that he must make up for the past.
+Hence it was that he went in for what he termed a burst of hard reading
+as soon as he reached Cambridge and entered at Caius College.  In the
+full realisation of his failings he proved that he was still a boy, for
+he set to and began reading night and day for about three weeks, so as
+to acquire as much as should have taken him about six months' work.  As
+a result nature said nay, and gave him a severe lesson in the shape of
+an illness which knocked him over, so that he had to go down for a
+year's rest, as it was termed, but it was in reality a good spell of
+health-giving instructive work which greatly influenced his future
+career.  In fact, he now began to pick up the information which he so
+largely utilised afterwards in his books.  Here was his first study for
+_Facing Death_, one of his most widely read boys' stories--boys', though
+it was as much read by men.  For he went down into Wales, where his
+father possessed a coal-mine and iron works, and at the latter he
+acquired such knowledge and insight into engineering as to enable him at
+a critical time in his career as a war correspondent to call himself an
+engineer.  Reporting himself as an English engineer desirous of studying
+the practical effect of great gun fire, he had no difficulty in getting
+permission to accompany the Italian Fleet in what was virtually the
+first battle between iron-clad men-of-war.
+
+Henty's subsequent military training, together with his physique and
+stern decision of manner, made him naturally an excellent leader of men.
+In ordinary civilised life he was one who, at a gathering, would be
+pretty well sure to be selected as chairman, for upon occasion he could
+abandon his quiet soft-spoken manner, fill out his chest, and, if
+slightly roused by opposition, speak out with a decision and a firmness
+that would lay antagonism low; while, if it happened to be in a lower
+stratum of not to say savage but uncivilised life, his training had made
+him a picked disciplinarian, one who had his own particular way of
+maintaining order and gaining the affections as well as the obedience of
+those whom he had to command.
+
+This was simple enough in the army with disciplined men, but there were
+occasions when his services were selected to guide and govern the
+undisciplined and those of the roughest and most obstreperous nature.
+
+Upon one occasion fate placed him, the cultivated scholar and
+Westminster boy, as foreman, or as it was termed amongst the men,
+"ganger", over a strong body of men engaged upon the construction of
+some small military railway.  His men were a very lively party,
+extremely insubordinate at first, and ready if matters did not go
+exactly as they pleased--if the work seemed too rough, or the supply of
+available strong drink too handy--to throw down their tools, or reply
+with insolence to their foreman, whose calm, quiet ways and speech
+seemed to invite resistance.  It was in ignorance that the fellow who
+offended did this thing, and he did not offend a second time, for Henty
+was leader with plenary powers, and he had but one way of dealing with a
+rough.  It was to order him at once to the place which he used as his
+business office, and with quiet firmness and decision, and in the
+presence of his following, to pay the man off there and then, to the
+great delight of the rest of the gang, who knew what was to follow.  The
+offender was paid in full and told to be off from the line.  He, of
+course, retaliated with an outburst of flowery language, noting the
+while the gathering together of his mates.  Henty meantime was quietly
+taking off his coat and rolling up his sleeves preparatory to showing
+the unbelieving ruffian how a muscular athletic English gentleman, a
+late pupil of a great professor of boxing, could scientifically handle
+his fists and give the scoundrel, to the intense delight of the
+lookers-on, a thoroughly solid and manly thrashing.  This invariably
+ended in the offender crying, "Hold!  Enough!" and accepting his
+punishment without bearing malice; and in almost every case the gang was
+not only not weakened by the loss of a man, but it maintained a more
+willing worker than it had possessed before.
+
+As may be readily supposed, the gentleman ganger lost no prestige
+amongst his men by such an exhibition of his prowess, for he knew most
+accurately with whom he had to deal, that is to say, so many big
+stalwart men of thews and muscle, such as our contractors have utilised
+for linking land to land with road and bridge, men of untiring energy
+and endurance, but with the mental capacity of stupid children.  These
+formed Henty's gang, and to his credit be it recorded that his treatment
+proved as efficacious as it was firm, the punishment being given calmly
+and in cold blood, to the astonishment of the man who received it.
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+FROM CAMBRIDGE TO THE CRIMEA.
+
+Soon after his return to Cambridge troubles with Russia were "on the
+tapis", and as it to show the preparedness for war which did not exist,
+_Punch_, as is usually the case, began to take notice of our army and
+navy.  It signalised the latter by referring to an event of the day, to
+wit, the sham-fight at Spithead, and represented a theatrical combat of
+the melodramatic Surrey or Victoria Theatre type between two British
+sailors, one being down and his comrade resting over him, hands on knees
+and cutlass in suspense, with the lines beneath: "Ah, it's all werry
+well, Bill, but my, if you'd been a Rooshian!"
+
+Then sham-fights and assumed preparation for war died into thin air.
+Matters came to a head, and our unpreparedness was awfully written in
+disease, starvation, and death for those who studied the columns of news
+from the Crimea.
+
+All young England was in a state of excitement.  The Crimean War was
+upon every lip, and every hot-blooded young man burned to get to the
+front.  Among these was George Henty.  The quiet student life at the
+university became painful; the days passed in Caius College seemed to be
+prison-like.  He too, strung up by that natural instinct that has made
+"Englishman" a name famous in the world's history, grew more and more
+restless.  In the nick of time he was offered an appointment in the
+Commissariat Department of the army, and the first steps were taken
+which enabled him to claim the rank of lieutenant in the British army,
+though it was to be in the utility more than in the fighting ranks.
+
+One of our distributors of Attic salt once wrote, in the plain and
+pungent witticism of his time, that an army crawled upon its stomach in
+its progress to conquest; and by a strange irony of circumstances the
+young lieutenant--for, as said above, that was the rank Henty bore
+during the few years he served in the British army--found himself
+providing and superintending the supplies of that army in order to
+enable it to progress on that portion of its anatomy which keeps it
+alive, that is to say, when he was not busily engaged in superintending
+hospital wards and organising arrangements, sanitary and otherwise, in
+those depressing asylums for the wounded and the sick.  The work was
+arduous enough, but Henty was the man to do it, in spite of the fragile
+promise of his youth, and the head-shaking as to his future of those who
+knew him.  He must have been a very disappointing man to his social
+prophets, seeing that he grew above the ordinary height, and came to be
+big-boned and stalwart, his powerful frame well clothed with sinew and
+muscle.  He was endowed with everything in fact suited to the making of
+what would be called a good all-round man, while his education, fostered
+by his natural pluck and determination, rendered him one who in his
+early manhood was a thorough athlete.  Enough indeed has been said to
+show that in addition to being a powerful and skilful wrestler, and a
+formidable competitor in a friendly contest with the gloves, he was a
+dangerous adversary when necessity compelled him to make full use of
+what was veritably the noble art of self-defence against the brutal scum
+of European life with which he was brought into contact.
+
+In the full vigour of his manly youth he was a splendid walker, thinking
+nothing of doing fifty miles in a day, and this not at the expense of
+exhaustion, for after a brief period of rest he could repeat the walk
+with comparative ease.  Muscular to a degree, he was a steady and
+dependable comrade in a boat.  In addition, aided by the possession and
+the capacity of a broad deep chest, whose buoyancy was a tremendous
+asset, he could swim with ease and untiring skill.
+
+Then, too, he made himself a good wielder of the foils, and the usual
+training of a military man enabled him to handle the service sword with
+as much ability as he displayed in pistol practice or with the rifle.
+Following up the ordinary education of a youth and young man with the
+acquiring and strengthening of such accomplishments as these, his
+appearance was such as would render him in competition one who would be
+chosen on any emergency as a leader of men, one who would be obeyed, and
+whose word would be law to those over whom he was placed.
+
+Excitement was raging in England after the failures and disappointments
+that were being canvassed during the Crimean War; all England was wroth
+as William Howard Russell's letters were read, telling the terrible
+tales of disease, starvation, and neglect suffered by our brave
+soldiers.  Accusations against the authorities were rife, accusations
+which stirred the Government to action and to making more systematic
+provision for our troops.  It will be readily understood, therefore,
+that the offer made by a man, so full of energy as Henty, to become a
+recruit in the Purveyors' Department in the Crimea, that is to say, the
+Hospital Commissariat, was accepted at once, though his place would more
+naturally have been in the fighting line.
+
+However, fate ordained that he was to do good work in connection with
+the provisioning of the unfortunate soldiers who had suffered so cruelly
+during the previous winter.  Attacking his task with his customary
+energy, as soon as he reached Balaclava in the early spring of 1855 he
+was found busy among the stores which were to be distributed, or
+arranging the contents of the huts which were filled with wine and the
+more medicinal stimulants which were to be reserved for the sick or the
+wounded that were brought into the temporary hospital.
+
+Here he was brought into touch with the officers of the medical and
+surgical department, and in connection with the transport service, for
+order was now springing up fast where chaos and despair had reigned so
+long.
+
+Henty writes home about the preparation of food and comforts for the
+sick, and the provision of mules and their drivers for the transport of
+the sick and wounded.  And now his fighting times commence--not with the
+sword and revolver with which he was armed; his encounters were with the
+shadow of death, as an adjunct to the strong body of surgical and
+medical men who were struggling so hard to make up for the want of
+preparation in the past.
+
+With regard to the mule service there is a grim touch in one of Henty's
+letters home concerning the duties of these useful, hard-working but
+stubborn brutes.  Where he found himself this portion of the transport
+service was kept in readiness, some fifty strong, to take ammunition
+down to the trenches, and on their return journey to bring the wounded
+back.
+
+A strange life this, superintending and aiding in such matters, for a
+young man fresh from Cambridge University.  It must have been a curious
+disillusionising to be hurried out to the Crimea, nerve and brain
+throbbing with warlike aspirations connected with the honour and glory
+of war, and then to find himself in the sordid atmosphere of the wet
+tents and rough huts, where the winter was still holding its own, while
+the constant booming of the great guns added to the general misery and
+wretchedness.  The possibility of an explosion was another cause of
+anxiety, for there was ever the prospect of a shell falling in one or
+other of the magazines which supplied the batteries, and a resulting
+disaster unless the fire could be extinguished in time.  These alarms
+generally occurred in the night, when, following upon the lurid display
+of flames from some hut or workshop set on fire by Russian shot, there
+would be the roar of orders, the shouting of men, and the dread of the
+fire being communicated to the crowd of shipping in the little sheltered
+harbour.
+
+It was a wondrous change from the calm and quiet of the university city
+to the roar and turmoil of the besieging camp with the thunder of our
+batteries, the return fire from Sebastopol, and the constant shells
+dropping in from the enemy's forts.
+
+Very shortly after he reached Balaclava he seized an opportunity to ride
+over the held of Inkermann, the scene of the surprise attack made by the
+Russians nearly six months before, and he says that at the top of the
+hill where the principal struggle took place the ground was still
+covered with the remains of the contest--ammunition pouches, Russian
+caps, broken weapons and other grim relics--while, rather ironically, in
+allusion to the way in which the allies were surprised, he says that
+this spot is now commanded by heavy batteries recently erected, and
+alludes to the old adage about locking the stable door after the horse
+is stolen.  Even then, so many months after the fight, many bodies of
+the Russians were still unburied, and lay there as though to demonstrate
+the horrors of war, the while the hill slope and a valley were so
+exquisite that the writer fell into raptures about the beauty of the
+place.  The steep cliffs were honeycombed with caverns, a ruined castle
+stood on an eminence, and the place was beautifully wooded, a stream
+that trickled through the valley amidst the exquisitely fresh and green
+grass adding to the wonder and the beauty of the scene.  But his
+day-dream was given a rude awakening by a hint thrown out, of the risks
+to which a war correspondent is exposed in the pursuit of his duty, for
+there was the sharp crack of a rifle and the dull thud of a bullet
+burying itself in a tree, having missed him narrowly, for luckily the
+Russian who had fired at him had not been quite correct in his aim.
+
+Hurrying back, he forgets the danger that he has escaped, and to his
+mind it is April once more, and he begins to describe the beauty of the
+wild flowers with which the slopes are clothed--irises varying in tint
+from pale yellow to orange, others alternating from light blue to
+purple, the early spring crocus of pure white, and wild hyacinths in
+abundance.
+
+On his way, as everything is fraternal among the besiegers, he and his
+companions pass through the French camp and taste the hospitality of
+their allies, receiving proof that in this camp, too, matters have been
+mended after the horrors of the past winter, for the English visitors
+are welcomed with what Henty declares to be first-rate provisions.  But
+he is dreadfully matter-of-fact and businesslike directly after, as
+behoves an officer of the Purveyors' Department, for he falls
+a-wondering why it is that the French bread is far superior to that made
+by the bakers in Balaclava, the latter having a sour taste that is
+unpleasant and, he thinks, unwholesome.  For his part he prefers the
+biscuit, but feels that on their return to England he and his comrades
+will be entitled to a handsome compensation for wear and tear of teeth
+in the service of their country.  Then, as if by way of comparison with
+the alarms that had suggested a fresh attack, he states that the night
+was less noisy than usual.  "In the early part our sharpshooters and the
+Russians' were cracking away, but about eleven the Russian works opened
+upon the parties engaged in the new parallel."  The next night he
+announces that a colonel of a French regiment of infantry was struck
+down while talking in the trenches to a subaltern--"a sixty-eight pound
+shot shattered him frightfully."
+
+At this time England was in the throes of expectation.  The long-delayed
+assault upon Sebastopol was expected at any moment, and the main subject
+of conversation out in the camp was what day would be appointed.  But
+Henty says, "What day that will be no one but Lord Raglan knows--even if
+he does himself."  However, at last the long-expected bombardment did
+begin.  From a complete circle of batteries round the town, jets of
+smoke were bursting, while a perfect shower of shot and shell was poured
+into the town and was as incessantly answered.  The wonder was that
+buildings did not crumble into dust before such a tremendous fire, for
+from our great crescent of mortars a shell was sent every ten minutes
+during the night, and the mules that bore the ammunition to the trenches
+came back sadly laden with wounded.
+
+Day after day the assault went on, and Henty devoted his spare moments
+to recording the various proceedings of the historic siege--the
+continuous fire of the English and their French allies, which, in spite
+of their vigour, only silenced the Russian batteries for fresh ones to
+be opened again after a few hours' hard work; the occasional skirmishes
+where attack was made by the Russians to carry a battery and be
+repelled; the destruction of rifle pits; the surprises caused by the
+Cossacks beginning to show themselves out upon the plain; attacks when
+prisoners were taken; replies and rescues.  Then his interest was taken
+by the allies who now appeared upon the field in the shape of the Turks
+commanded by Omar Pasha in person.  He describes them as a fine body of
+men who spend most of their time in drilling; for they display a great
+want of military discipline, and their movements are little better than
+a shuffle.  But Henty compliments them with the remark that they are
+getting into order.  Then he describes their arms and the excellence of
+their French rifles, and goes on to display the keenness of his
+observation as he seems to bring to bear old recollections of the
+_Arabian Nights_ and the peculiarity of the immense number of hunchbacks
+among the Turks, nearly all of whom have high round shoulders, which in
+a great many amounts to actual deformity.  It is hard to understand,
+though, why this should be attributed to their sitting cross-legged.
+However, he says the Turkish cavalry and artillery are good, the horses
+small but strongly made and in good condition.  Altogether he thinks the
+Turkish army a most welcome reinforcement.  All the time the siege goes
+on vigorously, with the English men-of-war and gunboats rendering all
+the help they can by checking the fire of the forts.
+
+Something of the weird state of affairs around the young Commissariat
+officer and correspondent is seen in his description of a leisurely walk
+he took to one of our marine batteries.  "The air," he says, "was so
+still that I could hear not only the explosion but the whiz of every
+shell most distinctly, though distant seven miles as the crow flies."
+
+The delicious spring weather that lasted for a time was followed by a
+gale with sleet, and then by forty hours of rain.  The change was
+mournfully depressing, the streets of Balaclava were a perfect sea of
+mud, everything was forlorn, miserable, and deserted, the officers in
+their waterproofs were dejected, and everyone was despondent.  However,
+the purveyor officer remarked that the Guards were by this time all
+provided with waterproof coats, which kept them dry as they stood at
+their posts.  But a thick mist hung over everything; the rain was
+soaking through all the tents; the ground had become so soft that the
+horses sank in over their fetlocks, while their heads were drooping, and
+they appeared the picture of discomfort.  The soldiers going down into
+the trenches carried a perfect load of clay upon their shoes, while
+those returning came back wet, knocked up, and soaked to the skin.
+
+In another letter, written just after this dreary time, Henty writes
+that the night closed in dark and lowering with every promise of wet, a
+horror for those dwelling in tents; just the sort of night, he says,
+which the Russians delight in for making a sortie from the besieged
+city, besides which, he says, they had been unusually quiet, a sign that
+mischief was afloat; but as the attacking force was growing pretty well
+accustomed to the habits of the enemy, a very strong body of men was
+sent down into the trenches.  In proof that this was wise, about ten
+o'clock there came somewhere out of the darkness in front the sound of
+men using picks and shovels, as if the Russians were raising a
+breastwork prior to an attack.  Then an order rang out, and from our own
+trenches a sharp fire was opened upon the attacking party; but owing to
+the darkness and want of aim it was probable that little damage was
+done, and the defenders crowded together in utter silence, listening and
+waiting for the attack that all felt was bound to come.
+
+At last, about one o'clock, there was a dull, heavy roar from out of the
+foggy night.  It was the signal gun, and instantly the enemy made a rush
+at the advanced trenches, to be met with a tremendous volley and stagger
+back, but only to come on again bravely out of the darkness, thousands
+strong, while the musketry firing was fiercer than anything that had
+taken place since the commencement of the siege.  This went on for two
+hours, during which time the whole of the Russians, according to custom,
+supplemented their fire with the most demoniacal yells, which were
+responded to by their friends in the town and answered in defiance by
+the cheers of our men in the other batteries at each repulse which the
+Russians sustained, for never once, in spite of the bravery of the
+attack, did they succeed in entering our advanced trenches.  The next
+morning, after they had retired, in spite of the number of wounded and
+the dead, whom it was their practice to carry off with them, the ground
+was covered with the fallen.
+
+What an experience for the young war correspondent who was making his
+first essay in that which was to become his profession for years, and
+who in this instance proved how thoroughly adequate he was for his task!
+
+Undaunted by their failure and their immense losses, but a short time
+elapsed before the besieged made another sortie, which proved as
+unsuccessful as the last; and though the Russian losses must have been
+immense, in our bayonet-bristling trenches but few men suffered.  Henty
+goes on to say it is quite impossible to describe these night sorties
+accurately, for those engaged in them know next to nothing in the
+darkness and confusion.  If asked in the morning, they would reply that
+the Russians came out strong and that our men loaded and fired in their
+direction as fast as they could, that the Russians yelled awfully, and
+the shot whizzed about like hail!  This was the invariable account of a
+sortie by those engaged in repelling it, unless there was a surprise and
+the Russians got inside our trenches, when in the darkness and confusion
+all were so mixed up that it was hard to know enemy from friend.  "Can
+anything wilder be conceived?"  Henty asks in a description of an
+attempt made by the Russians to seize one of our batteries and spike the
+guns.  The confusion was tremendous.  Imagine an attack on a dark night,
+the rain pouring, the men up to their knees in mud, fighting away all
+mixed up together, the constant flashes and reports of guns and
+pistols--the revolver being a most useful weapon on these occasions--the
+cheers of our men and the yells of the Russians.  At the commencement of
+one of these attacks one of our men saw someone crouching over one of
+the guns.  He asked him what he was doing.  The only answer was a cut of
+the sword, which took off luckily only the tip of his nose.  He
+immediately pinned the man to the gun with his bayonet.  He turned out
+to be a Russian artilleryman who had managed to get in to spike the gun.
+
+These were strange surroundings for a young literary man, for a rough
+hut was often the study of one who was to grow by degrees one of the
+widest known of English writers.  Not only the pen, but the pencil had
+become familiar to his fingers, and, possibly to fill up dull moments,
+he began to make sketches of such objects as took his attention; and the
+idea striking him that such subjects might prove attractive to one of
+the editors of an illustrated paper at home, he from time to time tried
+his hand at some little scene or some quaint-looking character which had
+caught his eye.
+
+These supplemented his long letters to a relative, and the idea growing
+upon him, he elaborated his writing, making these letters, evidently
+with latent hopes for the future, the germs of those which later grew to
+be so familiar to the British public.  Everything is said to have a
+beginning.  Certainly this was the commencement of George Henty's life
+as a war correspondent, but these efforts were not entirely successful.
+The sketches were duly taken by their recipient to the different London
+illustrated papers, but whether from not being up to the editorial
+artistic mark, or from the fact that each paper was already fully
+represented, no success attended their presentation.  The letters,
+however, fared better in one case, for upon their being offered to the
+editor of the _Morning Advertiser_, with a statement as to who and what
+the writer was, and where he was engaged, the editor promised to read
+them.  He kept his word, and proved his acumen by writing out to the
+young lieutenant with an invitation to him to represent the paper and
+send him from time to time a series of letters containing the most
+interesting occurrences of the campaign that came under his notice.
+
+The opening was eagerly seized upon, and proved highly advantageous to
+both parties.  The young officer was a privileged person at
+head-quarters, and his letters show that he had a keen power of
+observation and a great faculty for selecting subjects that were of
+interest to English readers.  As a consequence, he continued to
+represent the _Morning Advertiser_ until he was invalided home.
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+INVALIDED HOME.
+
+Henty's Crimean experiences were to be but short, but they enabled him
+to give us many admirable and vivid pictures of those stirring days.
+Although a non-combatant, he was in the thick of the fight before
+Sebastopol, and he seems to have missed nothing, from the most sordid
+features to the brightest and best.  He paints the horrors, and takes
+note of the pathetic, the good, and true.
+
+He gives us straightforward, telling lines regarding the Turks, and he
+records how our comparatively pitiful strength for the gigantic task
+upon which we had embarked, and in which our meagre forces had to be
+supplemented by the gallant sailors landed from the fleet, now grew into
+immense strength, the last ally being Sardinia with her little army of
+eighteen thousand men.
+
+He has something to say about Soyer and his culinary campaign and model
+kitchen, so urgently needed for the sick and suffering, and of the great
+aid it was to the doctors, whose hands were more than full of the sick
+and wounded when their battle began with the dire cholera.  He has
+sympathetic words, too, for the heroine of Scutari, where she seems to
+have led a charmed life, saving the sinking and suffering by her calm
+sweet presence, and encouraging in their continuous struggle the nurses
+who would have given up in despair.  No wonder that the name of Florence
+Nightingale was at the time on every lip, and that even now, from the
+far West and the antipodean South, the English-speaking race pay a
+pilgrim-like visit to the peaceful home in Derwent Dale where the
+illustrious lady is spending the evening of her life.
+
+Henty paints, too, his own existence in camp during those spring days
+when the rain was upon them.  He says to his readers: "Let them plant a
+small tent in the centre of an Irish bog, for to nothing else can I
+compare this place [before Sebastopol] when it is wet; the mud is
+everywhere knee-deep, while the wet weather has had another bad effect,
+in that it has accelerated the attacks of cholera, which is of a most
+malignant type, and a very large proportion of cases are fatal."  He
+begins one paragraph, too, with a short sentence which is terribly
+suggestive of a peril that had passed: "Miss Nightingale is better."
+
+But all through his narrative, so full of the observations of a young,
+clear-minded, energetic man, there stands out plainly the fact that he
+was there upon a particular duty--that connected with the department of
+which he was an officer.  At one time he is writing about the water, the
+excellency and purity of the supply; then he is condemning the
+arrangements, and no doubt pointing out the need of a better system, so
+that this bounteous supply should not be wasted by allowing the horses
+and mules to trample it into a swamp of mud.  And the need for these
+precautions was soon shown, even during his stay, for as the weeks
+passed, even where the produce of the springs was plentiful, the men had
+to go farther and farther afield for a fresh supply.
+
+At another time he is falling foul of the bread which is served out to
+the officers and men.  He denounces it as quite unfit for human food.
+It was by no means first-rate at the time of its leaving the ovens at
+Constantinople, but by the time it arrived it was "one mass of blue
+mould;" yet it was served out regardless of its condition and at a very
+great risk to the health of the soldiers.  In fact, he notes that it was
+so bad that even animals refused it.  No wonder he made comparisons
+between this and the admirable supply served out to the French army.
+
+Thoughtful and wise too in these early days, Henty has much to say
+regarding sanitary matters, the necessity for care, and above all--no
+doubt this was forced upon him by their propinquity--he is eloquent
+about the hospitals; again, and this would scarcely have been expected
+from one so young, he points out the way in which the air is tainted by
+the dead animals which are allowed to lie unburied.
+
+He began his duties at Balaclava in April, and at the beginning of June
+he writes, as might have been expected, that he is sorry that his letter
+this time will have to be a short one, as he has for the last two days
+suffered from a severe attack of the prevailing epidemic, which has
+prevented him from going out at all.  Three days later he sends word
+that the great bombardment of Sebastopol has recommenced.  He too is
+better--well enough to show his interest in the great general hospital
+kept especially for the reception of the wounded, and to record that it
+is filling fast.  He has sympathetic words for the sufferers and their
+ghastly wounds from shot and shell splinter.  He talks from personal
+observation of the firmness and patience of the poor fellows over their
+wounds, and of the extraordinary coolness and sang-froid with which they
+suffer the dressing, even to the amputation of an arm above the elbow,
+both bones below being broken by a minie-ball.  The conduct of these
+humble heroes brings to mind the old naval story of the past, of the
+Jack whose leg had been taken off in action, and who resented the idea
+of being tied up while amputation was performed.  "No," he said; "only
+give me my pipe;" and he sat up and smoked till the surgeon had
+operated.  This in the days, too, when anaesthetics were not in use, and
+haemorrhage was checked by means of a bucket of tar.  Poor Jack sat up
+consciously and looked on!
+
+Henty's record is that when one soldier's operation was performed and he
+was about to be carried into the hospital ward, he exclaimed, "I'm all
+right," rose up and walked to his ward, lighted his pipe, and got into
+bed.  This is given as a single instance taken at random from among
+numbers of cases.
+
+In his last letter from the Crimea, dated June 18, 1855, he records that
+there had been a serious reverse to the allied arms.  He had by this
+time somewhat recovered from his severe fit of illness, but he had long
+been over-exerting himself.  The doctors delivered their ultimatum, and
+he became one of the many who, weakened by the terrible exposure, were
+invalided home.
+
+Unfortunately a harder fate attended his only brother, Fred, who left
+England with him when he obtained his appointment to the Purveyors'
+Department, for he was seized by the prevailing epidemic, cholera, and
+died at Scutari.
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF ITALY.
+
+The department which invalided George Henty and sent him home to recoup
+did not lose sight of the man who had earned such a good name in the
+Crimea, and as soon as he was reported convalescent it began to look
+about for a position in which his services would prove valuable.
+
+Here was a man who, in connection with his duties in the Purveying
+Department during the late war, had more or less distinguished himself
+by the acumen he had displayed and the reports he had sent in concerning
+the state of the temporary hospitals and the treatment of the sick and
+wounded.  There is not much favour shown over such work as his.  The
+fact was patent that in Henty the authorities had a man of keen
+observation who grasped at once what was wanted in time of war in
+connection with the movements of an army, one whose mission it was not
+to direct movements and utilise the forces who were, so to speak, being
+used in warfare, but who knew how to make himself a valuable aid to
+supplement doctor and surgeon, and to carry on their work of saving
+life--in short, the right man in the right place.
+
+So he was selected and sent out to Italy charged with the task of
+organising the hospitals of the Italian Legion.  The very wording of
+such an appointment as this is enough to take an ordinary person's
+breath away.  It might have been supposed that the department would have
+selected as organiser some mature professional man and M.D., with the
+greatest experience in such matters, ripened in the work and well known
+as a great authority; but to their credit they grasped the fact that
+Henty's experience was proved and real.  Book-lore and the passing of
+examinations were as nothing in comparison with what this young man of
+twenty-seven had learned in roughly extemporised hospital, tent, and hut
+amidst the inclemency of a foreign clime, in the face of the horrible
+scourge of an Eastern epidemic, where the wounded died off like flies,
+not from the wounds, which under healthy environment would rapidly have
+healed, but from that deadly enemy, pyaemia, or hospital gangrene.  It
+was this which proved so fatal after the otherwise healing touch of the
+skilful surgeon's knife--for these were the days prior to the
+discoveries made by Lister, which completely revolutionised the surgical
+art.
+
+While in Italy in 1859 in connection with the hospital work, Henty
+stored his mind with the results of his observations.  They were
+stirring times.  War was on the way; Sardinia's army, fresh from
+fleshing its sword in the Crimea, was eager for the fight that was
+partially to free Italy, and the name of Garibaldi was on every lip, for
+he and his Red Shirts were burning to attack the hated Austrian.  While
+finding an opportunity to be present at some of the engagements, Henty
+was busy preparing himself for writing history, and his brain was
+actively acquiring the language and habits of the people in a way that
+was an unconscious preparation for a future visit to the country in
+connection with the duties of a war correspondent.
+
+It was during this visit to Italy in 1859, and while performing his
+duties of inspector and organiser of the Italian hospitals, that Henty
+made his first acquaintance with Garibaldi and his enthusiastic army so
+bent upon freeing Italy from the yoke of Austria.  In a number of most
+interesting letters, picturesque and full of the observation and
+training that he was gathering for the construction of the series of
+adventurous stories now standing to his name, he details his meetings
+with the Red Shirts.  Bright, high-spirited boys they were in many
+cases, ever with the cry of liberty upon their lips, and only too ready
+to welcome and to fraternise with the daring, manly young fellow who
+thought as little as they of the personal risks which had to be faced,
+and who was subsequently to chronicle this portion of their history and
+the warlike deeds of their chief.
+
+After his return from the organising expedition with the Italian Legion,
+Henty was placed in charge of the Commissariat Departments at Belfast
+and Portsmouth, and now held the rank of captain.  A plodding life this
+for a military man with all the making in him of a strong, thoughtful
+soldier, one who would have become the strongest link in the vertebrae
+of a regiment, so to speak, the one nearest the brain.
+
+Fate, however did not guide him in that direction, but, as we know now,
+led him towards becoming the critic of armies instead of an actor in
+their ranks.
+
+Judging from Henty's nature and the steadiness and constancy of his life
+in the pursuit of the career which he chose, it could not have been
+lightly that he came to the decision that from the way in which he had
+entered the army there did not seem to be any future for him worthy of
+his attention, for the British army has always been marked by the way in
+which birth and money have been the stepping-stones to promotion.  Of
+course there have been exceptions, but the British soldier has never
+been famed for carrying a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack, and it
+is only of comparatively late years that the famous old anomaly of
+promotion by purchase has died out.
+
+Certainly Henty entered the army as a university man and a gentleman,
+but he must have begun to feel, taught by experience, that he had gone
+in by the wrong door, the one which led in an administrative direction
+and not to the executive with a future of command.
+
+During Henty's stay in Ireland he had a very unpleasant experience with
+a rough in Dublin, or rather, to be accurate, a rough in Dublin had a
+very unpleasant experience with Henty.  Somehow or other, while out
+walking with his young wife, for he was now married, a brutal fellow
+offered some insult to Mrs Henty, in the purest ignorance of the kind
+of man whose anger he had roused.  One says roused, for in ordinary life
+Henty was one of the calmest and quietest of men; but he had plenty of
+chivalry in his composition, and moreover, as has been shown, he had had
+the education and training of an athlete, leavened with the instructions
+of the North-country trainer who taught him the jiu-jitsu of his day as
+practised by a Newcastle man.  What followed was very brief, for there
+was a quick, short struggle, and the Dublin Pat--a city blackguard, and
+no carrier of a stick--was sent flying over Henty's head, _hors de
+combat_, much surprised at the strength and skill of such a man as he
+had possibly never encountered before in his life.
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+THE ITALIAN WAR.
+
+Henty proved early the excellence of his capabilities, and that he was a
+man who would be all that was required for the preservation of men's
+lives; but such as he meet with scant encouragement, and at last, as
+said above, he made up his mind to try in a fresh direction, and
+resigned his commission.
+
+Led no doubt by his leanings, and taught by old experience in connection
+with his father's enterprises in coal-mining, he made a fresh start in
+life in mining engineering, and was for some time in Wales, where his
+knowledge of mining, and natural firmness and aptitude as a leader and
+trained controller of bodies of men, made him a valuable agent for the
+adventurous companies who are ready to open up new ground.  His
+operations were so successful that after a time he entered into
+engagements which resulted in his proceeding to the Island of Sardinia.
+Here there was much untried ground to invite the speculation of the
+enterprising and adventurous; for it is a country rich in minerals,
+several of them being so-called precious stones, and there seemed
+excellent promise of profit.  A good deal of speculative research was at
+one time on the way, and here, following his work in Wales, Henty spent
+some busy years, not, though, without finding the value of his early
+athletic education, for the lower orders were not too well disposed to
+the young English manager under whom they worked.
+
+Returning to England early in the sixties, he once more turned his
+attention to his pen, having proved, while in the Crimea, his ability
+for writing quick and observant descriptive copy, specimens of which
+were extant in the columns of the _Morning Advertiser_, and of which he
+had examples pasted up and preserved.  Moreover, when he began to make
+application for work, he had the satisfaction of finding that his
+articles had already excited notice in the literary world.  This helped
+him to obtain an engagement, somewhere in 1865, as special correspondent
+of the _Standard_, and he carried out his duties so successfully that he
+became a standard of the _Standard_, and was sent out in 1866 as one of
+the special correspondents of that paper to Italy, to report upon the
+proceedings of the Italian armies which had then united in the
+operations against the Austrian forces.
+
+Italy was to some extent familiar hunting-ground for Henty, inasmuch as
+at the time when he went to undertake the task of reorganising the
+hospitals of the Italian Legion he had seen a good deal of the country,
+picked up much of the language, and had become acquainted with Garibaldi
+and his followers when, as said before, they were engaged in the
+encounters which resulted in partially freeing Italy from the Austrian
+yoke.
+
+It was now that his early experience of the country and the mastery he
+had obtained over the Italian language stood him in good stead, while,
+as a matter of course, his experience and general knowledge of the
+country made him an ideal chronicler of the movements of the campaign.
+
+Plunged, as it were, right in the midst of the troubles, he seems to
+have been here, there, and everywhere, and by some means or another he
+was always on the spot whenever anything exciting was on the way.  Now
+he was at sea, now with the Garibaldians scouting on the flanks of the
+Austrian army, now making journeys by Vetturinos across the mountains,
+to turn up somewhere along with the forces of the king, and always ready
+to bring a critical eye to bear--the eye of a soldier--in comparing the
+three forces, the volunteer Garibaldians, the Italian regulars, and the
+Austrians.  The last mentioned seemed to him to be, in their drill,
+unquestionably superior to the Italians, displaying a strong _esprit de
+corps_, rigid obedience to their officers, and an amount of German
+impassibility far more adapted to make them bear unmoved the hardships
+and discouragements of long struggles and reverses than the enthusiasm
+of the Italians--an enthusiasm which was manifested in a perfect furore
+of delight throughout Italy on the news of the declaration of war,
+tidings reaching Henty from every city, of illuminations, of draping
+with flags, and other celebrations.
+
+"Even Naples," he says, "which has been far behind the rest of Italy in
+her ardour for the cause, began to rejoice at the termination of the
+long delay;" but he declares there was no doubt that the reactionary
+party had been very hard at work there, with the result that a number of
+turbulent spirits had been sent away from among the volunteers, the
+excesses which they had committed threatening to bring the Garibaldians
+into disrepute.
+
+He now fully proved his ability for the task he had undertaken.  Writing
+home as soon as he had crossed Switzerland early in June a long series
+of most interesting letters, he commenced with his first meeting with
+Garibaldi and his followers at Como, and continued throughout the war
+until victory crowned the efforts of the united armies of Italy and the
+patriots, and ended (as in a culminating outburst of pyrotechnic
+display) with the triumphant spectacles at Venice after the Austrians
+were finally expelled.
+
+Later, Henty gave permanency to his ephemeral contributions to the
+journal upon which he was engaged; but in these early days he was a
+comparatively unknown man, with nothing to commend him to the notice of
+an enterprising publisher, and the makings of a most interesting
+descriptive work sparkled for a few hours in the pages of the big
+contemporary newspaper and then died out, with the ashes only left,
+hidden, save to searchers in the files preserved at the newspaper office
+and in the British Museum.  For Henty, wanting time and opportunity,
+never reproduced these letters in their entirety, though they remained
+in the journalistic print and _in petto_, ready for use, as in a kind of
+brain mine when, as time rolled on, his adventures in story-land began
+to achieve success and excite demand.  Then they doubtless supplied
+pabulum for such tales as _Jack Archer_, _The Cat of Bubastes_, and _The
+Lion of Saint Mark_, stories quite remarkable for the truth of their
+local colour.  The last named so influenced a young American lad on a
+visit to England, that he prevailed upon his father to take him to see
+Henty, while afterwards, on being taken to Venice, he wrote a clever,
+naive letter, which is quoted elsewhere, to the author of his choice,
+telling him of his delight in coming to Europe and seeing for himself
+the Venice of to-day, where he recognised the very places that Henty had
+so truthfully described.
+
+It is a pity that these letters were not reprinted in book form; but
+long before an opportunity could have served, the brave struggles of the
+Italians to free themselves from the Austrian yoke, and the fame of
+Garibaldi, had grown stale as popular subjects for the general reader,
+and the question with the publisher, "would a book upon this subject
+sell?" being only answerable in the negative, nothing was done.  In
+fact, in those days, save in one instance, there was no demand for the
+reprinting of a journalist's contributions to a daily paper.  This
+particular instance seemed to stand out at once as the prerogative of
+one man alone, he who has only just gone to his well-earned and honoured
+rest, and whose contributions to the _Times_, _My Diary in India_, that
+vivid narrative of the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, became a
+classic.
+
+It was like old times to Henty, after crossing Switzerland, to find
+himself at Como awaiting the arrival of Garibaldi, who was reported to
+be on his way.  A portion of the Garibaldian army was already there, and
+in a short time, to his great satisfaction, Henty found that their chief
+was hourly expected to take command of the volunteers.
+
+His information proved to be true, and in the midst of tremendous
+enthusiasm he found the volunteers drawn up in double line reaching
+through the town, flags waving, the people shouting, and everyone
+working himself into a fever of heat.
+
+As the chief approached, the people seemed to have gone out of their
+minds.  Caps were thrown up recklessly, at the risk of never being
+recovered, and the people literally roared as the general, looking in
+good health, though older and greyer than when Henty last saw him in
+1859, rode along the ranks of the seven thousand or so of volunteers
+that he was about to review and passed on, waving his hand in reply to
+the cheering, as if thoroughly appreciating the greeting, much as he did
+during his reception in London.
+
+The town seemed afterwards to be swarming with his soldiers.  It
+appeared as if two out of every three persons in the streets upon close
+examination proved to be Garibaldians--close examination was necessary,
+for it needed research to make sure that they were volunteers,
+consequent upon the fact that in many cases anything in the shape of
+uniforms was wanting.
+
+As a rule their uniform, he points out, should have been the familiar
+red shirt, belt, and dark-grey trousers with red stripe, surmounted by
+red caps, with green bands and straight peaks.  In one of his early
+letters at this stage Henty describes the incongruous nature of the
+men's dress.  Perhaps one-fourth would have the caps; another fourth
+would look like the ancient Phrygians or the French fishermen.  Perhaps
+one-third would have the red shirts; possibly nearly half, the
+regulation trousers; and where uniform was wanting they made up their
+dress with articles of their usual wear--wide-awakes, hats, caps of
+every shape, jackets, coats black and coloured.  Some were dressed like
+gentlemen, some like members of the extreme lower order, altogether
+looking such an unsatisfactory motley group as that which old Sir John
+Falstaff declared he would not march with through Coventry.
+
+But in spite of this there seemed to be the material for a dashing army
+amongst these men.  They promised to make the finest of recruits, though
+certainly the observant eyes of Henty told him that many of them were
+far too young to stand the fatigue that they would be called upon to
+suffer during the war, a number of them being mere boys, not looking
+above fifteen.  But Garibaldi was said to be partial to youngsters, and
+he liked the activity of the boys, who, he declared, fought as well as
+men.
+
+On the whole, according to Henty's showing, Garibaldi's volunteer troops
+were very much the same as flocked to our best volunteer regiments in
+London during the early days.  In short, the enthusiasm of the
+Garibaldians was contagious, and Henty wrote of them with a running pen;
+but his enthusiasm was leavened with the common sense and coolness of
+the well-drilled organising young soldier, who made no scruple while
+admiring the Garibaldians' pluck, self-denial, and determination to oust
+the hated Austrian, to point out their shortcomings as an army and their
+inability to prove themselves much more than a guerrilla band.
+
+They were an army of irregulars, of course, but with a strong adhesion
+based upon enthusiastic patriotism.  With such an army as this it may be
+supposed that the followers of their camp sent order and discipline to
+the winds, and the war correspondent had to thank once more that portion
+of his athletic education that had made him what he was.  To use his own
+words, out there in Italy he "thanked his stars" that his youthful
+experience had made him a pretty good man with his hands.  He found
+himself in his avocations amongst a scum of Italian roughs ready to play
+the European Ishmaelite, with their hands against every man--hands that
+in any encounter grasped the knife-like stiletto, ready, the moment
+there was any resistance to their marauding, to stab mercilessly Italian
+patriot or believer in the Austrian yoke, friend or foe, or merely an
+English spectator if he stood in their way.  But to their cost in
+different encounters these gentry learned that the young correspondent
+was no common man, for Henty, in recording his experience with the
+pugnacious Garibaldian camp-followers, says calmly and in the most naive
+manner, and moreover so simply that there is not even a suggestion of
+boastfulness or brag: "I learned from experiment that if necessary I
+could deal with about four of them at once; and they were the sort of
+gentry who would make no bones about getting one down and stabbing one
+if they got the chance."  It was no Falstaff who spoke these words, for
+they were the utterances of a perfectly sincere, modest Englishman,
+albeit rather proud, after such a childhood, of his robust physique and
+of the way in which he could use his fists or prove how skilfully he
+could deal with an attacking foe and hurl him headlong, much in the same
+sort of way as a North-country wrestler might dispose of some malicious
+monkey or any wasp-like enemy of pitiful physique--comparatively
+helpless unless he could use his sting.
+
+Henty took all such matters as these quite as a matter of course.  He
+felt, as he wrote, that a war correspondent to do his duty must accept
+all kinds of risks in his search for interesting material to form the
+basis of his letters to his journal.  But incidentally we learn about
+semi-starvation, the scarcity of shelter, the rumours of the old dire
+enemy, cholera, whose name was so strongly associated with past
+adventures in the Crimea, risks from shell and shot, and ugly dangers
+too from those who should have been friends.
+
+For there is one word--spy--that always stands out as a terror, and it
+was during this campaign that in his eagerness to obtain information he
+approached so closely to the lines that he was arrested as such by one
+of the sentries and passed on from pillar to post among the ignorant
+soldiery.
+
+In this case he had started with a friend for an investigating drive in
+the neighbourhood of Peschiera, at a time when encounters had been
+taking place between the Italian army and the Austrians.  Upon reaching
+a spot where a good view of the frowning earth-works with their tiers of
+cannon could be obtained, they left the carriage, and climbed a hill or
+two, when they were attracted by the sound of firing, and hurrying on
+they came to a spot where some of the peasants were watching what was
+going on across a river.  Upon reaching the little group they found out
+that it was not a skirmish, but that the Austrians were engaged in a
+sort of review on the ground where there had been a battle a few days
+before.
+
+Henty felt that he was in luck, for he found that the peasants had been
+witnesses of the battle from that very position and were eager to point
+out what had taken place, the men giving a vivid description of the
+horrors they had witnessed and the slaughter that had taken place.
+
+Having obtained sufficient from one of the speakers to form an
+interesting letter, he and his friend returned to their carriage and
+told the driver to go back.  Henty had picked up a good deal of Italian,
+but not sufficient to make himself thoroughly understood by the driver,
+and, as is often the case, a foreigner of the lower orders failed to
+grasp that which a cultivated person would comprehend at once.  The
+consequence was that the man drove on instead of returning, and his
+fares did not find out the mistake till they caught sight of a couple of
+pickets belonging to the Guides, the finest body of cavalry in the
+Italian service.  Seeing that they were on the wrong track, Henty
+stopped the driver, questioned him, and then, fully understanding the
+mistake, told him to drive back at once.  But the pickets had seen them,
+and came cantering up.  Explanations were made, but the Guides were not
+satisfied.  They had noticed the coming of the carriage, and had become
+aware of what to them was a very suspicious act.  The occupants were
+strangers, and had been making use of a telescope, which from their
+point of view was a spyglass--that is to say, an instrument that was
+used by a spy--while they might have come from the Austrian side before
+ascending the hill.  This was exceedingly condemnatory in the eyes of a
+couple of fairly intelligent men, but they treated them politely enough
+when they explained matters and produced their passports.
+
+A very unpleasant _contretemps_, however, began to develop when the
+pickets said the passports might be quite correct, but they did not feel
+justified in releasing the two foreign strangers, who might be, as they
+said, Englishmen, but who were in all probability Austrians.  So they
+must be taken to their officer, who was about a mile farther on.
+
+It was a case of only two to two, and Henty's blood began to grow hot at
+the opposition.  He was on the point of showing his resentment, but
+wiser counsels prevailed; after all, it was two well-mounted and
+well-armed soldiers of the flower of the Italian cavalry against a
+couple of civilians, and, feeling that this was one of the occasions
+when discretion is the better part of valour, especially as a seat in a
+carriage was a post of disadvantage when opposed to a swordsman in a
+saddle, he swallowed his wrath and told the driver to go in the
+direction indicated by his captors.  For the first time in his life he
+realised what it was to be a prisoner with a mounted guard.
+
+The officer, who proved to be a sergeant, received them with Italian
+politeness, listened to their explanations, and at the end pointed out
+that the movements of the carriage, which might have come from an
+entirely different direction from that which they asserted, and the use
+of the telescope, looked so suspicious in the face of the nearness of
+the enemy, that he must make them accompany him to his captain about a
+couple of miles away.
+
+Matters were beginning to grow dramatic, and the feeling of uneasiness
+increased, for as a war correspondent no one could have realised more
+readily than Henty that he was undoubtedly looked upon as a spy, and one
+whom the sergeant felt he must in no wise suffer to escape, for he and
+his companion were now being escorted by a guard of four of the Guides.
+
+There was nothing for it, however, but to put a good face upon the
+matter and keep perfectly cool, though, to say the least of it, affairs
+were growing very unpleasant.  It was an accident the consequences of
+which might be very ugly indeed, and this appealed very strongly to his
+active imagination.  When he set off from the offices of the _Standard_
+upon his letter-writing mission, no thought of ever being arrested and
+possibly sentenced as a spy had ever entered into his calculations.
+
+Henty gives the merest skeleton of his adventure, but as a man who was
+in the habit of writing adventures and who possessed the active
+imaginative brain previously alluded to, it stands to reason that in the
+circumstances he must have thought out what he would have set down if he
+had been writing an account of the treatment likely to be meted out to
+an enemy's spy, especially to a hated Austrian, by the hot-blooded
+patriotic Italians.
+
+Some distance farther on in the warlike district, Henty and his
+companion were escorted to a small village occupied by about a hundred
+of the Guides and about twice as many Bersaglieri.  Here they were in
+the presence of superior officers, before whom they were brought, and to
+whom they again explained and produced their passports, and in addition
+Henty brought out a letter of recommendation to the officers of the
+Italian army, with which he had been furnished before starting on his
+journey by the kindness of the Italian ambassador in London.
+
+Here there was another example of the refined Italian politeness, and
+Henty must have felt a strange resentment against this extreme civility,
+so suggestive of the treatment that was being meted out to a man who was
+being adjudged before an ultimate condemnation, for the officers
+declared that the explanations were no doubt perfectly correct, but that
+in the circumstances it was their duty to forward the two prisoners to
+their general.  The general was about half a dozen miles away, while, as
+unfortunately one of their men had been wounded, they must ask the
+strangers to put their carriage at the service of the poor fellow, who
+was suffering terribly from the jolting of the bullock-cart in which he
+lay with five other wounded men, lesser sufferers.
+
+Accordingly Henty and his friend had to take their places on the
+bullock-cart with five wounded Austrian prisoners, and the procession
+started.  A circumstance that was extremely ominous was that they were
+preceded by another cart in which was another prisoner.  This man was a
+spy about whom there was not the slightest doubt, for he had been caught
+in the reprehensible act, and his fate would most probably be to have an
+extremely short shrift and be shot in the morning.  These were facts
+that impressed themselves very painfully upon the imagination of the
+young war correspondent, who must have felt that going before the
+general in such extremely bad company was almost enough to seal his
+fate, and he felt the more bitter from the simple and natural fact that
+it would be most likely impossible for him to send a final letter to the
+_Standard_ to record that his unfortunate engagement was at an end.
+
+The decision having been made as well as the change, matters looked
+worse and worse, for the procession was now guarded by a line of about
+thirty cavalry.  In front and rear marched a company of the Italian
+foot, while the officers proceeded cautiously, as the road on their side
+ran close to the Mincio, across which the Austrians might at any moment
+make a sortie.
+
+Then the proceedings grew still more dramatic and depressing, for
+several military camps were passed, out of which the men came running to
+look at the prisoners, and on hearing from the escort that one of the
+party was a spy, they began to make remarks that were the reverse of
+pleasant.  All the same the young captain in command of the Guides was
+particularly civil to Henty, and did all he could to make his position
+as little unpleasant as possible, chatting freely about the last
+engagement and the part his squadron had taken in the fight.  But he was
+much taken up in looking after his troops, and his English prisoners had
+plenty of time for meditation as to their future prospects, and the
+outlook was not reassuring.
+
+At last head-quarters were reached, and after a short detention the
+prisoners were taken before the General, Henty preserving all the time
+the calm, firm appearance that he had maintained from the first; and in
+all probability it was his quiet confidence that saved his life.
+
+The General examined the passports and the Italian ambassador's letter
+of recommendation, and at length in the most polite way set them at
+liberty, but in a manner that suggested that Henty must grasp the fact
+that in a state of war, if he went too close to the scene of action,
+such incidents were bound to occur.
+
+Their carriage was brought round, and in better spirits they started
+back.  At the first town they reached they found the place was full of
+troops.  Hungry and hopeful of a pleasant meal, they tried, but in vain,
+at the different hostelries to get something to eat, though finally, as
+a favour, they obtained a piece of bread, the last in the house, and
+some wine.  They again started, but when they reached another town their
+tired horses gave in, and they had to get out and walk.
+
+It was now nearly eleven o'clock at night, and one may imagine the weary
+tramp they had before they reached the Garibaldian pickets.  There they
+were again stopped and were told that without the password they could
+not enter the town, but must spend the night in their carriage.
+
+More arguments, more explanations, but all proved in vain, and there was
+a wretched prospect of the rest of the night being passed in misery; but
+Fate seemed at last to have ceased to persecute them, for by good
+fortune the officer of the night approached making his rounds, and after
+some parley allowed them to accompany him back to the town.  Here,
+however, more trouble awaited them, for on reaching their hotel at
+midnight, utterly famished, and calling for supper, it was to find that
+the Garibaldians had consumed everything.  All they could obtain was a
+cup of coffee, without milk, and they retired to rest, Henty with the
+feeling upon him that he had had a very narrow escape from being either
+shot or hanged.
+
+A culminating disaster, by the way, connected with the miserable march
+to the presence of the general, who was to decide whether or not the war
+correspondent and his companion were to be treated as spies, was the
+disappearance of the valuable telescope with which Henty had come
+provided for making observations in connection with the various
+engagements between the Italian and the Austrian forces.  It was in the
+carriage when it had to be given up for the use of the wounded, and, as
+the owner very mildly puts it, "someone took a fancy" to his glass, and
+he never saw it again, though he met with plenty of occasions when he
+had bitter cause to regret its loss.
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+THE SEARCH FOR AN ARMY AND A MEAL.
+
+In his early days as war correspondent everything was fresh and bright,
+and his letters display the keenness of his observation, especially in
+the way in which he compares, with a soldier's eye, the uniforms and
+accoutrements of the Italian soldier with those of the troops at home.
+The special war dress, adapted to the season (June), was of coarse brown
+holland or canvas, with a loose blue-grey greatcoat, and belt at the
+waist outside; the cavalry, it being summer time, wore red caps with
+tassels in place of helmets; the artillery had short jackets and canvas
+trousers.  Everything seemed useful and serviceable.  But now the critic
+comes in, for he writes: "I do not so much like the appearance of the
+army when on the march."  The rate of march was about one-fourth quicker
+than that of our own soldiers, and to keep up this swift pace the men
+seemed to be too heavily laden, the greatcoats too hot and cumbrous, and
+the knapsacks of calf-skin too heavy.  He begins to calculate what a
+slaughter there must have been of calves to furnish skins of exactly the
+same shade of brown for the four hundred thousand infantry of the
+Italian army.
+
+Then, to add to their load, the men's water-bottles, which were
+barrel-shaped, were rather larger than those of the British soldier, and
+each man also carried a canteen about the same size.  They had a blue
+haversack well filled, and to crown all, at the top of the knapsack each
+man bore the canvas and sticks which form a little tent under which the
+Sardinian soldier sleeps during a campaign.
+
+Of course he bore also his rifle, bayonet or sword, and ammunition,
+which increased the weight he had to carry; but the tent added immensely
+to his comfort, for whereas the British soldier has to pass the night as
+best he can, perhaps in heavy rain on wet ground, to wake cold, wet
+through, and unrefreshed, with the seeds of rheumatism in his limbs, the
+Italian pitches his _tent d'abri_ and sleeps in comparative comfort.
+During the campaign in the Crimea Henty often had occasion to note the
+magical way in which the Sardinian camp sprang up.  The little tents
+were pitched, the cooking-places established, arbours were made of
+boughs of trees for the officers' mess-tents, and everything assumed a
+general air of cheerfulness which contrasted favourably with the camps
+of the English and of the French.
+
+In these early days in Italy difficulties were many, and he laughingly
+commences one letter by stating that his doings ought to be headed "The
+Adventures of a War Correspondent in Search of an Army," for though
+battalions, regiments, brigades, and even small armies were on the move,
+the difficulty of getting upon their track was supreme.  He writes on
+one occasion: "We drove through the village" (he was with a companion)
+"down to the water-side."  Here lay the Po, a wide, deep river, as broad
+as the Thames.  There was no bridge of boats.  How, then, had the
+Italians crossed?  There was a sentry who looked at them peculiarly, and
+who when asked if they could pass over to the other side shook his head.
+They explained that they wished to join the camp, where they had
+friends, but they could obtain no information.  Meanwhile their presence
+had been attracting attention, and it was evident that they took Henty's
+companion, who was wearing a red shirt, for one of Garibaldi's
+lieutenants in disguise.  The people were appealed to for information as
+to whether the Italian army had crossed there, and at last they managed
+to gain the information that fifty thousand soldiers had crossed in the
+night.  But that was all the news to be gleaned.
+
+At last, however, they got upon the track of the army and well amidst
+the fighting that was going on, and he writes to his paper that he
+proposes during the next few days to give full accounts of the desperate
+encounters between the Sardinian army, aided by the Garibaldians, and
+the Austrians, "unless a bullet should put a period to my writing."
+
+But, as stated in another place, where Henty deals with the effect
+produced upon an observer by shells and the amount of mischief they do
+in the open, a man who has his business to think of in connection with
+reporting the movements of an army has not time to think of the risks he
+runs, and Henty troubled himself but little concerning the destiny of a
+stray bullet.  The old proverb says that every bullet has its billet,
+the falsity of which statement has been often enough proved in modern
+warfare by statisticians comparing the numbers of killed and wounded
+with those of the ball cartridges expended during some fight, unless,
+indeed, the word billet is taken to include the place where every
+missile falls.  In fact, when dealing with the firing at Magdala, where
+the British infantry made use of the breech-loading rifle for the first
+time, Henty criticised severely the waste of cartridges by the men, who,
+armed with the new easily-loaded weapon, scattered the bullets, without
+stopping to aim, at a rate calculated to leave them without cartridges
+in a very short space of time.
+
+Speaking as a practised officer of the Commissariat Department, his
+attention was much more drawn to the difficulties in connection with the
+task of obtaining enough to eat.  As regards shelter and sleep, he was
+ready enough to make shift with anything that offered of the former, and
+many a time the open sky was his cover, and a blanket or waterproof
+sheet his only protection from the rain.
+
+He fared worst, save in the way of sociability, when following in the
+track of those gallant, thoughtless Sons of Freedom, the Garibaldians.
+On one occasion he and a companion made their way to one of the many
+battlefields by the side of one of the Italian lakes, where the ground
+that had been defended by the Garibaldians was covered with scattered
+trees.  Beyond these the hillside was bare, but dotted with huge
+boulders of stone, which had been taken advantage of by the Austrian
+Tyrolese riflemen, and where they sheltered themselves to pick off the
+young patriots.
+
+Down below, the road ran by the shore of the lake, and here the Austrian
+column had done their best to cut off the Garibaldians.  On passing
+through this debatable ground the road rose considerably, and it became
+necessary for the two correspondents to practise care lest they should
+be mistaken for enemies, for by the side of the road were numbers of the
+shelter arbours run up by the Garibaldians, and these were occupied, for
+the sake of the shelter they afforded from the burning sun.
+
+Here Henty describes the beauty of the scene across the valley at the
+head of the beautiful lake.  Full in view were two villages, occupied,
+the one by the followers of the great Italian patriot, the other by the
+Austrians.  The mountain road had been guarded on one side by a low
+parapet wall to save it from the rushing storm waters that swept down
+from above after heavy rains, and here in two places ominous
+preparations had been made in readiness to check any advance on the part
+of the Austrians, the parapet being cleared away to form embrasures, out
+of which grinned the muzzles of the field-pieces, ready to belch forth
+their deadly shower of grape and round shot.  Here, too, was a deep
+ravine coming down at right angles to the road, offering excellent
+ground for a tactician to place his forces to advantage and deal out
+destruction upon advancing troops.
+
+Along the side of the ravine ran the road to the Italian village, for
+which the two correspondents were making, in the hopes of obtaining food
+and shelter.  As they passed on they found parties of Garibaldians
+encamped along the whole length of the road, and their sentries were
+ready to stop farther advance and demand their business and their
+passes.  These, however, were found to be _en regle_, and they were
+allowed to continue their journey to the village, which they soon found
+was occupied by portions of a couple of regiments and a battalion of
+Bersaglieri, by far the finest and most reliable portion of Garibaldi's
+forces.
+
+Henty and his friend, warned by previous experience, had taken the
+precaution to carry supplies with them, the said supplies being of the
+simplest description, a substance, in fact, which is always welcome to a
+hungry man, made delicious by the addition of the proverbial sauce.  In
+other words, they carried in their satchels portions of the homely
+cake-bread of the country, upon which they depended, feeling no anxiety
+about obtaining their share of the abundant spring water of the
+district.
+
+Thus provided, they had but one trouble, and that was as regarded
+lodgings.  They went at once to the only inn of the village, to find it
+closed.  This was discouraging, and they passed on, to find that almost
+all the shops of the little place were also closed.  Checked by this,
+they made for a group of the Bersaglieri, who seemed to be well supplied
+with their little thin cigars, the pale-blue threads of smoke from which
+curled lightly out in the evening sunshine.
+
+The deeply-bronzed soldiery politely exchanged salutes as the travellers
+questioned them about the prospect of finding a resting-place for the
+night, the answer to which was: "Have you any bread?"
+
+"Yes," replied Henty.  "Well, then," said a Garibaldian, with a smile
+which showed his white teeth, "you may think yourselves very lucky,
+signori, for we have had none to-day, and though we have had notice that
+some will come in this afternoon, it is more likely that it will not."
+
+This was disconcerting; but feeling that they could travel no farther
+they determined to persevere, in the hope that something might turn up;
+and if matters did prove to be at the worst they still had their open
+carriage, which would, at all events, with its cushions make sleep more
+easy, and keep them off the ground.
+
+They had given a lift to one of the Garibaldians, and though amused by
+their predicament, he laughingly tried to assist them by suggesting that
+they should go on, and stop and knock at every door until they found
+someone who would give them a lodging.  The notion seemed to be good,
+and to carry out the Italian's suggestion they drew up at the
+best-looking house they could see, and knocked boldly at the door.
+
+This was opened by an elderly priest, who raised his eyebrows in wonder,
+and glanced at the carriage and its occupants, and then at the
+Garibaldian who was acting as their guide, when an eager conversation
+ensued in the soft fluent Italian tongue.  The guide, speaking with
+energy, explained with enthusiasm that those whom he had brought to
+claim the priest's hospitality were two English gentlemen, whose hearts
+were in the Italian cause, and who, much interested, had come out on
+purpose to see the war; they were weary with their long journey and
+sought a refuge for the night--a lodging for which they were perfectly
+ready to pay with the customary generosity of their nation.
+
+It was all very flowery, but most effective, for the priest smiled and
+bowed and bade them enter, declaring his readiness to place a room at
+their service, but shrugging his shoulders as he told with much
+gesticulation how he lamented that owing to the exactions of the
+Austrians, who had been there only the week before, and many of whom had
+been quartered in the house, he had nothing in the way of food to offer
+them; however, anything they could procure his servants would cook.
+
+Perhaps it was due to perseverance having been rewarded and to having
+gained a lodging that, hungry though they were, they began to contemn
+their supply of bread.  Surely, they thought, in a village like this it
+should not be impossible to find something more tasty, now that fate had
+provided them with a cook.  So they sallied out, and leaving the more
+frequented streets, which swarmed with the hungry volunteers, they
+turned down first one lane and then another with no result.  At length
+Henty, tired by his journey, was beginning to feel a return of the
+despondency which attacks a hungry man, when he stopped short, catching
+his companion by the arm and holding up his hand, for from a small house
+on one side of the lane he heard a familiar suggestive sound, which is
+precisely the same in the boot of Italy as it is in some rustic English
+county.  It was the welcome cluck of fowls, shut up somewhere behind
+bars for safety.  This promised a prize if negotiation were carried to a
+successful issue, and hands involuntarily plunged into pockets, to be
+followed by the faint and smothered chink of coin.  Money should be able
+to purchase poultry at some price or other, even in times of war; if
+not, as it was a time of war, and as the two young Englishmen were upon
+a foraging expedition in a foreign country, why should they not--
+
+Dark thoughts suggested themselves, and visions of a bright fire and a
+browning chicken began to dawn and sharpen the rising appetite, but they
+were dissipated at once by the opening of the door, at which they had
+loudly knocked.  An animated parley commenced with the occupant of the
+cottage, the said parley ending at last in the correspondents becoming
+the masters of a couple of fowls, whose united ages, by the way, they
+found, when they came to eat them, must have been a long way on towards
+the age of one of themselves.
+
+But all the same they felt satisfied in their ravenous condition at
+having obtained even these world-worn birds at only about five times
+their proper price, especially as on returning towards the priest's
+house they again encountered the friendly Garibaldians, who had been
+less fortunate than themselves.
+
+There was still another drawback, that which comes to a hungry man even
+though he has obtained a whole fowl to himself, and this was the waiting
+while it was cooked.  While this was in process Henty had to try and
+curb his impatience by examining the beauty of the scenery.  But at last
+the repast was ready, and their friend the priest made them up beds, on
+which they passed the night in a far more luxurious manner than they had
+anticipated.
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+THE BATTLE OF LISSA.
+
+There were times when Henty had to take shelter from the Austrian fire,
+and others when he found himself exposed to that of the friendly army,
+whose skirmishers, made plainly visible by their scarlet shirts, began
+to send up little puffs of smoke from behind hedges and amongst trees,
+while crack! crack! the reports of the rifles rang out and echoed down
+the ravines, to die away amongst the distant hills.
+
+Then, too, one of his narrow escapes happened when he was on his way to
+Brescia.  He had some difficulty in getting there, for every vehicle was
+requisitioned for the public service, and he thought himself extremely
+lucky in being able to get his luggage sent on, leaving him free to
+undertake the walk of some five-and-twenty miles.  This was no serious
+undertaking to a well-shod athlete, being only one-fifth more than a
+tramp across our own Dartmoor, but with this difference, that the home
+walk would be through the crisp bracing air some fifteen hundred feet
+above the sea, while here the labour was very heavy, the heat of the
+Italian July sun being tremendous.
+
+However, just when he had proceeded half-way on his journey, and was
+suffering severely from the torrid air, which felt too hot to breathe,
+he, little anticipating what was to prove the outcome, congratulated
+himself upon what he looked upon as a stroke of luck, for, hearing
+wheels behind, he drew up by the side of the road, to stand panting and
+wiping his streaming brow, signing to the military driver of a
+government cart.  This man willingly agreed to give him a lift as his
+destination was the same, and explained that he was going to fetch a
+load of ice for the benefit of the wounded.
+
+It was rough travelling, but the change from the labour of tramping the
+road, which seemed to return the heat of the sun with fivefold power,
+was delightful, and the rattle and bumping of the clumsy cart by
+contrast became almost an exquisite pleasure.
+
+In this way five more miles were added to those which he had walked, and
+in describing the adventure which followed, Henty naively remarks that
+doubtless he should have ridden happily the whole distance into Brescia
+had not the ill-groomed, blind mare which drew the cart, suddenly
+conceived that she was being ill-treated by the addition of this
+stranger to her load.  She accordingly stopped short and began lashing
+out most viciously, nearly breaking the arm of the soldier who was
+driving, and then dashed off at full speed.  Seeing that she was blind,
+her course was not a very long one, and before they had gone far down
+the mountain road which gradually grew more and more shelf-like, the
+mare's flight became wildly erratic, until she checked herself most
+painfully by running her head against the rocks which rose up on their
+right.  After holding his breath for some time Henty relieved his
+overburdened chest in a deep sigh, for he had been debating in those
+brief minutes whether he should not risk everything and trust to his
+agility to spring out.  He now, however, began to breathe freely, and,
+dropping down from the cart into the road, he stared about him at his
+position, and realised how very near he had been to bringing his
+correspondent's task to a sudden end.  Had the mare in her blindness
+turned to the left instead of the right, horse, cart, and its occupants
+would have gone headlong over the low protecting parapet at the side,
+deep down a stony precipice, with only one result.
+
+In his matter-of-fact way Henty goes on to say: "This was not a thing to
+be tried twice, and I once more set off to walk, and in a mile came to a
+village, where by great luck I found a vehicle which brought me into
+Brescia in safety."
+
+In his eagerness to obtain the fullest information about the military
+proceedings between the opposing armies, Henty never spared himself.
+Wherever there was an engagement pending, or taking place, if it were in
+the slightest degree possible he would be there, running all risks, and
+at any cost; so that when the news came of the possibility of there
+being a naval engagement between the Italian and Austrian fleets, it was
+only natural that with his sailor-like proclivities Henty should wish to
+be present.
+
+As we have seen, he was well provided with introductions and credentials
+which facilitated his being with the army; but these hardly seemed
+likely to benefit him much with the navy.  However, he was not the man
+to be daunted by difficulties.  If a naval fight did take place, it was
+bound to be one of special interest, for though for years past the
+old-fashioned wooden walls and two- and three-deckers of this and other
+countries had been gradually changing into armour-clads, this was to be
+the first occasion when an encounter would take place between the
+ponderous monsters.  It was an event which would prove, not only to
+scientists but to their captains and crews, how they would behave.
+
+The question that arose, therefore, was how the representative of the
+_Standard_ could get on board one of the vessels.  Doubting what
+reception would be given to one who announced himself as a war
+correspondent, Henty proceeded, sailor-like, upon another tack.  After
+the training he had gone through and the work he had done, he considered
+himself justified in posing as an engineer eager to grasp exactly what
+would take place under fire, and in this character, as a scientific man,
+the difficulty was solved, for he was allowed to be present at the naval
+battle which took place in the Mediterranean off Lissa, the principal
+island of Dalmatia, some forty miles from the mainland, on the 20th of
+July, 1866.
+
+It was no trivial affair, but one as worthy of notice as any of the
+great battles of history, for the Italian fleet which set sail consisted
+of twelve iron-clads and eight wooden frigates, with their attendant gun
+and despatch boats.
+
+The island was strongly fortified by the Austrians, and the battle began
+with an attack upon the forts, which responded fiercely, and the grim
+reality of the encounter was soon learned by those on the iron-clads
+when shells began to burst on board.  But this attack was only in
+anticipation of the coming of the Austrian fleet, which was soon after
+signalled as being in sight, and its formidable nature was evident
+directly it approached.  Its three lines were composed of seven
+iron-clads, one wooden ship of the line, five wooden frigates, two
+corvettes, and twelve gunboats, the last mentioned carrying six guns
+each.
+
+The two fleets were not long in coming to close quarters, and it was
+soon proved that sailors could fight as well in iron-clads as in the
+towering old wooden craft of yore.
+
+The thunder was deeper from the much heavier modern guns, the impact of
+the modern missiles (elongated bolts, not balls) and the crash of the
+bursting explosive with which they were charged far more awful; but
+amidst the noise, confusion, and deafening explosions the spectator
+could grasp but little of what was taking place outside the vessel he
+was on.
+
+There was a certain grim novelty about being rammed, and the shock sent
+everyone who was not holding on, prostrate, convinced, or at least quite
+ready to imagine, that the vessel struck must be sent to the bottom.
+But this portion of the encounter did not prove to be so damaging as was
+anticipated, probably owing to the close quarters into which the two
+fleets were brought, and to the want of impetus of the striking ship.
+In fact, as the broadsides were exchanged, and the vessels were passing
+and repassing each other, they were in such close neighbourhood that at
+times the muzzles of the guns almost touched each other, and the effect
+was terrific.  Numbers of men were killed on board the vessel upon which
+Henty made his mental notes.  Shells crashed upon the iron armour, and
+were in some cases thrown off, but others passed in through the port
+holes and burst inside, committing terrible havoc, while at one time a
+broadside was received which glanced off.  A vast amount of damage was
+done, though, when they ran stem on to the nearest opponent with an
+awful crash and then backed off, to see dimly through the smoke that the
+Austrian adversary was evidently sinking.
+
+The result was that the Battle of Lissa supplied ample proof of the
+consequences following an encounter between two iron-clad fleets; but it
+was days after the noise and turmoil of the battle were at an end that
+Henty found an opportunity to pay a visit to the Italian fleet with the
+object of ascertaining how the various systems of iron-plating had borne
+the hammering of the shot and shell during this novel sea-fight.
+
+His first visit was to a vessel of nearly six thousand tons burden, and
+before going on board he was pulled slowly round her, stopping from time
+to time to examine the shot marks in her side.  And now it was
+surprising to see how little damage had been done.  The shot had made
+round dents of four to five inches in diameter, and from one to two and
+a half inches deep, but the marks made by the shells in the armour-plate
+were more ragged, some of the dents being from eight to twelve inches in
+diameter, rough and uneven, while, when a shell had struck where the
+plates joined, pieces were broken completely off.  Altogether, as far as
+her iron armour was concerned, this vessel, which had been engaged for
+more than an hour with two or three Austrian iron-clads, came out of the
+ordeal remarkably well.  Not one of her plates was penetrated, cracked,
+or seriously loosened; but on getting round to her stern her weak point
+was at once noticeable, and that was the rudder, which was quite
+unprotected.  Some six or seven feet of the unarmoured stern also was
+quite exposed, a fact which resulted in the loss of a sister ship, whose
+rudder was disabled almost at the beginning of the contest, so that she
+soon became an easy prey to her adversaries.
+
+In the case of the _Re de Porto Gallo_, the vessel Henty visited, her
+iron-plating was covered with a casing of wood, some nine inches thick,
+to a height of two feet above the water-line, and upon this her copper
+sheathing was fastened.  The whole of her port bulwark, with the
+exception of some fifty feet at the stern, was carried away by a
+collision with the adversary, the two vessels grinding together along
+their whole length.
+
+On mounting to the deck, Henty goes on to say, he first began to see to
+what a terrible fire she had been exposed.  Her rigging had been cut to
+pieces; black ragged holes where shells had struck and burst were to be
+seen; her boats were completely smashed to pieces.
+
+In the case of another vessel, the shot and shell marks were rather
+deeper, and the dents and ragged marks of the shells indicated that she
+had had to encounter heavier metal, while Henty's keen scrutiny showed
+him that the iron-plating which protected her must have been of a much
+more brittle nature; but even here it was quite plain to him that the
+protection afforded by the ponderous iron plates was most effective, and
+it was remarkable, considering how close the adversaries had been
+together, that more serious damage had not been done.
+
+In noticing Henty's account of the iron clothing of the Italian fleet,
+and the effect upon the ships of the enemy's guns, it must be borne in
+mind that some forty years have wrought vast changes in naval warfare,
+and it can easily be conceived how different would have been the havoc
+wrought if the encounter had been with the armament of such a vessel as,
+say our own unfortunate _Montagu_, or the _Sutlej_, with the twin
+occupants of its revolving turrets and the ponderous bolt-shaped shells
+they could hurl.
+
+These investigations appear to have been of the greatest interest to the
+young correspondent, but he was not satisfied; the sailor within him
+made itself heard.  He was satisfied with the value of armour-plates in
+protecting a man-of-war, but he wanted to know how, plated with these
+ponderous pieces of iron, such vessels would behave in a heavy sea.
+
+He had not long to wait, for he wrote directly afterwards that there had
+been a heavy squall, and one of the iron-clad fleet had had to run for
+the harbour, rolling so much from her weight, and shipping so much
+water, that she went down; but, fortunately, all hands were saved.
+
+There had been a day of intense heat.  The next morning it was hot and
+close without a breath of wind, and Henty states that he had been rowed
+across the harbour for his morning dip.  At that time there was not a
+ripple upon the water, but on his return at nine o'clock the sky was
+becoming a good deal overcast, while about half-past ten he was a
+witness of one of the squalls peculiar to the Mediterranean, and made
+familiar to old-fashioned people in the words and music of "The White
+Squall."  Sheets of water, without the least preliminary warning,
+dropped suddenly from the clouds; the furious wind tore along, driving
+before it every light object; outdoor chairs and tables were swept away,
+and the wind was master of everything for about twenty minutes.  When
+the fierce storm had passed on, and the rain had ceased, he, knowing
+what the consequences of such a raging tempest must be, hurried down to
+the landing-place to note what the sea had done.
+
+He was astounded.  His first looks were directed at the iron-clads.
+They were lying at anchor, and rolling bulwark-deep in so alarming a
+manner that it was fully proved to him that, had necessity forced them
+to go into action, they could not have opened their port-holes to work
+their guns, for had they done so they would certainly have been swamped.
+
+Nature seemed to be mocking at the ponderous vessels, and green seas
+were rushing completely along the decks of the iron-clad which
+afterwards foundered.
+
+He could see at the time by means of a telescope that the crew were
+engaged in dragging tarpaulins over her hatchways, while from the
+funnels of the whole fleet dense clouds of black smoke were rolling up,
+as the engineers were evidently working hard to get up steam, so as to
+relieve the strain upon their anchors, or to enable their captains to
+shift their berths.  Later he could see that several of the vessels had
+taken shelter in the harbour, but the _Affondatore_ was still in her
+berth, with her engines hard at work going ahead to relieve the strain
+upon her anchor.
+
+Speaking as one accustomed to the sea, he was under the impression that
+the captain was afraid to make for the harbour, outside which the vessel
+lay, for to have done so would have necessitated his exposing her
+broadside to the tremendous waves, which, though the sea had somewhat
+subsided, still swept right over her bows.  These were now apparently
+two or three feet lower than the stern, so that at the utmost the
+ponderous vessel was only six feet out of the water altogether, and she
+looked as if she had taken a great deal of water on board.
+
+At length, as Henty watched, he began to see that she was changing her
+position.  Her head turned slowly towards the harbour, her main-sail was
+set to steady her, and she began to steam slowly in.  But in spite of
+the sail that had been hoisted she rolled heavily, and by degrees seemed
+to have lost all power of riding over the waves, which now made a clean
+sweep over her, until at times he lost sight of her bow for some seconds
+together.
+
+At last, after expecting from time to time to see her founder, he saw
+that she had reached the harbour in safety, to anchor just inside the
+end of the mole, some three hundred yards from shore, and, growing
+excited as he felt in doubt about her position, he jumped into a boat
+and pulled out to her, to find that her bow was not above two feet out
+of water, while her stern was a foot higher than it had been on the
+previous day.  In spite of man-of-war order, a good deal of excitement
+evidently prevailed.  The crew were busily engaged in relieving her bows
+by carrying all weight as far aft as possible, and evidence of the peril
+of her position was plainly shown by the engines being hard at work
+pumping.
+
+So he began to feel hopeful that as the vessel was now in still water
+she would be safe, but the hope was vain.  Either recent repairs over
+the shot holes received in action had given way, or some of her upper
+plating, weakened by a shot, had opened with the strain.  Whatever was
+wrong, as Henty watched he could see that she was getting lower in the
+water, which in little more than another half-hour was level with her
+bow.
+
+Then it was that, feeling that it was impossible to do more, orders were
+given which resulted in the boats being lowered, and with discipline
+well preserved they were manned, while launches came out to her
+assistance and took off the crew to the last man.
+
+It was a painful scene which soon followed.  The grand vessel's bow was
+now some distance below the surface, while the stern still maintained
+its buoyancy; but all at once, as if the iron-clad monster were making a
+desperate struggle for life, she gave a sudden heavy roll before
+steadying herself, and remained in her proper position with only a
+slight list to starboard.  Then she sank slowly and calmly, and all was
+over with the gallant ship.
+
+Henty described at length the battle of Lissa, of which no better
+account could have been given than that of this unbiased spectator; but
+upon the appearance of a lengthy official report, he did not hesitate to
+turn stern critic and fall foul of the brag and bombast which disfigured
+its columns.  No doubt to flatter Italian pride this was so full of
+inflation, that the English correspondent flatly compared it with the
+never-to-be-forgotten narrative delivered by the stout knight to Prince
+Hal and his companions.
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+THE END OF THE WAR.
+
+Henty writes of Brescia as a Garibaldian town, that is to say, a town
+garrisoned by volunteers, and after being there for some days gaining
+knowledge of these patriots, he takes advantage of the occasion to
+attempt some description of their state.
+
+At one time he found the station crowded as if the whole population had
+assembled, and he explains the reason of the unusual scene.  A train of
+enormous length had just entered the station crammed with red-shirted
+volunteers, who were being received with tremendous cheers, which they
+responded to as lustily.  Then ensued an affecting scene, for numbers of
+the regiment had friends and relations in the town who were searching
+eagerly from carriage to carriage enquiring if they were safe.
+
+The train was only to stop for ten minutes, and the men were not
+supposed to alight; but no orders could keep them in, and a scene of
+wild embracing, handshaking, and kissing ensued, mingled with eager
+enquiries after relatives in other regiments, good wishes, and
+farewells.  Then the station bell rang and the train moved on, the
+soldiers waiting till the last moment and then jumping on as it was in
+motion, so that as it moved out of the station it presented an
+extraordinary aspect, men in scarlet shirts leaning out of every window
+and standing on the foot-board the whole length as closely as they
+could, while others were even on the roofs, and all waving their hands
+and cheering.  He heard afterwards that some of the men in their
+enthusiasm and excitement rode the whole of their journey upon the
+steps, while three or four in the various trains were killed from
+leaning too far out and striking their heads against the abutments of
+bridges.
+
+The commissariat arrangements, into which as a matter of course he would
+be prone to enquire, were, he declares, vile.  In fact, he says the
+arrangements for feeding these poor fellows were, like all other matters
+connected with the volunteers, shamefully bad.  Some of them, in a three
+days' journey, had no food but bread and cheese and a little wine.
+
+At another town he found the place crowded with Garibaldians, who had
+taken possession bodily of the inn he reached.  Tables were spread out
+in the court-yard, at which parties were sitting; upstairs and down the
+inn was thronged.  The landlady and waiters received their English
+visitors with an air of languid indifference very different from their
+customary manner.  At the first complaint Henty was assured that for
+three days and nights they had not rested, and that as fast as one
+regiment of the volunteers went off another took its place.  The men
+were all famished by long fasting in the train, and only too glad to sit
+down to a regular meal again.
+
+Here he found that although the Garibaldians were better clad than when
+he first encountered them, for they had all got red shirts, and caps of
+some shape or other, many of them were sadly neglected.  Some were
+almost shoeless, others had only just previously received their arms.
+Moreover, with the exception of the Bersaglieri regiments, which had ten
+rounds of ball cartridge each, no ammunition whatever had been supplied.
+They were in a melancholy slate for an active force just taking the
+field--no shelter tents, so that they had to sleep in the open air, and
+most of them had only one blanket to serve as a cloak in the daytime and
+a cover at night.
+
+Some of them had not even this poor protection, and had to sleep on the
+ground, however wet the night, with no other protection than their red
+shirts and trousers.  Fortunately for them, they had patriotic faith and
+enthusiasm; but there was no ambulance train or any accommodation
+whatever for the wounded, and, speaking generally, the commissariat
+arrangements were so bad that it was no unusual thing for a regiment to
+go all day without food.
+
+The result was indignation on the part of the volunteers at the
+scandalous treatment they were receiving; but this only made them still
+more desirous to get at the enemy and show that, ill-used though they
+were, when it came to fighting they could do as well as the line.  For
+it seemed that there was considerable jealousy and ill-feeling between
+the two services, the Garibaldians believing firmly that the treatment
+they were receiving was caused by those in authority, and when the news
+came of a disastrous defeat of the regular troops, it was received by
+the volunteers with something like satisfaction and a full belief that
+they would do better when their turn came.
+
+"Indeed," says Henty, "it must be owned that they had very much more
+than a sufficiently good opinion of themselves, for they firmly believed
+that they could defeat anything like an equal number of Austrians, even
+though the latter were provided with artillery, as they would be."
+
+Henty learned from the plucky fellows that they did not believe much in
+the value of ball cartridges, but pinned their faith entirely on the
+bayonet, against which weapon he did not believe that they would be able
+to stand for an instant.  His opinion was that if the Garibaldians came
+upon a body of the well-drilled Austrians in a steep place, or where
+they were in confusion, the volunteers' impetuous onslaught would be
+irresistible; but on the other hand, he could not believe that out on
+the plain disorderly rushes could ever break the Austrians' steady steel
+lines.
+
+At this time a battery of mountain artillery was attached to Garibaldi's
+command; but the guns were so clumsy and the carriages so primitive that
+Henty believed they were not likely to prove of much assistance, and,
+continuing his remarks about the uniformity and aspect of the
+Garibaldian troops, he grimly notes that consequent upon sleeping upon
+the wet ground, the red shirts were beginning to lose their original
+brilliancy of colour.  He has, though, a few words of praise for the
+volunteer cavalry, the Guides, who were extremely useful as vedettes.
+Their grey-blue uniform with black cord braiding, natty scarlet caps and
+high boots, gave them a very soldierlike appearance, while for night
+duty they had very long cloaks of the same colour as the uniform, and
+lined with scarlet.
+
+Henty had always words of praise for the unquenchable pluck of the
+Garibaldians, the indomitable determination that, in spite of bad
+drilling, clumsy discipline, and bad leading, finally led them to
+success.  Garibaldi himself, however, came in for criticism, for he
+declares, after recording a wound that the general had received, that it
+was greatly to be regretted that he should expose himself to danger, and
+that his young officers should be so eager to do the fighting themselves
+instead of steadying their men and leading them.
+
+Then again he attacks the commissariat in his customary, vigorous way,
+while reporting after one of the fights the wantonness which could send
+three thousand men from a town to march twenty-five miles without
+breakfast to begin with or supper to finish with, this being only a
+common specimen of the commissariat arrangements.  "Certainly," he seems
+to growl, in a quotation, "somebody ought to be hanged; I do not know
+who it is, nor do I care, but such mismanagement has, I believe, never
+been equalled.  All the same," he says, "the volunteers take it with
+wonderful good temper."
+
+Picturesque, he says, as was the appearance of the Garibaldian camp, so
+bright and gay with the scarlet shirts of the soldiery and the green
+arbours, that it looked like a gigantic military picnic, it was the
+abode of as badly a fed set of men as were to be found in Europe.  A
+little bread or biscuit and soup, doled out at the most uncertain
+intervals, with occasionally meat and frequently nothing at all, was the
+food which the government of Italy bestowed upon her volunteers, many of
+whom had left luxurious homes to fight her battles; and in some cases
+the men were so reduced from weakness that at certain stations many of
+them had to be taken into hospital.  The poor fellows were fed, when fed
+at all, with a mixture with bread swimming in it which was called soup,
+but which was utterly innocent of meat in its composition, and tasted
+simply of tepid water; a sort of raw sausage, flavoured strongly with
+garlic, and a mess of either rice or macaroni, with something called
+meat in it, but utterly untastable; and yet this same food was at one
+time, while Henty was with the volunteer army, all that he could depend
+upon for himself--that or nothing.  Campaigning with the Garibaldians
+was sorry work, but, soldierlike, Henty tightened his belt and fought
+his way on with the volunteers in expectation until they won.
+
+Still with the head-quarters of Garibaldi, and in the midst of the heat
+of an Italian July, Henty writes again in the midst of warfare, with all
+day long the boom of cannon and the sharp crack of musketry sounding in
+his ears.  And as he writes, he says, the confusion outside, the talking
+of innumerable Garibaldians under the window of the humble room of which
+he thinks himself fortunate to call himself master for the time, the
+rumbling of carts, the shouting of the drivers, and the occasional call
+of the bugle, all remind him that he is in the midst of war on a large
+scale.
+
+The heat has been terrible; not a breath of wind stirring, and the
+cicadas in the vineyards which line the roads through which he has
+passed have been in the full tide of song.  "The noise," he says, "that
+these insects make on a hot day is something astounding.  It is a
+continued succession of sharp shrill sounds such as might be made by a
+child upon a little whistle."  He asks his reader to imagine an army of
+children, thousands strong, lining the road and all blowing upon these
+whistles, "and you will have an idea of the prodigious thrill of sound
+produced by myriads of these creatures."
+
+"Zeno," he says, "the old Greek philosopher who was mated to a shrew, is
+reported to have exclaimed: `Happy the lives of the cicadas, since they
+all have voiceless wives.'  But I think that it is equally fortunate for
+humanity in general, for if the female cicadae were in any way as
+voluble as the males, it would be impossible to exist in the
+neighbourhood of the vineyards at all without losing one's sense of
+hearing."
+
+But insects, the boom of cannon, the rumble of tumbrels, and the crackle
+of musketry notwithstanding, the war correspondent's communications had
+to be written, and two of his most interesting pieces of news, which are
+rather ominous in sound, are that the general's son, Ricciotti
+Garibaldi, who is serving as a private in the Guides, is at present ill,
+though nothing serious is apprehended, while Garibaldi's wound still
+causes him great pain and inconvenience.  He can do nothing for himself,
+but he is the enthusiastic general still, even though he has to be
+lifted from the sofa upon which he lies all day, and carried by four men
+to his carriage, the anxiety he feels at the state of affairs greatly
+retarding his recovery.
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE.
+
+IMPRESSIONS OF ITALY.
+
+In what had now become a sight-seeing perfect holiday time for Henty,
+prior to his being present to witness the entry of the Italian troops
+into Venice and the departure of the Austrians, Ravenna, with its
+antiquities, its museums and traditions, was too great an attraction to
+a literary man to be passed over.  He appreciated to the full the ruins
+of the old Christian churches, the cathedrals, the traces of the Roman
+emperors, the glorious fir woods with their pleasant shades, and raked
+up memories of poet and student who had been attracted there in their
+time, such as Dante, Boccaccio, and Dryden.  All three have written
+their recollections, while Byron worked there, finding other points of
+interest beyond its quiet charm.  For it was in Venice that he wrote
+_Marino Faliero_, _The Two Foscari_, _Cain_, and other poems.
+
+But every city of the Italian plains had its attractions for Henty, and
+his writings at this date are one long record of a country which teems
+with memories of the past.
+
+Much as he was interested in the fairs and markets and antiquities,
+Henty was too much of the sailor and soldier not to be attracted by a
+little scene at Ancona on his last morning there, and that was in
+connection with the landing from the fleet of a body of sailors for
+certain evolutions upon the parade.  They brought ashore twelve light
+guns, apparently about five-pounders, each manned by six Italian Jacks.
+These guns were promptly taken to pieces, and a couple of the men caught
+up the gun, the rest the wheels, ammunition boxes and carriages, and
+bore them down to the boats.  Then, at the word of command, they carried
+them up again to the drill-ground, and in a little over a minute the
+guns were put together, mounted, loaded, and ready to open fire, the
+limber, in charge of two of the six men, standing a little in the rear.
+The whole evolution was remarkably good, and the rapidity most striking.
+At the word of command the guns were fired; they limbered up directly,
+and the men attached a sort of harness which went across their chests,
+and dashed off as fast as they could run till a halt was called, fresh
+position taken up, the guns unlimbered, loaded, and discharged again in
+an incredibly short space of time.
+
+As Henty watched them the sailors seemed to be taking their task as if
+it afforded them the greatest amusement, and to one who had never
+witnessed any such drill before it appeared to be an exercise that ought
+to be introduced to our own navy, which, as far as he knew, had not been
+furnished with these light portable guns for landing operations, "for
+there is no question," he says, "that they would be of immense service
+if two or three of these little guns were added to every vessel of our
+fleet."
+
+This was, of course, prior to Henty's experience in connection with
+Magdala and Ashantee, where he found our sailors on landing expeditions
+in no wise behind those of the Italian fleet.  Later it came to his lot,
+after his own war-correspondent campaigns were at an end, to deal with
+correspondence, letters, and telegrams connected with the Boer war, in
+which our Jacks performed wonders, not with toy guns, but with the
+monsters on their specially-contrived carriages, under the manipulation
+of Captain Hedworth Lambton and Captain Percy Scott, which startled our
+enemies.
+
+With ears relieved from the incessant roar of cannon to listen instead
+to the ringing of joy-bells and the cheers which welcomed the
+declaration of an armistice, Henty gladly availed himself of an
+opportunity to visit the old Italian cities, so as to see what life was
+like in these old-world places.  Much of the quaint and antiquated still
+lingers round these towns, not only in the buildings, but in the habits
+of the people, suggestive of the days when Shakespeare and his
+contemporaries constructed their dramas, laying their scenes in Verona,
+Venice, Padua, Mantua, and other places, the very names of which suggest
+slashed doublets, rapiers, family enmities, relentless vendettas,
+keen-bladed swords, stilettoes, bravoes, feathered caps, poisoned cups,
+and all the rest.
+
+Starting from Ancona, he went over to Sinigaglia, now upon the railway,
+but formerly a Roman station, and later of considerable importance in
+the Middle Ages, when war used often to rage between the states of the
+Pope and the family of Malatesta at Rimini.  Here, too, Caesar Borgia
+made his name infamous by causing the Condottieri, his allies, to be
+strangled, an act of treachery suggestive of the massacre of the
+Janissaries at Constantinople.
+
+These names suggest old-world celebrity, but Henty had come over for a
+change, sick for the time being of war and its rumours.  The bow-string
+had been tight for some time, sending literary arrows speeding west, and
+the fact that a rather famous fair was being celebrated attracted him,
+in expectation of seeing what Italy would be like when its people were
+_en fete_ at a function similar to our own old Bartlemy or Greenwich.
+
+In visiting Sinigaglia, a place associated with such names as the above,
+he fully expected to revel in the picturesque; but he found that the
+Italians, troubled as they are with such terrible epidemic visitations,
+have grown to pay greater respect to sanitary measures than did their
+ancestors, and in consequence ancient ruins with their echoes of the
+past do not receive the respect we pay to them in England.  He found one
+grand old citadel, but the Italians had been behaving to it like
+Vandals, or, to be more familiar of speech, like our honest old British
+churchwardens when they distribute whitewash.  Other ruins, such as
+nowadays we place under the care of some learned society, he found had
+been patched up and turned to some useful purpose.
+
+The fair was in full force, but by no means English-looking.  There were
+no roundabouts, either steam or worked by expectant boys in return for
+an occasional ride; no swings, no dramatic shows, no giants, no fat or
+spotted ladies, no freaks such as our American friends accustomed to
+Saint Barnum of show fame rejoice to see, no music, no noise.  It did
+not seem at all like a fair; but he found other attractions in the large
+town of about twenty-three thousand inhabitants, which was built as a
+fort about a third of a mile from the almost tideless sea, which, after
+the fashion of Venice, was connected therewith by a wide and deep canal.
+This canal offered passage for good-sized vessels, and ran up right
+through the town, all of which was very interesting from a commercial
+point of view; but it was the middle of hot August, and the place had a
+greater attraction for our traveller because it happened to be one of
+the most fashionable watering-places of eastern Italy.  Henty here draws
+attention to the great advantage the Italians possess in living on a sea
+like the Mediterranean, where bathing-places can be erected, and where
+at all times there is a sufficient depth of water to enable one so
+desirous, to have a plunge without having to go lumbering out in one of
+the miserable rickety boxes on wheels which we call bathing-machines.
+
+The same advantages are offered in the harbour of Ancona, at which town,
+at this period, Henty was making his head-quarters.  Here he found
+floating baths represented by a chamber of about fifteen feet square,
+into which the sea had free ingress, and also a larger bath big enough
+for a swim, while if one were so disposed there was egress to the sea.
+
+To return to Sinigaglia: seeing that it was fair time the streets were
+furnished with awnings to keep off the sun, and the place was after all
+very attractive, with its streets filled with women displaying their
+baskets of goods for sale.  Being a fete day the peasantry had flocked
+in from the surrounding country in their best and most picturesque
+costumes of bright colours and snowy white, with their hair carefully
+dressed in a peculiar fashion, and a plentiful display of gold necklaces
+or ear-rings.  Their dark hair, warm complexions, and large dark eyes
+all tended to form a very attractive scene.
+
+Henty however always displayed a mind receptive of anything connected
+with utility.  As a rule he looked out for matters concerning
+sanitation, and while he condemned the vandalism, he had a word to say
+here respecting the purifying effect of whitewash.  But in a place like
+this, so intimately associated with the old and historical, it is
+amusing to find that he takes a walk round the outskirts of the ancient
+city, and very unpoetically notes that the hills about Sinigaglia would
+gladden the heart of a London brickmaker if they could be dropped down
+in the neighbourhood of the metropolis.  It stands to reason that he
+must have had Southall in his eye, for he says that the Sinigaglia hills
+are entirely composed of fine brick clay of apparently unlimited depth
+and extent.
+
+As far as the fair was concerned, Henty writes soon after from Rimini--
+most poetic of names!--that he was glad that he went back to Ancona for
+the fair in that town, for it differed entirely from that at Sinigaglia,
+in that it was especially lively, amusing, and attractive.
+
+"The fair," he says, "begins where Ancona ceases."  The attractions were
+almost entirely devoted to the young, so that for the time being the
+place was turned into an attractive toy-land.  The Grand Promenade of
+Ancona, in the neighbourhood of the sea, and planted with rows of trees,
+was the centre of interest.  The fair stalls, which were most abundant,
+were small, but were made most attractive.  Each had its speciality, and
+was, of course, thronged with eager, bright-eyed children.  One
+contained drums only; the next military toys, small swords, guns and
+pistols; the next would be all small carts; then came one with dolls'
+furniture, most neatly made in japanned tin or iron.  A little farther
+on the stalls were filled with the noisy playthings so dear to
+children's hearts--whistles, trumpets, accordions, and rattles of the
+most ingenious construction and maddening power.  Then, again, there
+were stalls displaying the ingenuity and delicacy of Italian taste,
+where they sold only dolls' head-dresses, the most jaunty little caps,
+hats, and veils conceivable, quite an equipment, in fact, for the heads
+of a whole troop of little fairies.
+
+Then, again, there were many stalls with dolls dressed in the extreme of
+fashion; but in a fatherly manner, suggestive of thoughts of home, he
+goes on to say that "the dolls themselves would not at all come up to an
+English child's idea of what such a toy ought to be, being all cheap
+wooden dolls.  I did not see one made of wax in the fair."
+
+Many of the toys exhibited were unquestionably German, similar to those
+seen in our own bazaars, but some, particularly the drums, he noticed
+were Italian.  It was easy to detect the difference in the colouring,
+the paints used being of less clear and bright shades; and they were
+unvarnished, which is seldom or never the case with German toys.  Round
+these stalls the crowd of little people and their friends was constant.
+
+Observant of the country again, Henty goes on to say, with thoughts of
+home: "Children here have few amusements, few toys, and still fewer of
+those charming story-books with which so many of our booksellers' shop
+windows are full, especially about Christmas time."  It is worthy of
+notice that this was in 1866, about two years previous to the production
+of Henty's first boys' story, and over thirty years before the time
+when, with scrupulous regularity, the booksellers' shop windows were
+annually displaying two or more of his own productions specially written
+for the young.
+
+The parents and the friends seemed disposed to indulge the children to
+the utmost upon this occasion, for all had their hands full of toys.
+Boys drummed and blew trumpets and whistles till he was nearly deafened;
+little girls clung tightly to the skirts of their mothers' dresses with
+one hand, and with the other held out their new dolls admiringly before
+them; and appeared to be continually questioning their friends as to
+whether they were quite sure that sundry other purchases carried in
+paper bags were safe.
+
+It was a charming scene, for the stalls were lit up by candles, which
+burned steadily in the serene summer air.  Nothing could have been more
+attractive--the crowds, the pleasure of the children, the number of
+well-dressed people in their varied refinements of fashion, and the
+peasant women in their bright-coloured handkerchiefs, but many with no
+other decoration to their heads save their abundant smooth and
+neatly-braided hair.
+
+Other picturesque features in the crowd were afforded by the soldiers,
+sailors, and marines, with their round hats and drooping plumes of black
+cocks' feathers, and the uniforms of the National Guards and officers of
+all these services.
+
+Passing onward, he came upon stalls significant of his being in a hot
+country, for at these only fans were sold--fans of every size and
+colour.  In Italy, it must be remembered, as in Japan, nearly everyone
+carries a fan, and uses it instead of a parasol to shade the face when
+walking and to cool the bearer when sitting down.
+
+And now began the stalls of the vendors of more useful articles.  First
+were the basket-makers and turners, trades which seemed to be generally
+united, as if the women of the family pursued the one branch, the men
+the other.  There were baskets of every size and form, from those which
+might hold a lady's fancy-work, right up to the enormous holder in which
+Falstaff himself might have been borne.
+
+The turners' display of the works of their lathes was wonderful in
+variety, and included wooden bowls, platters, distaffs, and spindles,
+strings of buttons, bowls, and articles that were more the work of the
+carving tool, in the shape of spoons, taps, and pegs.
+
+Then there were stalls with articles made from horn instead of wood,
+followed by displays of articles in iron and tin, notably small charcoal
+stoves, coffee-roasting apparatus, and ladles, while last in utility
+there were sieves of cane, wire, and horse-hair.  The variety was
+wonderful.  Now the stalls were covered with hats--from the coarsest
+straw or chip, to those once fashionable in England and worn by our
+grandmothers under the name of Tuscan and Leghorn,--while a brisk sale
+of cutlery was being carried on, men selling wooden-handled knives of
+the cheapest kind, such as the peasants always have at hand.
+
+Elsewhere there were copper cooking utensils in plenty.  Cooking in
+Italy is almost always done in copper pans and pots, and there is no
+cottage so poor that it has not its half-dozen, at least, of these
+brightly kept vessels.
+
+And now, where the crowd was thickest, Henty found that he had been too
+hurried in his judgment of Italian fairs, for he found the old English
+fair equalled, if not excelled.  Here were the shows and menageries,
+with the outside pictures of terrific combats with impossible animals,
+conspicuous among them being a snake, by the side of which the sea
+serpent would sink into insignificance, engaged in the operation of
+devouring a boat-load of Hindus, or so they seemed to be by their
+complexion and costume.  This show boasted a band, while its neighbour
+contained our old friends the wax figures, representing heroes of modern
+times, among which he noted that, in remembrance of the Crimea, the
+showman had done England the honour of placing Lord Raglan.  By way of
+extra attraction the little exhibition was furnished with an organ and
+cymbals.
+
+If he had shut his eyes now, he says, he could almost have imagined
+himself in England--the music, the shouting of the touters at the
+booths, the blowing of trumpets and whistles, the beating of small
+drums, all recalling home.  But there was one difference that was
+unmistakable.  There was no pushing, no foul language; there were no
+drunken people, no roughs, all of which appear to be the inseparable
+elements of an English fair.
+
+There were a great number of fruit stalls, which seemed to be doing a
+good business among the lower orders, especially at the counters devoted
+to the sale of slices of water-melon, which the people of Italy seem
+never tired of eating.  Henty ventures to say they were very nice to one
+who got used to them, but for his part, he declares he would just as
+soon have eaten the same weight of grass.
+
+When he left the place that night the proceedings were still in full
+swing, and when he returned to it at six o'clock the next morning, there
+was the same crowd as late the night before, and a brisk trade was still
+going on.  Noticing again the vast number of fruit stalls, the thought
+occurred to him that it was fortunate that there was no cholera in the
+town, for if all the fruit that he saw in Ancona were consumed by the
+people before it got bad, it would produce an increase of that epidemic
+which was terrible to contemplate.  There were hundreds of cart-loads of
+melons, water-melons, and peaches, which were poor tasteless things and
+always picked too soon; he declares he never tasted a ripe peach while
+he was in Italy.  Pears too, figs, and grapes were plentiful; but he
+gives them no praise.
+
+To his surprise and amusement, perhaps consequent upon Ancona being so
+old-world a city, he came upon one relic of the past, and that was a
+stall for supplying the matches such as our grandmothers used, such, in
+fact, as used to be sold by every pitiful vendor in the streets, in the
+shape of long thin strips of wood cut into a sharp point at each end,
+dipped in melted sulphur, and then tied up in bunches like fans.  These
+were, of course, the predecessors of the lucifer matches, as they were
+called, which were sold in neat little boxes, with an oblong piece of
+sanded card laid on the top.  This folded across, and between its folds
+the match was drawn sharply, when it burst into flame.  These were soon
+succeeded by a somewhat similar match, with the sand-paper a fixture on
+the bottom of the box, and the priming of the match so increased in
+inflammability that the ignition took place as at the present time, and
+the name Congreve Light came in, the "light" soon dying out, and giving
+way to Congreve or matches only.  Of course, those which Henty saw on
+sale were for use in connection with the old-world flint and steel and
+tinder-box.
+
+Passing on that morning, he went through the Custom House, to find
+beyond it the regular food market at its height.  Hundreds of neatly
+dressed peasant women and girls were standing with their baskets before
+them, ready to supply eggs, butter, cheeses, fowls, turkeys, ducks,
+pigeons, and larks, for the most part alive, but doomed.  There were one
+or two baskets which contained puppies, probably, however, not doomed,
+at least, to be cooked.  But there were baskets in plenty containing
+delicacies in the nature of molluscs!  He was within reach of the sea,
+but they were neither oysters, scallops, mussels, cockles, nor winkles,
+but the fine pale-shelled, spiral, Roman snails, that doubtless had been
+captured in the moist eve or early morn when ascending the poles of some
+vineyard.  Delicate, but not tempting to the English taste.
+
+To do the fair thoroughly, Henty, before leaving, visited the cattle, to
+find that the supply of horses was just then very small; but there was
+the prospect that, directly peace was signed and the enormous transport
+train paid off, horses would become as cheap in Italy as they then were
+dear.
+
+There was a large show, though, of the beautiful patient, docile,
+draught oxen, which were fetching from twenty to thirty pounds a pair;
+and with these he concluded his inspection of the two fairs.  He then
+suffered a most Inquisition-like examination of his baggage, and started
+for a visit to one of the smallest republics in the world, a country
+close to the Adriatic shore, which had been for some time attracting his
+attention.  This he hoped to see and report upon before the festivities
+of peace should commence consequent upon the complete freedom of Italy,
+or troubles should arise once more and make busy in other ways the war
+correspondent's pen.
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+THE VISIT TO SAN MARINO.
+
+On his way to San Marino Henty found himself at Rimini.  This place is
+the Ariminium of the Romans.  It was enlarged and beautified by Julius
+and Augustus Caesar.  Here, too, in a.d. 359 the Aryan doctrine was
+denounced.  As the centuries rolled by, the town fell into the hands of
+the Lombards, and was given by the Emperor Otho to Malatesta, whose
+family ceded it to the Venetians, from whom it was afterwards wrested by
+the Popes, and it remained part of the Papal dominions till 1860.
+
+It has its antiquities, the principal one being an arch erected in
+honour of Augustus, and bearing still in perfect preservation the old
+Roman carvings, representing on one side Jupiter and Minerva, on the
+other, Neptune and Venus.
+
+Another antiquity that took Henty's attention as being well worthy of
+notice, from the way in which it brought back to his memory Westminster
+School and his studies of the classics, was a short pillar in the
+market-place with an inscription stating that Caesar stood upon it to
+harangue his soldiers before passing the Rubicon.  Caesar, history
+informs us, was a short stout man, and Henty's old studies led him to
+believe that he could not have looked well upon that short column, upon
+which he would probably have been lifted by the officers of his staff;
+and somehow or other--perhaps the weather was not very genial--the
+column did not impress him with any particular feeling of veneration.
+His ideas ought to have been classic and stern; but it is strange, as he
+says, what inopportune ideas strike one.  He approached the stone with a
+thorough belief in it, prepared to picture Caesar aloft, and the
+heavy-armed legionaries of the Roman cohorts standing armed, leaning
+upon their spears, with the eagles they had carried triumphantly through
+so many campaigns erect in their midst.  But as he came fully into sight
+of the stone, the thought of the difficulty of getting upon it and of
+Caesar's ungraceful figure brought to his mind the remembrance of H.K.
+Browne's etching representing the immortal Pickwick standing upon a
+chair, with one hand under his coat-tails and the other outstretched, as
+he harangued the members of his club.  And all belief in the legend of
+the stone faded away at once.  In fact, Henty was not an imaginative
+man.  Neither was he a great humourist; but when he was in humorous vein
+his humour was dry and good.
+
+By the way, legend says that it was at Rimini that Saint Anthony
+preached to the fishes when the people refused to hear him, and that San
+Marino, who was a native of Dalmatia, across the Adriatic Sea, came over
+and settled here.  He gave his name afterwards to the little republic
+and to the mountain which Henty's driver pointed out to him--rising far
+above all the hills in its neighbourhood, nearly fifteen miles away--at
+the beginning of a very charming drive in an open carriage drawn by one
+of those novelties that are not often let for hire--a very fair horse.
+
+This curious little state is in its own way perfectly unique, and its
+existence is the more singular from its being situated in Italy, though
+for centuries in the Middle Ages that country was the scene of an
+uninterrupted succession of wars.  The hand of every country was against
+its neighbours.  Towns changed owners every few years; states were
+swallowed up, conquered, reconquered, but San Marino has remained.
+
+The law of strength was the only law recognised--that law which says he
+shall take who has the power, and he shall keep who can; for the weakest
+always went to the wall.  It is then most singular that this little
+territory of about eight thousand inhabitants should have remained
+intact for more than fifteen centuries, and that now, while all its
+powerful neighbours have become merged into one great state, this tiny
+republic should be the sole portion of Italian soil possessing a
+separate autonomy.
+
+History tells us that in the old Roman days, soon after the persecution
+of the Christians by the Emperor Diocletian commenced, San Marino,
+finding that there was no rest for his people in Rimini, led his little
+flock out from that city and established a Christian colony at the
+summit of the highest and most rugged mountain in that part of the
+country, then probably a place surrounded by untrodden forests; and the
+little state thus founded has remained separate ever since.
+
+The road to San Marino led across an undulating and very richly
+cultivated country, where the peasants were engaged gathering in the
+grape harvest, which that year, from the extreme dryness of the early
+part of the season, was the worst the people had ever known.  They were
+also occupied picking the maize, which is so important an item of the
+Italian farmer's crop.
+
+Indian corn is a little better known now in connection with its
+beautiful growth than when Henty paid his visit, but his description of
+what was to him almost a novelty is still pleasant reading.  He tells us
+how the plants are thinned out as soon as they appear above the ground,
+and the blades are left to grow on about a foot apart in a climate where
+they spring up to the height of about six feet.  The stalks, he says,
+"for the first two feet above the ground are about the diameter of a
+man's thumb, but towards the top they expand to a considerable extent."
+
+He had seen maize growing in its early stage during his previous visits
+to Italy, but never before having passed the hot season there, this was
+the first time he had witnessed the harvest, and it was a matter of
+surprise to him that such thin stalks could support the weight of a head
+of maize.  But now to him the mystery was explained.  At about two feet
+from the ground, at the time the plant flowers, the stem increases in
+size, presently opens, and a thick shoot makes its appearance,
+apparently composed of a compressed bunch of leaves.  This becomes
+larger and larger, the leaves expand, open more and more, and spread out
+like broad wavy blades of grass.  The head or cob of maize swells out
+and forms at its summit a great silky pale golden tassel, while, as the
+cob becomes larger and larger, much of the upper part of the stalk in
+the process of the ripening dies and falls off.  Then the lower leaves
+drop away, the grand beauty of the field of maize passes, and from the
+time the crop is ripe until the harvest the field seems to be composed
+of stumps with bunches of dead leaves at the top.  These leaves,
+however, enclose the great solid, regularly formed or apparently
+built-up head of maize, which is left drying as it stands in the torrid
+sunshine, till it is cut off and carted to the farms.  At this stage the
+Indian corn is taken in hand by the women and children of the family,
+and the separate grains are picked off and exposed on cloths to dry
+perfectly in the sun.
+
+Passing the cultivated fields and crossing the little stream which forms
+its boundary, Henty learned that he was in the Republic of San Marino,
+that the circumference of the state was thirty-five miles, and that the
+mountain, or crag as it should rather be called, rose almost in its
+centre.  With the exception of the rock itself, every part was extremely
+fertile and well cultivated, and of more value than land in the
+surrounding country, on account of the absence of taxation and other
+advantages peculiar to the republic, chief among which was the freedom
+from military conscription.  Every male in San Marino is, it is true, a
+soldier, but soldiering involves no fighting or absence from home.
+Although all are liable to be called upon to serve in case of necessity,
+only those under a certain age are on ordinary occasions called out.
+The strength of this regular army of the republic is eight hundred men.
+Of these, seven hundred form the National Guard; the remaining hundred
+are the body-guard of the president.
+
+They have their uniform of blue, the National Guard having red facings,
+the body-guard yellow, the band white.  Then they have their national
+flag of blue and white; and a police force administered by a chief and
+five carbineers, whose uniform is dark blue with white cross-belts and
+grey trousers, so that they look on the whole much like the carbineers
+of the Italian service.  These five are, of course, always on duty, and
+are regular salaried police.  The army only appears in uniform upon
+Sundays and fete days, when the men are drilled; but the troops receive
+no pay.
+
+"We arrived," says Henty, "at the village of Serravalle.  Here the
+carriage stopped, and I had to take my seat in a little pair-wheeled
+trap drawn by a good-sized pony.  These berruchinos, as they are called,
+are by no means comfortable, for instead of being boarded, the floor is
+composed of a loose network of cords, which affords little rest for the
+feet.  They have no dash- or splash-board, and you are consequently in
+unpleasant proximity to the horse's heels, if it should take it into its
+head to kick.  They have, besides, no rail or other rest for the back."
+It was an intensely hot day, and at the village from which he made his
+fresh start he was glad to accept the loan of an immense blue umbrella.
+And now began an adventure.
+
+They had ascended a steep hill, so steep that the driver got down and
+walked, and he had not retaken his seat when, without the slightest
+previous notice of its intention, and presumably induced thereto by the
+bite of a fly in some more than ordinarily tender part, the wretched
+little pony started off at full gallop.
+
+At this time Henty was sitting quietly under the umbrella, tranquilly
+smoking and chatting to the driver, when there was a sudden jerk.  His
+feet having no hold and his back no support, the former flew up into the
+air and his head went back.  Instinctively he made a desperate grasp at
+the side rail with his unoccupied hand, but it gave way, and in an
+instant he was on his back in the middle of the road with the blue
+umbrella perfectly shut up beneath him.  Fortunately the trap was not
+very high, and his bones were at that period of his life very well
+protected, so in a moment he was on his feet again, much more astonished
+than hurt.  Bearing the relics of the blue umbrella he pursued the trap,
+which in spite of the efforts of the driver was going on at full speed,
+dragging him after it, and it was three or four hundred yards from the
+place where the pony started before the man was able to bring it to a
+standstill.
+
+A little scene ensued, for when he came up Henty found the driver
+looking pale as death, and so much scared that it was with the greatest
+difficulty he could be persuaded that his fare was not seriously hurt.
+
+It was rather a remarkable escape; but Henty states that he was so
+little shaken that he did not even suffer with a headache from the
+effects.  Of course, however, the principal damage was to the blue
+umbrella, and on his return to Serravalle he had a very lengthy amount
+of talk and argument with the old lady, its owner, as to the amount of
+compensation to be paid, for it was irretrievably ruined.
+
+The rest of Henty's journey to the Burgo of San Marino, a village
+containing about seven hundred inhabitants, was uneventful.  It is
+planted at the foot of a precipice, at the top of which the old town,
+which is populated to about the same extent, is perched.  It is a
+remarkable mountain, rising as it does almost perpendicularly, and
+therefore being a very suitable spot for the erection of a fortress in
+the old dangerous times, for all around there lie nothing but softly
+swelling hills, no other so suitable a defensive place occurring until
+far back in the Apennines, another twenty-five miles inland.
+
+The rock is about half a mile long, and to the east the face is
+absolutely perpendicular, while to the west it has a gradual but still
+rapid fall, the land being cultivated up to the very walls of the town
+upon its summit.
+
+There is no flat ground upon the top.  It is a mere narrow ridge, the
+descent beginning from the very edge of the perpendicular east face.
+When looking up the rock from the road all that is seen of the town are
+three towers perched upon the three highest points, and the church.
+None of the houses is visible owing to their position upon the west
+slope.
+
+Enquiries brought an introduction to one of the ancients of the place,
+who acted as cicerone to strangers visiting San Marino, and during a
+walk he was found to be charged with a pretty full description of the
+politics and history of the little state.
+
+Everything was in a delightful state of innocency, honour more than
+money seeming to be generally the object sought.  There were two
+captains-regent instead of presidents, who were allowed seventy-five
+francs each during their term of office of six months.  The home and
+foreign ministers were each paid two hundred and fifty francs for office
+expenses, postage, etc.  The commander-in-chief of the army got honour
+alone and not a sou besides, and apparently had to pay for his own
+uniform.  Then came the highest paid officials of the republic.  These
+were three, two physicians and one surgeon, who received thirteen
+hundred and fifty francs, or fifty-four pounds a year each, and for this
+had to be at the call of all the citizens of the state, to whom they
+rendered their services gratis.  The only patients who had to put their
+hands in their pockets were those who lived out of town, and they had
+also to provide conveyance.
+
+There was a judge who went on circuit, and he was chosen for a period of
+three years, but might be re-elected twice.  To meet these stupendous
+demands, which meant an expenditure of about three thousand pounds a
+year, the government raised a revenue by the profits upon the sale of
+tobacco and salt, these being, as in other parts of Italy, state
+monopolies.
+
+In addition to this a very small tax was levied on the landed
+proprietors, and the Italian government paid a sum of eighteen thousand
+francs a year, which was used for making roads, assisting the poor,
+giving aid in cases of loss by fire or misfortune, and repairing the
+public buildings.  This sum was paid by the Italian government for
+customs dues.
+
+Following his guide, Henty found the city to be a long narrow village on
+and below the crest of the cliff.  It was enclosed by a wall some
+twenty-five feet high, surmounted by numerous round bastions.  It showed
+every proof of having been very strong in former times, and even then,
+although the walls were very old and crumbling, it was evident that a
+thousand men could defend it for some time against a strong force, the
+rock falling so steeply away below it that it would be difficult to
+bring cannon to bear on it.  Within the walls the houses were all
+crowded together; the streets, although they all zigzagged upwards, were
+so steep that no horse could draw a vehicle up them.
+
+Among the antiquities of the place were the old Assembly Hall and the
+building which contained the rooms of the captain regent, displaying the
+arms of the republic--three towers with plumes on the tops and the motto
+"Libertas."  These towers represented the three which stood upon the
+highest points of the rocks.  The view from the summit of the rock was
+superb.  A thousand feet below lay the Burgo.  Beyond that for miles
+upon miles spread a gently undulating country, dotted with innumerable
+towns and villages, stretching away to the seashore.  To the north lay a
+perfectly flat marsh land through which the Po and Adige find their way
+into the sea, this--the Adriatic--looking like a blue wall dotted with
+white sails.  The guide assured the visitor that just before sunrise the
+mountains of Dalmatia, a hundred miles distant at least, were plainly
+visible.
+
+Away to the west the Apennines shut in the view.  Upon one of the spurs
+the castle of Saint Leon was visible, where the celebrated Cagliostro
+was imprisoned and died.
+
+Henty observed upon his descent to the gate of the tower six strong
+posts, four being placed to make a parallelogram with cross pieces at
+the top, to one of which was attached a windlass.  The remaining two
+posts were placed one in front and one behind, the whole suggesting the
+possibility that they had been used in former times in the defence of
+the tower.  On being questioned, however, the guide explained that they
+were used for a much more matter-of-fact purpose.  When oxen are being
+shoved they are not so calm and patient over the operation as a horse,
+generally objecting very strongly to the performance.  Hence they were
+driven in between the posts, ropes were fastened to the cross-bar on one
+side, these were attached to the windlass, and when this was turned, the
+bullock was swung up into the air, and his feet fastened to the posts in
+front and behind.
+
+It proved to be a delightful visit, the visitor ending by dining at a
+little auberge in the village at the foot of the hill, where to his
+surprise he found that they had an excellent cook.
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+A LAND OF MYSTERY.
+
+Henty, having been interested in mining early in life, was at any time
+eager to seize upon an opportunity to plunge into the bowels of the
+earth, and not long after he commenced as war correspondent to the
+_Standard_, that is, at the termination of the Italo-Austrian campaign,
+he took occasion when at Trieste to run up into the hill country for a
+few days and visit the three great sights of Carniola, namely, the
+Grotto of Adelsberg, the Lake of Zirknitz, and the quicksilver mines of
+Idria.
+
+Here the man who had studied mining in his youth with the possibility of
+succeeding to his father's industrial occupation was in his element, and
+showed himself ready to study the country with an open and receptive
+mind.  He was eager at once to investigate the mountainous and sterile
+country covered by the Alps and Tyrol, the vast forests and their
+timber, the transport, the burning of charcoal, and the general
+cheerlessness of a land of desolation often covered with huge boulders
+and scaurs of white stone.  Quite the geologist here, he notes the hard
+white limestone of the secondary formation, quarried extensively, being
+excellent for building, and known through Italy as Istrian marble.  He
+speaks of it as being the same stone which extends through Carniola and
+through Dalmatia into Greece, and here he seems to revel in a kind of
+exciting pleasure as he finds himself in a limestone formation somewhat
+similar to that of our own Derbyshire, asking to be explored and
+tempting him to excursions, honeycombed as it is with fissures and
+caverns.
+
+Probably in no tract of country of equal size in the world are there so
+many singular freaks of nature.  Rivers of navigable size and depth
+issue from its mountains--rivers which far surpass the subterranean
+streams of Central France--and these, after running for a few miles,
+enter a cavern and lose themselves as suddenly and mysteriously as they
+appeared.
+
+It is a land of mystery and wonder, and, as if the spirit were moving
+within him to store up his mind with the natural wonders for attractive
+stories to come, such as would in some form or another fascinate readers
+yet unborn, Henty, with great eagerness, embraced the opportunity here
+offered to explore a wild land of savage sterility, where, as if to be
+in keeping with the "crag, knoll, and mound confusedly hurled, the
+fragments of an earlier world," terrible tempests sweep with
+irresistible force.  In the fury which rages in this inhospitable
+region, horses and wagons are not infrequently hurled over precipices,
+and a foot passenger, surprised in one of the tempestuous mountain
+squalls, is forced to seek for shelter beneath the parapets that have
+been built along the road.
+
+Here he found that he was in a country where the railroads were
+protected by strong stone walls ten or twelve feet high, or equally
+lofty wooden palisading supported on both sides by massive struts, so as
+to afford some shelter to the passing trains which, when the gales are
+at their worst, are quite unable to pursue their journey.
+
+Here, too, the engineering difficulties encountered in the construction
+of one of the lines had the deepest interest for Henty as a mining
+engineer, for not only was he face to face with the difficulties of the
+making of the railroad, but also with those of obtaining a supply of
+water at the various stations.  Where the line ran, all was aridity and
+desolation.  The water was below, requiring the help of powerful engines
+to raise it, and aqueducts over the surface to bear it along, one of
+these water-bridges being twenty-five miles in length.  It was a very
+giant-land for a writer of fiction to fill with adventure.
+
+Passing through this country of desolation, he at last reached the
+well-named village of Adelsberg, which in a state of nature might very
+well have supplied the crags where the eagles built.  This he found a
+comfortable well-to-do village, Swiss-like in appearance, with its
+chalet style of architecture; but he was bent on the works of nature,
+and drove out to the famed Lake of Zirknitz, a piece of water that has
+obtained fame through its peculiar habit of quitting its bed once a year
+for a few weeks and so supplying the natives of those parts with an
+opportunity for growing a crop of coarse grass and millet before its
+return.  This is all a suggestion of the peculiar workings of the
+subterranean waters below, and the regularity is more or less wonderful.
+
+About midsummer the waters of the lake begin to shrink, growing lower
+and lower, and so rapidly that, after about twenty days in July, the
+lake is empty, remaining so till September or October, according to the
+season.  This is the rule; but as there is no rule without an exception,
+the lake sometimes remains full for three or four years together, to the
+great loss of the people of the stony neighbourhood, who depend upon the
+little crop of buckwheat and millet which they are able to grow in the
+muddy bed.  They also look forward to another harvest given to them when
+the water dries away; for, strange to state, at this time a plentiful
+supply of fish that flourish in the depths of the lake is left high and
+dry, and forms a portion of the natives' food.
+
+Knowing the character of the lake, Henty on his visit had looked forward
+to finding the place empty; but it presented no attraction for the
+visitor, appearing to be only an ordinary sheet of water some four miles
+long by three wide.  There were villages about its shores, and a few
+small islands dotted its surface; but no opportunity was afforded him of
+examining what to a mining engineer would have been a matter of intense
+interest, the natural machinery which operates in the remarkable process
+of emptying and refilling.  For above ground the lake has neither outlet
+nor inlet; but the limestone which forms its bed contains a number of
+funnel-shaped holes communicating with the vast caves, grottoes, and
+reservoirs in the mountains, by which the water enters or is drawn off.
+Some of these act as ebbing-pipes only; by others the water both enters
+and retires.
+
+Upon occasions when the lake is empty, and there has been a sudden storm
+in the mountains, the water pours into the dry bed with such wonderful
+force and rapidity that it is sometimes filled in twenty-four hours.
+The annual emptying of the lake, however, is observed almost as a fete
+by the surrounding villages.  The church announces the strange
+phenomenon, and the inhabitants become fishers for the nonce.  Nets are
+prepared, and every description of vessel is held ready for the capture
+of the fish left behind when the water retreats, the nets being
+principally used as the waters sink and the funnel-shaped holes can be
+reached by the fishermen, who endeavour to cover these orifices before
+the fish can descend through them into the natural reservoirs below.
+
+As the waters gradually disappear, a certain number of little pools are
+left, each being the property of one or other of the villages, and
+bearing its name.  These pools vary greatly in the extent of the harvest
+they yield the villagers.  One year a pool will contain cart-loads of
+fish, another year perhaps only a few dozen.
+
+Henty gives a most interesting account of the strange phenomenon, but
+says nothing respecting the quality of the fish, except such as is
+conveyed by the eagerness of the inhabitants to obtain this natural
+yielding of the lake.  They in all probability, however, belong to the
+_coregonus_ family, a kind of lake fish which in variety haunt the lakes
+of Central Europe, and which one can answer for being very good eating,
+a quality not often possessed by fresh-water fish.  In this case, as
+salt forms a large source of trade in the neighbourhood of Lake
+Zirknitz, the fish obtained from its waters most likely partake of the
+firmness and good qualities of those obtained from the sea.
+
+In this mountainous region Henty's observation was always busy, and he
+notes everything, not forgetting the accommodation.  He describes the
+inns as rude, but not uncomfortable, the cookery not bad, but considers
+the people display an undue affection for stewed apples, which they look
+upon as a vegetable to be consumed with meat of all kinds.
+
+He was much interested, too, in the custom of the villagers of keeping
+bees.  He noticed in some villages several long carts, upon each of
+which were placed some twenty or thirty bee-hives of the shape of
+fig-boxes, but about two feet and a half long by a foot wide and nine
+inches deep.  These hives are the property of various villagers, who
+club together, take a cart, and send it from place to place, so as to
+give the bees a fresh hunting-ground and a change of blossom for their
+supply.
+
+Of course it is in the nature of a bee to be busy.  Here they all seemed
+to be very active and hard at work, but they were rather a nuisance in
+the villages by reason of their numbers.  However, they seemed
+particularly good-tempered bees, a fact of which Henty gives an example,
+and were not so much a nuisance through offering injury as from their
+habit of clustering upon the grapes and other fruits exposed for sale.
+
+Henty says he remonstrated with a market woman, of whom he was willing
+to buy a bunch of grapes, when she held it out to him with eight or ten
+bees upon it, busily extracting honey, whereupon she laughed at him,
+picked the insects off with her fingers, and held them out to him to
+show that they were not disposed to use their stings even when roughly
+handled.  An interesting fact this in natural history, and one which
+Henty admired, though he preferred seeing it done with other fingers
+than his own, and was quite content that the woman should have a poor
+opinion of his personal courage.  But there are bees and bees, some more
+aggressive than others.
+
+We all know the qualities of our own native bee, and any bee-keeper,
+unless he has been stung frequently and become inured, will tell you
+that the bees imported of late years from Liguria, and now acclimatised,
+have a rather vicious disposition.
+
+These from the neighbourhood of Adelsberg are in all probability the
+reverse in character.  Certainly they seem to vary, for Henty describes
+the honey as by no means good, being very dark-coloured, and having a
+strong, unpleasant twang.  On the other hand, the flavour depends upon
+the neighbouring growth of flowers, and the taste may be given by some
+nectary common to the neighbourhood, possibly by what Henty describes
+when he says the fields were bright with purple crocus, which he had
+never before seen flowering at this time of year--October--evidently a
+mistake on his part, for the colchicum, the producer of the old-world
+remedy for gout.
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+A SUBTERRANEAN EXCURSION.
+
+The next day Henty started for his eagerly anticipated plunge into the
+far-famed Grotto of Adelsberg, and he frankly declares at once that
+there are some sights of which it is impossible by mere words to convey
+any adequate impression, and to do justice to which it would be
+necessary to combine the epithets and imagery of a dozen languages.
+
+"Foremost among these," he says, "is the Grotto of Adelsberg, and I had
+hardly entered it when I became painfully conscious that the idea with
+which I had come--namely, of writing a description which should give a
+vivid conception of the most beautiful and varied succession of grottoes
+in the world--was hopelessly beyond my powers."
+
+The entrance to the caverns is about a mile from Adelsberg, and a little
+way up the side of a limestone mountain whose strata dip at an angle of
+about forty-five degrees.  Immediately below the entrance a good-sized
+stream plunges into a low cavern and reappears only some ten miles
+distant in a direct line to the north.  But some idea of the actual
+course of this river may be gained from the fact that pieces of cork
+thrown in where the river disappears do not emerge again for twelve
+hours, which goes to prove that the distance they have travelled is more
+than double the above.  There are, it seems, two entrances, and in the
+one followed, the path at first led through a passage or corridor of no
+great length, and then opened suddenly into a noble cavern known as the
+"Dome."
+
+This was all that was known of the grottoes till the year 1819, when a
+workman accidentally destroyed a stalactite screen and discovered the
+entrance to the apparently illimitable series of caves beyond.  Of
+these, five miles in length have been explored; but the end has not been
+reached, and they extend for unknown distances in several directions.
+The effect of the Dome is superlatively grand.  It is three hundred feet
+in length and one hundred feet in height and width.  The sides are quite
+perpendicular, and at about half their height a natural gallery runs
+partially round them.  The view from this is magnificent in the extreme.
+The guides who accompanied the visitors placed candles at short
+intervals along the parapet, but their light barely pierced the gloomy
+expanse.  Upward the roof loomed dark and vague.  Beneath, the river,
+which had commenced its subterranean passage, rushed brawling among
+rocks, and was crossed by a wooden bridge lit up by two rows of candles,
+whose rays were reflected in broken flashes from the black tumbling
+water.
+
+At the extreme end of this vast hall a faint blue light showed where the
+daylight beyond struggled in at the outlet of the river cave.  Above and
+around the roar of the stream was re-echoed and answered by a thousand
+low reverberating murmurs.  The whole effect was ineffably solemn and
+awe-inspiring.  Henty and his companions having provided themselves with
+magnesium wire at Trieste, this was now used, and the effect was
+absolutely startling.  The light streamed out into the most distant
+recesses, the candles faded to dim red points, and the roof, which had
+before appeared of fabulous height, seemed now to be crushing down upon
+them, the stalactites of its rugged surface standing out clear and well
+defined.  Then, as the bright white light with its clouding smoke died
+out, the darkness deepened with oppressive heaviness.  Everything had
+been so grand, that it needed all the persuasions of the guide, who
+assured the party that far more beautiful things were to be seen beyond,
+before they could be induced to leave this spot and to ascend the steps
+which led to the entrance of the inner caves.
+
+The path which they followed then was upwards of three miles long, and
+so arranged that they returned by a different series of grottoes from
+those they had traversed.  The variety of scenery displayed in these
+three miles was extraordinary.  Sometimes the way contracted into low
+narrow passages, at others opened out into enormous halls.  Chambers and
+corridors, fairy grottoes and gloomy caves, alternated with each other,
+and the principal halls were popularly named the Ball-room, the
+Concert-room, and the Calvary.  The Ball-room was of nearly the same
+proportions as the Dome, except that the height was not so great, but
+its character was entirely different.  It was graceful and airy, and was
+apparently illuminated with numerous chandeliers.  The floor was
+perfectly smooth and level, and at one end an artificial orchestra had
+been erected in the midst of a group of crags and stalagmites.  This,
+once a year, is really used as a ball-room for a dance, to which
+thousands of the surrounding peasantry flock.  Nothing could be more
+beautiful than the way in which the walls are decked by nature.
+Everywhere from walls and roof depend masses of stalactites of the most
+graceful and elegant forms.  Floating draperies are festooned around.
+Filmy, semi-transparent veils seem to wave gently to and fro as they
+sparkle in the numerous lights.  Here appear drooping pendants and
+tapering spike-like projections; there, majestic pillars and clustering
+columns.
+
+The Concert-room is similar in character, but larger and narrower, and
+hence issued an immense and gloomy corridor more than a hundred feet
+high.  The floor was covered with masses of loose rock, whose huge and
+rugged shapes loomed, distorted and uncouth, in the faint light of the
+candles.
+
+From this abode of gloom they entered the Calvary, which appeared to be
+the largest of all the halls.  It must have been three hundred feet long
+and upwards of two hundred wide.  At one end rose a lofty heap of rocks
+that had fallen from the roof and been cemented together by stalagmites.
+It bore a resemblance to a great shrine, and was brilliantly
+illuminated, while the rest of the vast space lay in deep and mysterious
+shadow.  From the lower end, where the observers stood, the floor sloped
+steeply up.  It was composed of misshapen blocks of stone, for at some
+far-distant period the whole interior, now a flat bare surface, must
+have fallen with a mighty crash, brought down by the weight of the
+stalactites that had formed upon it.  That the catastrophe happened long
+ages since was evidenced by the fact that the whole floor was covered
+with stalagmites of various sizes and heights, which looked as though a
+forest of great pines had once grown there, till their trunks had been
+snapped short off by the swoop of some mighty whirlwind.
+
+There was a weird grandeur about this hall which was almost appalling,
+producing as it did questioning fancies respecting the possibility of a
+repetition of the old-world scene.
+
+In the corridors and caves that intervened between these principal
+chambers and halls there was an infinity of fantastic shapes, in which
+fancy could trace almost every known form.  A monstrous bee-hive, a
+Brobdingnagian tortoise, huge fallen trees covered with lichens growing
+rankly, half-rounded nodules, and great wart-like protuberances.  In one
+place the roof would be supported by Gothic columns, farther on by
+unshapely props and buttresses.  In one corner rough stems as of ivy
+seemed to be clinging to the wall, or the gnarled trunks of oaks thrust
+themselves up between the blocks.  Above one cave it seemed as if a
+great tree were growing, whose twining roots hung down from the roof.
+
+And so on, and so on, fancy helping the visitor to believe that he was
+gazing upon long ranges of organ pipes, upon stems of palm-trees with
+well-defined marks whence the broad leaves had sprouted, or upon
+basaltic columns, with wide steps slowly formed by ages, where water had
+trickled down.  Farther on, too, at intervals, creamy-red couches seemed
+to be temptingly placed, with folds of a soft white material thrown
+carelessly over them, while long flags and fringed draperies of
+admirable texture and design drooped down from chinks and crannies in
+the roof, as if to form decorations for some fete in the world of the
+gnomes.
+
+There was no end to the wonders wrought by nature's own sculptors--
+fonts, chalices, exquisitely chased imaged shrines, and strange
+confessionals; groups of statuary wrought in beauty, with roofs above
+covered with fretwork of the most delicate tracery; and in opposition
+there was the grotesque on every hand, with squat heathen idols, grim
+corbels, and in the darkness, with Dore-like effect, diabolical-looking
+creations or works as of some enchanter's wand.  In parts everything was
+so real, that it was impossible not to believe that that cascade,
+glistening as it did when the lights were turned upon it, was not deep
+water, but only stone, or that a fountain glittering with diamond spray
+in the passing light was not composed of liquid drops.
+
+In one cave the wall seemed to be hung in ruddy masses of stalactite of
+so truly a fleshy tint that they seemed to be palpably strips of flesh,
+which carried the spectator back to old classic readings and the legends
+of the Latin ancients.  For it seemed as if the cave might be the spot
+where Apollo had skinned Marsyas, and Henty listened as if expectant of
+hearing the sufferer's howls re-echo through the vast labyrinth.  For
+here seemed to hang his flesh--great strips of muscle and tendon, some
+looking cold and stiff, others soft and limp, with the glowing tint of
+life still warm upon them.  It was terribly real.
+
+Earthy solutions had stained some of the stalactites of a dirty grey
+hue, the material of the carbonate of lime being dull and coarse; but
+others again were white as alabaster, the carbonate giving place to the
+sulphate, and looking pure and semi-transparent.  In many places the
+surface of the deposit of lime, slowly formed of nature's great
+patience, was smooth as polished marble, while in other places,
+suggestive of the more ready work of heated springs of water charged
+with lime, the deposit was uneven as masses of coral.  The tints, too,
+varied from clear white to cream colour, orange, and red; and while in
+many places the drooping stalactites were dull and soft-looking, and
+reflected no light, in others they sparkled with myriads of coruscations
+as of diamonds, emeralds, and rubies; or rather, as they changed and
+flashed in the passing light, they resembled rocks over which a thin
+film of jewels was streaming, or a sudden blaze of sunshine upon hoar
+frost.
+
+And it was not only the eye that was dazzled and seemed to gather an
+imagination of its own; but there were wonders for the ear, for now and
+again there were hanging masses offering themselves to be struck,
+waiting there in the whispering silence of the vast halls of wonder, to
+give out a clear bell-like sound which varied from the sharp ring of a
+struck glass to the deep soft boom of some cathedral bell, the tone
+being invariably much purer and sweeter from the semi-transparent blocks
+than from those that were formed of material which was loose and coarse.
+
+Many of the caves that closely adjoined each other varied in the most
+extraordinary manner.  Some seemed to be dark and murky, suitable homes
+for gnomes and evil genii.  Misshapen monsters appeared to lurk, eerie
+and gruesome, in obscure corners; slimy and uncouth reptiles seemed to
+crawl and grovel in the damp mire, looking horribly real, though only
+fancy save in the solidity of stone.
+
+And then, gloomily seen on high, weird, shadowy creatures, dank and
+bat-like with their dusky wings, appeared to be hovering just beneath
+the roof, till a nameless horror seemed to pervade the gloomy
+atmosphere, and the imagination peopled the place with unearthly
+creatures which the mind refused to believe were illusory, so real were
+they in their stony extravagance; yet all were the work of nature,
+formed through the dark ages slowly, drop by drop.
+
+There they were in the dim nooks and recesses, seeming, as the smoking
+candles flickered upon their glistening surfaces, to beckon and grin,
+peering round twisted buttresses, gloating, vampire-like, on the
+passer-by from behind the fallen columns, and producing a shuddering
+horror, as they seemed to be only waiting till the visitors to these
+awful shades had passed before they sprang.
+
+It was here that even the brilliant rays of magnesium failed to dispel
+the gathered blackness, and the strange shapes stood out more spectral
+and awe-inspiring than before.  And it was water--water everywhere,
+drip, drip, drip, never ceasing--the hardest of hard water, that the
+most thirsty in these caverns would shrink from drinking, for he would
+know that he was sipping liquid stone, the stone that had built up
+everything around, and which would go on almost silently building fresh
+wonders until Time should be no more.  And in spite of the flash and
+brilliancy of beauty as opposed to the dull, glistening, slimy look of
+much of nature's work, there was something shuddering in its inspiration
+as he who gazed at the same time had what was going on conveyed to him
+through his ears--the drip of water never ceasing, and its feeble echoes
+seeming to rustle with mysterious whisper throughout these shadowy cells
+and proclaim the wonder-work in process of construction.
+
+It was with a strange feeling of relief that they passed on out of these
+awe-inspiring caverns into a region where, in delightful contrast, the
+eyes were welcomed with a sight of what could only be the
+dwelling-places of the inhabitants of a kind of fairyland.  Here all was
+graceful pinnacle, delicate spire, tapering point, and slender pillar,
+each frosted alike with silvery rime, which made the finger shrink when
+touching them; for it seemed, according to everyday knowledge, quite
+startling that these beautiful works of nature should feel cool and
+temperate; the visitor felt that they ought to sting the nerves with
+pain, for their sparkling effect looked so exactly as though it had been
+produced by frost.
+
+Icy, too, appeared much of the beauty now--the sparkling fairy couches
+spread with frosty lace, the gauzy floating folds encrusted with gems.
+Everywhere the lights flashed and glittered, refracted in a thousand
+colours; for here, too, seemed to be the caves of crystal-land, the
+homes of the water sprites who dwelt where water had now become pure,
+solid, and perfect for evermore, where water had become pure ice that
+was not cold, where even the floor was white sparkling sand scattered
+with gleaming shells, above which the water fays floated, and the sea
+sprites played and chased fish in the ice grottoes.
+
+Such were some of George Henty's impressions of the Grotto of Adelsberg,
+and he concludes by saying that any traveller who has ever had the
+opportunity of seeing that home of nature's wonders lit up as he had,
+would surely bear him out in saying that, so far from exaggerating, he
+has but touched upon a few of the varied and extraordinary beauties of
+the place.
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
+
+MINING FOR MERCURY.
+
+Still feeling his great interest in mining to an extent that makes one
+wonder that he did not make that pursuit the work of his life to the
+same extent as he made yachting the pleasure, Henty now made his way to
+Idria to make a careful examination of the quicksilver mines, the
+property of the Austrian government.  The journey was undertaken partly
+from its being likely to form an interesting letter, but still more
+probably from a desire to foster his own inclinations.  And no wonder!
+For it is not every man who could write in perfect sincerity, "My
+experience of mines is very extensive," and then go on to talk like a
+past master of mining in general, not in support of this assertion, but
+in proof of his general knowledge.
+
+Reaching the quicksilver mines, which are, as is probably known, very
+few and far between upon the face of the earth, he gives a thorough
+description of the place.  The workmen, he tells us, number some six
+hundred, the buildings connected with the mine are good and well kept,
+the posts and doors painted the familiar black and yellow of Austria,
+while the imperial arms, surmounted by the two crossed hammers, are
+fixed to the various offices.
+
+In old works accounts are given about condemnation to the quicksilver
+mines and the convict life of the unfortunates, but Henty's account of
+the place seems to prove everything to be very businesslike and
+matter-of-fact, and the old descriptions that blackened the
+administration would appear to have been extremely highly coloured.  The
+government has erected a theatre for the use of the workmen, and has in
+other ways laid itself out to study their comforts in a manner for which
+its habitual detractors would hardly have given it credit.
+
+The pay of the miners is about eightpence a day, apparently a very small
+sum, but which is above the average gain in a country where the
+necessaries of life are extremely cheap.  When they are ill, and this is
+not infrequently the case, for the fumes of mercury are extremely
+deleterious, they receive three-quarter pay, together with medicine and
+medical attendance, while they are provided for in old age.
+
+After this brief socio-political statement, the businesslike miner and
+student of geology speaks of the formation of the country where the
+mines are situated.  This is an oolite limestone, that is to say, the
+cream-coloured soft building stone so familiar in building, which
+hardens in time, and is generally dubbed Bath-stone.
+
+He was rather surprised that a quicksilver mine should be here, and he
+made a careful examination of the surface of the neighbourhood before
+descending, but could discover no signs of the existence of a mineral
+vein, and so felt at a loss to imagine what induced the original
+investigators to set to work at that particular spot.
+
+Here is his version of the old story which credits the discovery of
+quicksilver as being due to a barrel-maker who, after making a tub,
+placed it under a dropping spring to see if it would hold water.  When
+he came to look at it again, he found it contained what he took to be a
+certain amount of glistening water; but on attempting to move the tub,
+he discovered it to be so heavy that he could not lift it, the supposed
+water being the enormously heavy liquid, quicksilver.
+
+Henty also relates that a spring that arose in Idria had been observed
+to deposit in the hollows of the stone small quantities of quicksilver.
+This came to the notice of a merchant from Trieste, who happened to be
+stopping in the neighbourhood.  Being a business man whose head was
+screwed on the right way, he came to the conclusion that this
+quicksilver must issue from the rock in company with water, and that if
+he sank to a sufficient depth, the source from which the spring drew the
+mercury would be discovered.  Without any delay he obtained a grant from
+government, began to sink, and carried on quicksilver-mining for some
+years with success.  But it soon became evident to him that the primary
+source of the fluent metal was much deeper down, and to reach it much
+larger capital was required than he could command; so, still acting as
+the business man, he sold his works to the government, no doubt at an
+excellent profit, and by the government they have been carried on ever
+since.  They are now the richest and most extensive of any in Europe,
+with the exception only of those at Almaden, in Spain.
+
+Henty's stay in Idria was only short; but being furnished with a guide,
+and having put on the suit of miner's clothes provided for visitors, he
+commenced his descent.  This was made by means of a number of inclined
+shafts of admirable masonry, worked in a perfect oval, and about seven
+feet in height.  These can be best conceived by imagining a perfectly
+dry London sewer being placed nearly on end.  In these shafts small
+stone steps were formed, by which the descent was made without fatigue
+or difficulty.  He considered that these shafts were superior, both in
+arrangement and workmanship, to anything he had ever seen in his great
+experience.
+
+On descending he noticed that the mine was worked, to speak technically,
+in five levels, and that in some places the quicksilver was in the
+familiar glistening globules in a soft and partially decomposed state.
+But the greater portion occurred in the aforesaid limestone itself, and
+even where it was present in the enormous proportion of eighty per cent
+it was not visible; but the ore resembled very rich brown haematite
+ironstone.  In describing his visit, Henty goes on to write about the
+warmth of the atmosphere and the close mineral odour, and to relate how,
+in consequence of the deleterious mercurial fumes, the miners are unable
+to work in the richest parts for more than two hours at a time.
+
+He continues, then, quite as a man accustomed to inspecting mines,
+declaring that the timbering, i.e. the supports, of the levels,
+ventilation, and other arrangements of the mine are good.  But he never
+saw labour so completely thrown away in any undertaking of the kind he
+ever visited; for the miners were constantly employed upon poor
+barren-looking stuff, which the most unpractised mining man--including,
+of course, himself--might have seen would never lead to anything.  Had
+their work taken the shape of small galleries for exploration, it might
+have been explicable; but the men were almost all engaged in greatly
+widening previously-made passages where nothing whatever had been found,
+nor was likely to be.  He accounts for this, like a practical man, by
+supposing that, as a miner could only work for a few hours a week upon
+the rich spots, and as the management are obliged to keep a large
+succession of men for working continuously, they put the men to work in
+the barren places purely to keep them employed.
+
+Satisfied with his inspection, he at last made the ascent, coming up a
+nearly perpendicular shaft, worked by water-power, in the large and
+dirty basket in which the ore is lifted to the surface.  He then
+proceeded to the smelting-houses, where the quicksilver is extracted
+from the ore.  These were about a mile from the town; but the furnaces
+were not at work at that time of year--October--on account of the fumes
+thrown off being so extremely deleterious to vegetation and to the
+cattle which fed upon it, as in grazing they, of course, took up a
+certain amount of the mercury deposited upon the herbage.
+
+The smelting, or, as it might more properly be called, the distilling,
+of the mercury is only carried on in winter, when the fumes that escape
+from the furnaces fall upon the surface of the snow, which in that
+mountainous country covers the earth, and are washed away when the thaw
+comes in the spring.  The poorer ores are crushed under stamps, and the
+mineral is separated by dressing and shaking tables.  The richer stuff
+is at once carried to the furnaces, where it is roasted, and the
+mercurial fumes which are evolved by this process are collected in
+adjoining chambers.  Henty goes on, like a mining expert, to criticise
+the imperfect way in which the processes are carried out, adjudging that
+under better management the fumes which spread over the surrounding
+country would be far less noxious.
+
+The total amount of quicksilver produced by this one mine annually is
+about two thousand five hundred pounds, and this is exported in iron
+bottles for the use of the gold and silver mines of Mexico, Peru, and
+Brazil.
+
+Surprise was expressed at the commencement of this chapter that
+literature had not lost her able writer for boys by his being absorbed
+by the mining profession.  His remarks concerning miners gained from his
+own observation pretty well justify this comment, for, moralising upon
+the people under observation at the quicksilver mines of Idria, he says
+that among no class of the population of various countries is there so
+great a resemblance as between miners.  However the peasantry in general
+may attire themselves, the miner wears a universal garb.  He shaves
+closely, so that the dust and dirt, which his occupation involves, may
+be the more readily removed when he returns to the upper air; and if the
+workers in the lead-mines of the island of Sardinia (where he had been,
+to study them), the Slav from Illyria, the Frenchman, the Belgian, the
+Cornish, Welsh and Newcastle miner, with all of whom he had made
+acquaintance, were massed together, the shrewdest observer would be
+puzzled to separate the men belonging to the different nationalities.
+They wear the same coarse flannel attire; they have the same
+loosely-hung limbs, the same muscular development about the shoulders,
+and the same weakness of leg; their faces are uniformly pale and sallow
+from working in places where daylight never penetrates; they are hard
+drinkers, strong in their likes and dislikes, very independent, and
+great sticklers for their rights.
+
+Certainly, he continues, these Idrian miners are more fortunate in many
+respects than their fellows, for their houses are singularly large,
+clean, and commodious.  Their government lays a considerable extra tax
+upon wine, because its use is very hurtful to the men engaged in the
+mercury works, but its price does not prevent the miners from partaking
+of it freely.
+
+Henty slept in Idria but one night, and he found it very late before the
+little town settled into tranquillity.  Every time he closed his eyes
+and endeavoured to go to sleep, a burst of discordant singing from
+parties returning from wine-shops reminded him unpleasantly that miners
+will be miners all the world over.
+
+The next morning he left for Italy, and he amusingly describes his
+experiences of travel in a primitive conveyance hung very low, without
+any springs whatever.  This should have been drawn by a pair of horses,
+but was actually only drawn by a single beast trotting upon one side of
+the pole.  The shaking upon the rough road traversed was something
+terrible, and in the course of a six hours' journey he was rather glad
+of a rest of half an hour and a relief from the shaking.
+
+As the village inns were all alike, he describes one as a sample, in
+which he partook of some very weak, warm stuff which they called broth.
+The room set apart for the meal was low and whitewashed, crossed by the
+rough beams which supported the room above.  In one corner was an
+immense stove, five feet high and six feet square, covered with
+green-glazed earthenware tiles.  A seat ran round this, and upon the top
+a layer of maize was spread out to dry.  In another corner was a small
+cupboard.  But even there art was represented by roughly-coloured prints
+dealing with the Prodigal Son, in the attire of a Venetian senator of
+the Middle Ages.  There was a crucifix with a small lamp upon it, a
+great clock like those seen in English country cottages, with a
+preternaturally loud tick, and there was a strange-looking table, which
+he found upon examination was a paste-board and flour-bin combined.
+Three puppies and two kittens scampered and played about upon the floor,
+which was of stone, but beautifully clean.
+
+Reader, do you like struddle?  Most probably you are quite ignorant of
+what the question means.  Henty was in precisely the same mental
+condition when, after eating his soup, his hostess asked him if he would
+like some struddle.
+
+Henty assented, without having the slightest idea of what struddle might
+be, and the hostess brought in a plate of what resembled boiled
+three-corner puffs; but, though sweet, they were not triangular jam
+tarts, for the contents were principally onions and parsley, and quite
+uneatable.
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
+
+THE ABYSSINIAN CAMPAIGN.
+
+Henty was not one who, during a long life, indited many letters dealing
+with his ordinary social communings with his friends, from which
+chapters might be extracted concerning his thoughts upon political or
+social subjects, his leanings towards life in general, or his interest
+in some special subject.  He rarely wrote home save, as has been before
+said, to tell of the state of his health, referring those he loved to
+his long professional letters in the columns of the journal he
+represented.  But in justice to one of the most industrious of men, his
+family fared, as far as interesting and descriptive matter was
+concerned, much better than those connected with the most chatty of
+correspondents, who scatter manuscript as opposed to his print.
+
+Autobiographies are few.  There are plenty of the young and enthusiastic
+who begin life by writing a journal, but those who keep it up to the end
+are very, very rare.  Unconsciously, however, George Alfred Henty pretty
+well passed his days in writing his own life, and, as fate would have
+it, a life of the most stirring kind.
+
+The letters he did write to his colleagues upon business, those of a
+social nature, or on matters connected with some literary transaction to
+a fellow club member, as well as those between editor and contributor,
+or with the positions reversed, were always the same--written in a
+minute neat hand upon small note-paper and in violet ink.  But of the
+many possessed by the writer not one seems to contain material that
+would be interesting to the general reader.  Owing, perhaps, to their
+want of egotism, they do not tell their own tale of the man's nature one
+half so well as the columns he wrote during his long connection with the
+newspaper press.
+
+And thus it is that through his early manhood onward, through maturity
+to his thoroughly vigorous old age--if it can be termed old age when a
+man is robust and virile till beyond three-score years and ten--Henty's
+life formed so many chapters of energetic and active career, marked, as
+it were, by passages generally warlike, connected with the warfare of
+nations.
+
+At the time of which one is writing, that is, the year following the
+freeing of Italy, he spent much of his time making tentative unofficial
+efforts with his pen; but this was prior to the commencement of the long
+series of novels and stories written especially for the youth of
+England.  For the next year he began to devote considerable attention to
+his little yacht, finding exercise and refreshing peaceful life afloat.
+Yachting was the one hobby of his manhood, and a recreation in which he
+indulged himself at every opportunity, even to the very last.  In this
+way he recouped himself, and made up for the worry and excitement such
+as falls to the lot of a war correspondent, who is never free from the
+strain of thinking out what will be the most interesting thing to record
+among the many incidents occurring around him.  There is invariably
+anxiety about how to write and where to write, and when the account is
+written the additional worry of how to get in touch with the post and
+make sure that you have done everything possible to ensure the matter
+reaching its destination safely and expeditiously.
+
+The year's comparative rest that followed the adventures in Italy was
+needed, for Henty was awaking fully to the fact that a war
+correspondent's life makes a heavy drain upon the stored-up forces of
+the Bank of Life; and it must not be forgotten that his health exchequer
+in youth was at a very low ebb.
+
+It may have been instinct--the natural desire of the weak to gain
+strength--that induced Henty to direct his attention so much to the sea;
+and without doubt this favourite pursuit of yachting, which took him
+away from town life, from the strain of mind and the weary hours at the
+desk, to where he could breathe the free air of heaven and cast off
+care, strengthened him and prepared him for the next bout of duty that
+he would be called upon to undertake.
+
+It was just a year after the conclusion of the Italian war when he was
+called upon to gird himself for another period of active service, and
+leave civilised Europe for the heats and colds of semi-barbarous
+mountainous Africa.  The cry of the sufferers had awakened patient
+Britain to the fact that she could no longer stop her ears to the
+piteous plaint of the captives, no longer suffer the mocking insolence
+of the defiant ignorant ruler, King Theodore of Abyssinia; and Sir
+Robert Napier was preparing his forces for the invasion of that
+comparatively unknown and warlike land.
+
+All this is well-recorded history.  Henty's adventures begin with his
+start for the front, after reaching Bombay, where his first troubles
+commenced with the choice of attendants.  Servants swarmed, but
+experience seemed to show that it was considered the correct thing to
+hire oneself out to a master bound for Abyssinia, and, just before he
+left, to disappear with his purse and any handy portable property.
+
+Henty's first experience was with a mild Hindoo, who directly after fell
+sick, while this man's brother, engaged by a colleague, was at the last
+moment melted by the tears of an aged and despairing mother, and the two
+rogues decamped laden with plunder.
+
+This difficulty got over, necessaries were packed, and a vessel was
+chosen in which Henty and a friend were to sail in company with some of
+the troops.  They were a little disturbed, though, when they discovered
+that the only available bath below had to be removed to make room for
+three and a half tons of gunpowder.  It was a change which by no means
+added to their comfort or to their feelings of security.
+
+However, in spite of hindrances and delays, he, a brother special, and
+three officers made their start, choosing by preference to sleep on
+deck, partly because the nights _al fresco_ were delightful, though
+rather cold, but more on account of the imaginary dangers that might
+arise from the monsters which haunted the berths below.  It may have
+been the effect of imagination and extreme terror, but these creatures
+appeared to be as large as cats, and much quicker footed, probably from
+having more legs.  Their horns resembled those of bullocks, and in their
+utter fearlessness of man they attacked him ferociously.  Henty
+christens them vampires, though he does not record that they practised
+the bloodthirsty habits of those creatures, and then he comes down to
+plain fact and explains that his _betes noires_ answered to the common
+name of cockroach.
+
+One of his first experiences of sleeping on deck with his comrades was
+to be awakened by a splash of water in his face, and as the vessel was
+given to rolling he attributed this to spray; but only for an instant,
+for down came a rush of water as if emptied from a bucket.  In a moment
+he was upon his feet to begin dragging his bed over to leeward.  Then
+came a rude awakening to the fact that the splash and the bucketing were
+caused by rain, which raged down as if pumped by a hundred steam
+fire-engines.  There was nothing for it but to laugh, as the party
+gained the cabin floor drenched, and with their silken pyjamas clinging
+to their skins.
+
+The customary troubles on board the small vessel, laden to a great
+extent with heterogeneous stores, came to an end, but not without
+incident, for navigation in the Red Sea is a most intricate and
+dangerous business, as its western shore is studded with islands and
+coral reefs.
+
+The vessel was running along with a favourable breeze, and Henty had
+been watching the low shore with its stunted bushes and strange conical
+hills bearing a fantastic resemblance to hay-cocks, while a mighty range
+of mountains loomed up in the distance.  The outlook was interesting
+enough, for this was his first sight of Abyssinia; but then came a very
+narrow escape.  They were sauntering about, watching the land and
+listening to the calls of the sailor heaving the lead in the chains.
+First it was ten fathoms, then two minutes elapsed and the man cried
+five fathoms, whereupon a shout came from the captain: "Stop her!  Turn
+her astern!"  In the momentary pause of the beat of the screw the
+sailor's voice came again: "Two fathoms!"--a dire warning to those on
+board the steamer.
+
+But the screw had been reversed, and the yellow water was foaming round
+them, showing that the sand at the bottom of the shallow water was being
+churned up as the steamer, still forging more and more slowly ahead,
+came to a standstill.  Then the fact was patent that they were ashore;
+while thoughts of shipwreck began to be busy in the brain.
+
+The customary business of trying to get the vessel off ensued; orders
+flew about; the vessel was driven ahead, then astern; but she remained
+fast, and seemed to be moving only on a pivot.
+
+The troops and crew were ordered up and tramped here and there--marching
+aft, then forward, but without result.  They were run in a body from
+side to side, to give the vessel a rolling motion.  Still no result.
+Then another plan was tried, so as to loosen the craft from the clinging
+sand and work out a sort of channel; and this was managed by the
+soldiers running to one side and then jumping together, then back across
+the deck and jumping again, the effort being made by every active person
+on board, till it seemed as if all were engaged in a frantic war-dance.
+
+After this anchors were got out, and the men set to work at the capstan,
+the only result being that they seemed to be fishing for coral, pieces
+of which were dragged up looking ominously suggestive of what would
+happen if some of the glistening white dead rock pierced the vessel's
+skin.
+
+There seemed at last to be no chance of getting off unless a portion of
+the cargo were discharged.  Accordingly when an Arab dhow came into
+sight and dropped anchor, a bargain was made with the sheich, her
+captain, for him to come alongside and lighten the steamer by taking on
+board a portion of the cargo and the whole of the troops.  This, Eastern
+fashion, took an enormous amount of talking, and when all was settled it
+was found that the water was too shallow for the big dhow to come
+alongside, with the result that this expedient was given up.
+
+Then another dhow came and anchored at a short distance, presenting
+something novel to the traveller.  This vessel proved to be bound for
+their own port, namely, Annesley Bay, and it was laden with a portion of
+the transport that was to help the expedition across the wild country
+towards Magdala, to wit, a herd of no fewer than twenty-two camels.  The
+poor animals, the so-called ships of the desert, were packed together in
+a boat that did not look large enough to hold half that number.
+
+At last real help came within signalling distance, and this proved to be
+one of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's big steamers.  She had half
+of one of our regiments on board, and was towing a consort with the
+remaining half of the 33rd Regiment from Karachi.
+
+A boat was sent from the great steamer, and an officer came on board to
+examine the state of affairs.  He very soon came to the decision that
+the water was too shallow for his vessel, the _Salsette_, to come within
+towing distance.  As the grounded ship was in no danger, he was obliged
+to leave it to its fate; but to the great satisfaction of Henty and his
+colleague, on ascertaining their destination he offered them a passage
+for the rest of the way.  In due course they arrived very comfortably at
+the starting-point for the expedition.
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
+
+INCIDENTS OF TRANSPORT.
+
+There was plenty to see at the far-from-cheerful place which was to
+become the depot of troops and stores.  A pier was being run up for
+landing purposes, and vessels were discharging slowly, with the promise
+of a deadlock unless more convenience for landing the contents of the
+vessels that were lying idle was provided.
+
+To all intents and purposes they were at the edge of a desert, and here
+everything that was necessary for the expedition had to be landed.  An
+enclosure was filled with stacks of pressed hay for the mules and piles
+of grain and rice--goods that would be easily damaged, but were fairly
+safe, nevertheless, owing to being in a hot and comparatively rainless
+district.
+
+Besides the regular labourers that had been engaged, brightly clothed
+women, looking particularly picturesque, had been sent over from India
+on purpose to grind the corn for the troops.  Tents had arisen, forming
+quite a canvas town; and storehouses were being constructed by Chinese
+carpenters, so that the place was rapidly becoming busily populous.  In
+addition to those at the landing-place, clusters of tents were scattered
+within a circle of a mile, while the main camp of the expedition was a
+mile and a half inland, consequent upon the scarcity of water.  For at
+the beginning all living things, men and beasts, had to depend for the
+principal life-sustainer, water, on the supply obtained from the ships.
+Consequently every steamer in the harbour was at work night and day
+condensing, at a cost of twopence halfpenny a gallon for the coal
+consumed in the process.
+
+Henty's senses of sight and smell were offended as they had not been
+since the Crimea.  Dead mules, camels, and oxen lay everywhere about the
+shore, and attempts were being made to get rid of the offence by burning
+the carcasses.  Wherever the poor brutes were lately dead, vultures were
+congregated, many so gorged with flesh that they could hardly rise when
+approached, while others, where some poor beast had lately expired, were
+walking about at a distance, as if not quite certain that the animal was
+dead.
+
+It was a doleful picture--one of the accessories of the glories of war.
+Here and there half-starved mules were wandering about, their heads
+down, their ears drooping, and their eyes growing dim with the approach
+of death; others staggered down to where the sea rippled on the sands,
+and tasted again and again the briny water; while others still,
+half-maddened by the heat and thirst, drank copiously, to drop dead
+where they stood, or crawl away to die miserably in the low
+desolate-looking scrub.
+
+A man with a great love for domestic animals, Henty generally had about
+half-a-dozen dogs of the Scotch terrier and other breeds to share with
+him the quiet of his home study, supplemented by two or three cats which
+lived in fairly good harmony; the sight of these suffering dumb
+creatures therefore strongly moved his sympathies.
+
+Before his landing, his attention had been attracted by the cruel way in
+which the wretched, doleful camels were packed in the dhow, and the
+sight of these beasts of burden being disembarked drew his attention at
+once.
+
+The native boats could not get nearer than two or three hundred yards
+from the shore, for the water was not more than three or four feet deep,
+and into these shallows the poor brutes were dragged and thrust, when,
+dazed by the novel position, they for the most part lay down, their long
+necks raising their curious heads just above the surface, while they
+made no attempt to make for the land.  Some never did make any effort,
+and later their bodies would be seen drifting here and there, growing
+more buoyant under the hot sun as decomposition set in.  Others,
+however, struggled to within fifty yards of the shore before lying down,
+to look, with their erect necks and partly submerged bodies, just like
+gigantic waterfowl.  As for those that were driven ashore, want of food
+and the evil treatment received during their transit had reduced them to
+the most miserable plight.  Their bones were almost starting through
+their skins; and while at the best of times, when well fed and watered,
+a camel in its utterances is a most doleful, murmurous creature, these
+poor brutes lay as if dead upon the sand, uttering feebly the almost
+human moaning and complainings peculiar to their race.
+
+Whether from mismanagement or callous brutality, the treatment of the
+unfortunate mules and camels landed on these desolate shores was painful
+in the extreme, and droves of hundreds untended were wandering about,
+striving for a few days' existence by plucking scanty shoots, previous
+to sickening and dying.
+
+The scenes, Henty says, were frightful everywhere, but worst of all at
+the water-troughs, where the half-mad animals, especially the mules,
+struggled for a drink at a time when water was almost worth its weight
+in gold.  They fought wildly for a draught of that for which they were
+dying, biting and kicking till many of them in their weakness were
+knocked down and trampled to death, a fate which at least saved them
+from perishing miserably under their burdens upon the road.
+
+Thoroughly angered by the neglect, and in accordance with the intense
+desire of the practical man to have everything done orderly and well,
+Henty busied himself and inquired why these scattered mules were left
+untended, to learn that nearly the whole of the mule and camel drivers
+had deserted.  In fact, at the beginning of the arrangements in
+connection with the transport, everything seemed to have gone wrong.
+The mules and camels were dying of thirst and neglect; consequently the
+advance brigade could not be supplied with food.  Someone was in fault,
+but, as is often the case, the mistakes of one are visited upon no one
+knows how many.  But there, it is easy to find fault.
+
+It must have seemed almost bliss to get away from the misery and
+confusion in the neighbourhood of Annesley Bay.  At least there was the
+hope of ceasing to be tormented by the flies that were increasing and
+multiplying, as they did farther north in the old Pharaonic days.  There
+was the prospect of a weary desert journey over sand and rock, with a
+pause here and there where wells existed with their scanty supply of
+water, or others were being dug, but there was the promise of a
+pleasanter existence afterwards, since the camp station was nearly five
+hundred feet above sea-level, with a likelihood of comparative coolness.
+
+It was a long and dreary ride, with nature apparently against the
+intruders.  As a consequence, with animals as well as with man
+everything seemed to go wrong.  One of Henty's principal complaints was
+still of the flies, which he considered to be, up to the present, the
+greatest nuisance he had met with in Abyssinia.  He declared them to be
+as numerous and as irritating as they were in Egypt; but he consoled
+himself with the fact that they went to sleep when the sun set, and as
+there were no mosquitoes to take their place, he was able to sleep in
+tranquillity, that is to say, to lie down in the sand.  Water, of
+course, was too scarce for a wash; but here again there was
+consolation--a good shake on rising, and the dry clean sand all fell
+away.
+
+Still, there was a fresh anxiety for him in connection with the
+traveller's greatest worry, that is, luggage.  He was much troubled by
+the fact that the troop of mules which bore the officers' necessaries
+had not turned up, and one of the missing animals was the carrier of his
+own luggage and stores.
+
+On this march Henty had his first experience of the desert wells.  These
+wells were dug in the bed of what in the rainy season must have been a
+mighty torrent fifty yards wide.  He states that he had seen many
+singular scenes, but this was the strangest.  The wells were six in
+number, about a dozen feet across and as many deep.  All the water had
+to be raised in buckets by men standing upon wooden platforms who passed
+the full buckets from hand to hand.  The water was then emptied into
+earthen troughs, which soon became mud basins, and from these the
+animals were allowed to drink to the tune of a perpetual chant kept up
+by the natives, without which the latter seemed unable to work.
+
+Round the wells was a vast crowd of animals--flocks of goats and small
+sheep, strings of draught bullocks, mules, ponies, horses, and camels,
+and about them stood the regular inhabitants of the country in their
+scanty attire, armed with spears, swords like reaping-hooks, and heavy
+clubs.  The women among them were either draped in calico or
+picturesquely clothed in leather, and plentifully adorned with necklaces
+of seeds or shells.
+
+Here, too, the trouble with the thirsty animals was often terrible, the
+camels being especially unmanageable.  One of them, for instance,
+because its pack had slipped beneath it, began to utter strange uncouth
+cries, kicking and plunging wildly, until it started a stampede among
+the mules, many of which had probably never seen any of these ungainly
+beasts before.
+
+When matters settled down, the little party made for the commissariat
+tent to draw their rations, and here a religious trouble arose among
+some of the Parsee clerks of one of the departments.  They complained
+bitterly that there was no mutton, and that it was contrary to their
+religion to eat beef.  The commissariat officer regretted the
+circumstances, but pointed out that at present no sheep had been landed,
+while the small ovine animals of the country were mere skin and bone.
+
+Henty closes this little scene with the moral that Parsees should not go
+to war in a country where mutton is scarce, and he wonders how the
+Hindoo soldiers will manage to preserve their caste intact.
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
+
+EN ROUTE FOR MAGDALA.
+
+The famous march to Magdala had now begun, and Henty's recorded
+recollections are full of interest and observation.
+
+At one time he came upon a party of excited soldiers who had suddenly
+disturbed a troop of the great baboons which haunt the stony mountains,
+and, with visions of specimens flashing across his mind, he joined in
+the chase, revolver in hand, racing and climbing among impeding thorns,
+compared to which an English quickset hedge was nothing at all.  After a
+couple of hours' hunt, followed out as eagerly as when he was a boy, he
+found that the quarry was quite at home and that he was not, with the
+result that he thought he lost pounds in weight by his exertions, but
+that the toil did him good.
+
+Before the starting of the expedition, the press had been full of the
+predictions of the busybodies who know all about everything, and had
+prophesied that those who went were to die of fever, malaria, sunstroke,
+tsetse fly, guinea worm, tape-worm, and other maladies.  It was soon
+found, however, that everybody enjoyed vigorous health, and that though
+the army was in expectation of being hindered by, and of having to fight
+their way through, the forces of the petty kings or chiefs through whose
+countries they passed, very little of a serious nature occurred to
+hinder the advance to the stronghold of the stubborn monarch of
+Abyssinia.
+
+Nothing seems to have been too small for Henty's observation, and his
+letters to the journal he represented teem with references to the
+various objects that caught his eye.  At one time he was describing the
+appearance, uniforms, and physique of the Indian troops, the Beloochs,
+or the manners and customs of the scoundrelly camp-followers.  Then he
+would descend directly afterwards to such minor matters in natural
+history as the feeding habits of the sheep ticks, which in places
+swarmed.  In another place he discourses in a much more interesting
+fashion than a scientific student (for he omits the hard technical
+names) of the vegetation seen around, such as gigantic tulip trees, and
+a shrub of whose name he confesses his ignorance, though he considers it
+notable from the sprays resembling asparagus.  He is attracted by plants
+of the cactus tribe, particularly by one that spreads out a number of
+arms pointing upwards, making it resemble a gigantic cauliflower.  Then,
+evidently feeling doubtful about the suitability of so matter-of-fact a
+description, he makes a brave shot at the Latin name--almost the only
+one he records--the scientific italics, _Euphorbia candalabriensis_,
+looking novel and strange.  Later, with a frank display of doubt, he
+declares that he does not vouch for the correctness of this name.
+
+Onward still, hour by hour and day by day, we follow him, noting how
+eager and fresh he is in the morning, and how weary as the day's march
+approaches its end.  At these times we find him recording the
+unpleasantnesses of the route, such as the influence upon the atmosphere
+of the dead carcasses of the worn-out animals, from whose neighbourhood
+the great vultures rose lazily and wheel away.
+
+The heat of the sun was at times intense, but the nights were sometimes
+bitterly cold, too cold to sleep, and when at last sleep came, again and
+again the weary travellers were disturbed by the antics of one of the
+beasts that bear about the worst character of any that have been brought
+into domestic use, and whose obstinacy has become a proverb.  One of
+these mules would break loose from its head ropes, and, as if urged on
+by some malignant spirit of mischief, would nearly upset the tent by
+stumbling over the pegs and getting itself involved amongst the ropes,
+when, as if bitterly resenting the presence of their mischievous distant
+relative, the horses would seem perfectly savage, and threaten to break
+loose and stampede.  Four or five times in a night Henty or one of his
+colleagues would have to get up and go out in the cold to stone the
+brute, while the grooms, who were sleeping for mutual protection close
+to the horses' heads, and who were rolled up in their rugs, wonderful to
+state, heard nothing.
+
+But this was not the only manner in which the calm of the night's rest
+would be disturbed, for the black followers who acted as servants to the
+group of war correspondents seemed to have a natural proclivity for
+quarrelling among themselves, often rousing up their masters in alarm to
+find out what some outburst might mean.  Long after his return from
+Abyssinia, Henty would amuse his literary friends by chatting over these
+troubles of the night.
+
+As a change from this we find Henty noticing the beauty of the country,
+the picturesqueness of the narrow gorges through which they passed, and
+the profusion of wild figs, golden-blossomed laburnum, and acacias, the
+last white-flowered and with pods of the clearest carmine.  Getting now
+upon colour, he describes the beauty of the numerous humming-birds
+(query, sun-birds) and the gorgeous plumage of others of larger size
+that, startled by the strangeness of their visitors, perched at a short
+distance from the path.  Again, the descriptions of the brilliant
+butterflies which flitted here and there among the flowers are strongly
+suggestive of the observant boy longing for a net and a few cardboard
+boxes and pins.
+
+These charming rides had to give way to work of a very different nature,
+which included dismounting, leading their ponies, and preparing to
+ascend the mountain side; for the valleys and ravines gave way to steep
+tracks covered with boulders, the tropical valley with its beautiful
+foliage was succeeded by stunted pines, and the sappers were set busily
+at work forming a track of zigzags for the force to ascend.
+
+At times the store and ammunition-bearing mules had to ascend places as
+steep as flights of stairs, with the steps as much as three feet high;
+but, nothing daunted, the force pressed on.
+
+Later, an ambassador from one of the local kings, whose country was
+being traversed, met the advancing force, and it was considered an act
+of wisdom to give him a sample of what our well-drilled troops could do,
+in the way of a little sham-fight.  The display was so effectively
+carried out that this monarch considered it good policy not to support
+King Theodore with his army of seven thousand men.
+
+At the first camp among the mountains the native Abyssinians, led by
+curiosity, or possibly with other intentions if opportunity served,
+swarmed around, exciting Henty's interest in their swords and spears.
+Certain specimens he managed to secure (not those of the poorer classes,
+but those of costly silver), and these he afterwards hung upon the walls
+of his study at home.
+
+As compared with the slight bayonet of our men, fixed to the rifle
+barrel, the Abyssinians' spears were formidable weapons, from six to ten
+feet long, and weighted at the butt.  Their bearers could throw them
+over thirty yards with great force and with no little accuracy, while in
+a hand-to-hand fight, or when offering resistance to a charge, they were
+dangerous weapons in the grasp of an active man.
+
+At one time Henty records an unpleasant check to his proceedings in the
+shape of an order being promulgated that no correspondents were to
+accompany the expedition; but when another general took over the
+command, this embargo was removed, and we find him at the front again,
+after a long weary pause which had forced him into inactivity at the
+base.
+
+In spite of obstacles upon obstacles the troops were progressing.  The
+heavy guns surmounted the rugged mountain-paths, and the savage cruel
+tyrant passed from mocking defiance to alarm, as his scouts brought him
+tidings of the slow and determined march, higher and higher towards his
+stronghold, of the punitive force which conquered slowly and steadily
+every physical difficulty.
+
+Then there were rumours that King Theodore was beginning to repent, and
+that he was ready to give up his many prisoners, releasing them from
+their long captivity.  But the expedition still rolled onwards and
+upwards--cavalry, infantry, and the heavy and light mountain guns--ready
+to carry Magdala by _coup de main_ if it were feasible, or bring the
+tyrant into submission by a prolonged siege.
+
+Though everything seemed to be done very deliberately, the advance never
+stayed, with the troops still healthy and well, the losses only
+occurring among the transport animals as the result of accident, hard
+usage, and disease.  It was a varied little army which composed this
+expedition, horse and foot--light-mounted Hussars, sturdy infantry, and
+dark-browed men of India in their picturesque uniform,--green frocks,
+red sashes, and scarlet turbans.  The picturesque was not lacking,
+either, in the work of surmounting the stern rugged passes, where the
+engineer officers with their sappers cleverly and speedily constructed
+bridges over gully and gash.
+
+The progress by this time had become steady and methodical.  The losses
+were terrible, but fresh animals arrived to take the place of those
+which were swept away by disease.  The chief halts were made at the
+stations formed at the wells, many of the latter being constructed on
+the new ingenious principle which came into note at that time.  These
+wells were afterwards familiar at home as Abyssinian wells.  Thus
+slowly, but steadily, our lightly burdened troops continued on their
+way, each day bringing them nearer to where Theodore had gathered his
+forces in the mountain aerie, which he had believed impregnable.
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
+
+JOTTINGS BY THE WAY.
+
+During the advance Henty relates that three of the officers of the 4th
+Regiment of Foot were witnesses of a horribly barbarous custom practised
+among the natives of Abyssinia, a custom which shows the callousness of
+the natives to the sufferings of the animals in domestic use.  The
+practice was recorded by James Bruce as witnessed by him during his
+travels in Abyssinia, towards the end of the eighteenth century, in
+connection with his attempts to discover the sources of the Nile.  Upon
+his return, when he described the manners and customs of the people of
+Abyssinia, his narratives were received with mingled incredulity and
+ridicule, and the practice now in question was treated as an outrageous
+traveller's tale.  Certainly the problem whether nature would readily
+heal the wound described gave some excuse for want of faith in what
+approaches the marvellous.
+
+The operation described by Bruce, but which has been denied by all
+subsequent travellers, and by the Abyssinians themselves, probably
+through some feeling of shame at their own barbarity, was that of
+cutting a steak from the body of a living ox.  Our officers came upon
+the natives just as they were engaged in the act.  The unfortunate
+bullock was thrown down, and its four legs were tied together.  The
+operator then cut an incision near the spine, just behind the hip joint.
+Next, separating the skin from the flesh, he cut two other incisions at
+right angles to the first, this enabling him to lift up a flap of skin
+four or five inches square.  After this, by cutting with his knife
+diagonally, so as to pass the keen instrument partly under the skin, he
+cut out a lump of flesh larger in length and width than the flap of
+skin.  The hole made was then filled with a particular preparation, and
+the flap of skin was replaced and plastered over with mud.  Finally, the
+feet of the poor animal, which had kept up a low moaning while the
+operation was going on, were untied, and it was given a kick to make it
+get up.  It should be mentioned that the operator cut two or three
+gashes in the neighbourhood of the wound, apparently as a sign to show
+that the animal had been operated upon in that part.  The officers
+observed that several of the other cattle of the same herd were marked
+in a precisely similar manner.  It was remarked, too, that during the
+operation the poor animal bled very little, and half an hour afterwards
+was found walking about and feeding quietly.
+
+Anatomists have denied, Henty continues, the possibility of an animal
+being able to walk after such treatment; but here was the indisputable
+fact.  There is the possibility that the antiseptic nature of the huge
+plaster, used to fill up the vacancy from which the piece of flesh had
+been cut, was sufficient to make it heal in the pure clear air of
+mountain Africa.
+
+Fortunately, from our few losses--unfortunately, from a scientific point
+of view--we have no record of how clean-cut wounds in the human being
+fared in Abyssinia.  On the other hand, the rapid healing of flesh and
+muscle on the lofty tablelands of the Transvaal during the Boer War was
+almost marvellous.
+
+Everywhere on his way to the front Henty found something fresh to
+describe.  One day there was to be rocket practice, the operators being
+the Naval Brigade, with its frank-looking, free-and-easy Jacks, who were
+anxious to be ready to astonish the natives with their singular
+missiles.  There was not room in the valley where they were in camp, so
+the plan was tried of drawing the tubes up one hill and firing across to
+the next hill, about two thousand yards away.
+
+There were twelve mules, each with a tube and a supply of ninety
+rockets.  There were four men to each tube, besides the one who led the
+bearer.  At the word "Unload!" the tubes, each about three feet in
+length, were taken off the mules and arranged in line upon a sort of
+stand, with an elevator, which could be adjusted to any required angle.
+
+The order first given was to try ten degrees of elevation, and at the
+command "Fire!" a stickless rocket rushed from the tube like a firework,
+and buzzed through the air to the opposite hill.  Three rockets were
+fired at this elevation, and then three from an elevation of five
+degrees, all apparently passing to their mark in a way likely to strike
+terror into the hearts of the defenders of Magdala.
+
+These men of the Naval Rocket Brigade, who had come up to join the
+military, proved to be an admirable body of men, ready to endure fatigue
+and hardship with the good temper peculiar to sailors.  Contrary to what
+might have been expected, seeing how little marching a man-of-war's man
+is accustomed to get, they marched better than soldiers, and never fell
+out, even on the most fatiguing journeys.  Their quaint humour provided
+great amusement to the troops, and the way in which they talked to their
+mules, which they persisted in treating as ships, was irresistibly
+comic.
+
+Henty mentions one sailor who was leading a mule with a messmate walking
+behind, when they came to where a body of soldiers was stationed.  This
+did not seem to concern the sailors, who had been given orders to carry
+out, and so they went straight on.  "Hallo, Jack!" cried one of the
+soldiers good-humouredly.  "Where are you coming to?"
+
+"Coming?" said Jack.  "I ain't a-coming anywheres.  I am only towing the
+craft.  It's the chap behind who does the steering.  Ask him."  It was
+always the same with the tars.  The mule's halter was either the
+tow-rope or the painter.  They starboarded or ported their helm, tacked
+through a crowd, or wore the ship round, in a most amusing way.  On one
+occasion an officer called out: "Sergeant-major!"  There was no answer.
+"Sergeant-major!"  (louder).  Still no reply.  A third and still louder
+hail produced no response.  "Boatswain, I say, where _are_ you?"
+
+"Ay, ay, sir!" was the instant answer from the man who was close by, but
+who had quite forgotten that in the service ashore of the Rocket Brigade
+he took the new rank of Sergeant-major.
+
+The Jacks made curious friendships during the advance, and a good deal
+of comradeship soon existed between them and the Punjabis, although
+neither understood a word of the other's language.  During a halt the
+cheerful sailors would sometimes get up a dance to the music of the band
+of the soldiers from the Five Rivers Region.  The band played well,
+seated in a circle and looking extremely grave, while the sailors would
+stand up in couples or octettes and solemnly execute quadrilles,
+waltzes, and polkas, to the great astonishment of the natives, who
+crowded round looking on in wonder at what to them seemed a profound
+mystery.
+
+The Punjab Pioneers seem to have been a splendid regiment, and their
+services under their gallant major proved to be most valuable during the
+expedition, for their leader divined the spots where water ought to be
+found, and it was dug for until a gushing supply of the precious
+necessary was forthcoming.
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
+
+KING THEODORE AT BAY.
+
+At last the spot was reached where the army could take up its position
+to look across at Magdala, which appeared like a three-topped mountain
+with almost perpendicular sides.  And here the whole force rested and
+girded up their loins for the final struggle.
+
+The advance had been long and wearisome; but as soon as the men were
+refreshed by a rest all was excitement, and the next morning the troops
+were again in motion.  Henty started early in the full conviction that
+something would take place, while the men in his neighbourhood, who had
+been suffering after their last march the night before from want of
+water, were looking eagerly forward to reaching the welcome stream that
+could be seen flowing at the bottom of the ravine below.
+
+Here, however, came a disappointment.  There was abundance of water in a
+river eighty yards wide, and waist deep; but it was the colour of coffee
+with milk, and nearly opaque with mud.  In fact, it was like a dirty
+puddle in a London street just after being churned up by an omnibus.
+However, there was nothing for it.  All had a drink, and then the men
+filled their canteens before they prepared to wade across.
+
+Later, the heat was terrible.  Everyone was devoured with a burning
+thirst, and any money would have been given cheerfully for a drink of
+pure water.  When, that afternoon, a storm passed over, and they caught
+just the tail end of the rain which fell, Henty was glad to spread out
+his waterproof sheet, and he caught nearly half a pint of what he
+declared was the most refreshing draught he had ever tasted.
+
+Matters now grew very exciting.  Henty and his colleagues could see with
+their glasses the enemy's guns upon the fortifications, with
+artillerymen passing from gun to gun and loading them in succession.
+
+Behind the spectators the troops were still advancing.  The Naval Rocket
+Brigade emerged from the flat below and were joining the Punjabis, when,
+almost at the same moment, a dozen voices proclaimed that a large force
+was coming down the road from the fortress.  Glasses were turned in that
+direction, and a large body of horse and footmen were seen hurrying down
+pell-mell.  The question arose, did this mean a peaceful embassy or
+fighting?
+
+All doubt was soon at an end: a gun boomed, and a thirty-two pound shot
+struck the ground in front of the Indian troops.  It was war, then--
+defiance.  King Theodore meant to fight, but not within the walls of
+Magdala; he was coming out to engage the British forces in the open.
+
+The fight had begun; a steady fire was kept up from the fortress guns,
+and Henty says: "A prettier sight is seldom presented in warfare than
+that of the enemy's advance.  Some were in groups; some were in twos and
+threes; here and there galloped chiefs in their scarlet cloth robes.
+Many of those on foot were in scarlet and silk, and they came on at a
+run, the whole force advancing across the plain with incredible and
+alarming rapidity."  It was for some time doubtful whether they would
+not reach the brow of the little valley, along which the Rocket train
+was still coming in a long single file, before the infantry could arrive
+to check them.  After a few minutes, however, the infantry came up at
+the double, all their fatigue and thirst having vanished at the thought
+of a fight.
+
+Almost immediately the enemy had their first answer to the guns of the
+fortress in the shape of a rocket whizzing out upon the plain, for Jack
+was alive, and a cheer rang out as other rockets followed in rapid
+succession, making the Abyssinians stop short in utter astonishment at
+this novel way of making war.  But the chiefs urged them forward, and
+they advanced again, being now not more than five hundred yards from
+where Henty and his colleagues stood watching them.
+
+With his glass he could distinguish every feature, and as he looked at
+them advancing at a run with shield and spear, he could not help feeling
+pity for them, knowing what a terrible reception they were about to meet
+with; for in another minute our line of skirmishers had breasted the
+slope and opened a tremendous fire.
+
+The enemy, taken completely by surprise, paused, discharged their
+firearms, and then slowly and doggedly retreated, increasing their speed
+as they felt how hopeless was the struggle against antagonists who could
+pour in ten shots to their one.
+
+Meanwhile the infantry regiment advanced rapidly, driving the retreating
+men before them.  The native regiment followed up, and the lookers-on
+could see the battle was almost won, for the troops advanced so rapidly
+that the Abyssinians could not regain the road to the fortress, but,
+chased by the rockets, were driven to the right, away from Magdala.
+
+All this time the guns from the fortress kept up their fire upon the
+advancing line, but most of the shot went over the men's heads.  So bad
+was the aim of the king's gunners, that he himself was nearly killed
+while superintending the working of one of his big guns by his German
+prisoners.
+
+In another portion of the field a more desperate fight was being carried
+on by the defenders, and step by step Sir Robert Napier's forces were
+developing the attack.  The mountain train of steel guns got into
+position and sent in a terrific fire, speedily stopping the head of
+another of the enemy's columns, while the Punjabis poured in a withering
+fire and afterwards charged with the bayonet.  As a result King Theodore
+suffered a crushing defeat, for upwards of five thousand of his bravest
+soldiers had sallied out to the attack, while scarcely as many hundreds
+returned.
+
+All this took place in the midst of a tremendous thunderstorm, with the
+deep echoing roar of the thunder completely drowning the heavy rattle of
+musketry, the crack of the steel guns, and the boom of the enemy's heavy
+cannon upon the heights.
+
+A tremendous cheer rose from the whole British force as the enemy
+finally retired, and thus terminated one of the most decisive skirmishes
+which had perhaps ever occurred; it was memorable, too, as being the
+first encounter in which British troops ever used breech-loading rifles.
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN.
+
+THE FALL OF THE CURTAIN.
+
+The eventful day was now closing in, and everyone was glad to wrap
+himself in his wet blanket and to forget hunger and thirst for a while
+in sleep.  Strong bodies of troops were thrown out as pickets, and the
+men were under arms again at two in the morning, lest Theodore should
+renew his attack before daybreak.
+
+Then news was brought in that there was plenty of water to be had in a
+ravine near at hand, and the Indian bheestees were sent down with the
+water-skins, in company with soldiers with their canteens.  But the
+water was worse than any they had drunk before, for the place had been a
+camp of Theodore's army.  Numbers of animals, mules and cattle, had been
+slaughtered there; the stench was abominable, and the water nearly as
+much tainted as the atmosphere.  Still, there was no help for it; all
+had to drink the noxious fluid.  After obtaining a little food, Henty
+rode over to where he could leave his horse and go down into the ravine.
+Here fatigue parties were engaged in the work of burial; and in plain
+simple words Henty describes the scene as shocking--certainly his
+picture is too dreadful to be dwelt upon.
+
+In good time that morning there was a tremendous burst of cheering, for
+two of the prisoners had come in with proposals from the king; and the
+embassage reported that Theodore had returned after the battle to say to
+them with a noble simplicity: "My people have been out to fight yours.
+I thought I was a great man and knew how to fight.  I find I know
+nothing.  My best soldiers have been killed; the rest are scattered.  I
+will give in.  Go you into camp and make terms for me."
+
+There was something almost Scriptural in the tone of resignation these
+words breathed--words which invited the sympathy of all thinking men for
+the conquered.  But this feeling was deadened directly news arrived of
+the horrors that had taken place in Magdala on the very day before the
+arrival of the British.  Theodore had ordered all the European captives
+out to be witnesses of what he could do, and before their eyes he put to
+death three hundred and forty prisoners, many of whom he had kept in
+chains for years.  These included men, women, and little children.  They
+were brought out and thrown upon the ground, with their heads fastened
+down to their feet, and the brutal tyrant went among the helpless group
+and slashed right and left until he had killed a score or so.  Then,
+growing tired, he called out his musketeers and ordered them to fire
+upon the crowd, which they did until all were despatched, when their
+bodies were thrown over a precipice.  His usual modes of execution were
+the very refinement of cruelty, the sufferers being tortured and then
+left to die.
+
+With this knowledge Sir Robert Napier declined to grant any conditions
+whatever, demanding an instant surrender of the whole of the European
+prisoners and of the fortress, promising only that the king and his
+family should be honourably treated.
+
+The two captives who had borne the king's message returned with this
+answer, to come back in the afternoon with a message from Theodore
+begging that better terms might be offered him; but the general felt
+obliged to refuse, and the ambassadors departed once more amid the
+sorrowful anticipations of the camp.
+
+To the great joy of all, however, Mr Flad, one of the messengers, again
+came to camp with the joyful news that all the captives would be with
+them in an hour.  This proved correct, and with the exception of Mrs
+Flad and her children the whole of the captives were released.
+
+Meanwhile the king was allowed till noon the next day to surrender
+Magdala, otherwise the place would be stormed, and the making of
+scaling-ladders was begun; long bamboo dhooly poles were utilised for
+the sides, and handles of pickaxes for the rungs.
+
+Within the next few days Mrs Flad and her children were brought into
+camp, and several of the principal chiefs came in and showed that
+Theodore's strength was crumbling away, for they declared their
+willingness to surrender; but the king held out.  The storming parties
+were arranged, and the cavalry were sent out to cut off the tyrant's
+retreat.  Meanwhile a great exodus of the people was going on, the
+fortress being cleared of the non-combatants.
+
+During the attack which followed, while the garrison kept up a scattered
+fire with bullets, none of which reached our troops, there were not
+wanting signs to indicate the despair of the partly-forsaken monarch.
+Driven frantic by his position, the wretched man could be plainly seen
+galloping about with some half a dozen of his chiefs in a sort of
+aimless frenzy.
+
+At last the storming party advanced, the defenders of the gate were
+cleared away after a feeble defence, and the fighting was over, with no
+killed on the British side and only fifteen wounded.  The remaining
+inhabitants, rejoicing that the days of the tyranny were over, crowded
+out to offer the conquerors refreshing drink, while Theodore was
+discovered lying dead.
+
+Henty's task was done, and not choosing to wait for the slow return of
+the troops, he, together with three others, making with the ten
+servants, syces and mule-drivers, a formidable and well-armed little
+company, started on the way down.  It was a bold undertaking,
+nevertheless, for they had to pass through a disturbed country where
+convoys were being constantly attacked and muleteers murdered, and where
+scarcely a day passed without outrages being committed by the Gallas,
+the inhabitants of Northern Abyssinia, who were always upon plunder
+bent.
+
+Their servants were all armed with spears, the baggage mules were kept
+in close file, and Henty and another rode in front, the two others in
+the rear, with cocked rifles and revolvers ready to hand.  Owing to
+their state of preparedness, and the fierce look of the well-armed
+English leader, though they passed a party or two of sixty of the
+Gallas, equipped with spears and shields, and a desire to use the former
+if they had the chance, these rogues sneaked off among the bushes, and
+the war correspondent and his colleagues reached the depot and port in
+peace.  But not entirely, for, to use Henty's own words, "When coming
+down country from the Abyssinian business the Gallas stopped us on one
+occasion and proposed to loot the entire caravan, but I was able to
+half-choke the life out of the gentleman who tackled me personally."  In
+fact, the party had ample opportunity of realising the risk and danger
+to which a war correspondent is exposed.
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY.
+
+THE SUEZ CANAL.
+
+Upon Henty's return from the Abyssinian campaign in 1868 his active busy
+mind incited him to take a calm home rest from his warlike labours by
+writing one of his first books, based upon his correspondent letters,
+and entitled, _The March to Magdala_.  This, published towards the end
+of the year, was full of vigorous description, and as an epitome of the
+war it achieved a very fair success.  In addition it served to make the
+reading public better acquainted with a name already familiar to the
+newspaper world.
+
+Very shortly after this essay now, he wrote and sent out through the
+same publishers, Messrs. Tinsley Brothers, his second three-volume
+novel, _All but Lost_.  This was in 1869, and long before the days when
+he devoted himself to the young readers of his works of adventure.
+
+At the end of the year he undertook another expedition.  This, however,
+was of a peaceful nature, to wit, the task of describing the
+epoch-marking inauguration of M. Ferdinand de Lesseps's _magnum opus_,
+the Suez Canal.  It was a pleasant duty, for the correspondent was
+practically a privileged visitor, and one of the representatives of
+civilisation who had come to partake of Ismail Pasha's munificent
+hospitality, in company with other guests who may fairly be classed as
+representing "the world."
+
+He wrote a series of letters full of vivid word-painting, descriptive of
+Cairo _en fete_, of ball and banquet, of the illuminations, and of the
+state of the ancient city--of the Egypt where of old the children of
+Israel were enslaved, and helped to build the monuments which still
+remain.  He also touched on the homes which were raised and built with
+the straw-mingled clay that ages ago crumbled into dust, and is now
+being excavated and basket-borne to spread upon the agricultural land as
+an extra fertiliser of the almost too fertile earth.
+
+Henty had a great opportunity here for his descriptive pen, and his
+letters abound with pictures of the Aladdin-like state of the place, of
+the way in which money was lavished to provide a grand reception for
+empress and emperor, viceroy and prince, and the rest of the
+distinguished guests whom the Khedive delighted to honour.  Cairo
+presented such a scene, that the writer felt that he could readily
+imagine himself transported into the times of the _Arabian Nights_ as it
+might have been on the occasion of the marriage of Aladdin to the
+princess of his heart, one Badroulboudour.  The illuminations in the
+soft transparency of an Egyptian atmosphere presented a fairy-like
+aspect.  Flags of all nations hung perfectly still in the soft air, side
+by side with lanterns and decorations of a more national kind.  There
+were fireworks everywhere; rockets ascended with a hiss and roar in
+rapid succession, while dazzling fires of every hue that chemistry has
+won from earth's minerals threw broad floods of colour like nocturnal
+rainbows, only more iridescent in their mingling, along the street and
+across the square.  Noise was not wanting, for petards exploded with
+unpleasant frequency; and as the salvoes died out there was constantly
+arising the peculiar dull subdued roar of the thronging multitude in
+ecstasy at the unwonted sight.
+
+In the side streets the crowd was strangely novel to the eyes of the
+foreign visitor, and as carriages crowded with spectators made their way
+slowly through the throng of the ordinary Egyptian city dwellers,
+strongly reinforced by the inhabitants from all the country round, the
+eyes of the stranger were constantly attracted by the silent,
+solemn-looking, white-turbaned Mussulman, and the dark, blue-robed,
+muffled, and yashmak-wearing women--all eyes for the looker-on.  It was
+a strange and constant change from light to darkness in the generally
+ill-lit city.  One minute the spectator would be traversing a street
+that presented the appearance of a long ball-room, with lines of
+chandeliers running down the centre only a few paces apart.  From these
+hung festoons and garlands of coloured lamps, while several lines of
+lanterns ran along the houses on either side.  Then a few steps and the
+visitor plunged into a narrow way, sombre, suggestive, and gloomy,
+possibly illumined only by the glowworm-like rays of a single lamp, with
+a few slippered people hurrying softly, almost shadow-like, as they made
+their way towards the line of illuminations.
+
+In the brightly lighted streets the looker-on from any elevation gazed
+down upon a perfect sea of turbans and also at a long line of carriages,
+each preceded by its wand-bearing runners shouting boisterously to the
+crowd to clear the way.  It was one long festival for rich and poor
+alike, and the variety of the scene was wondrous.  The occupants of the
+carriages, whose drivers forced their way through the good-tempered
+crowd, were often the closely-veiled inhabitants of the harems of the
+rich, not as a rule the harem of the Eastern story, the word harem now
+more truly meaning simply the ordinary home.  But in many cases these
+were guarded jealously by attendant eunuchs, and preceded by runners
+bearing braziers or cressets of flaming wood.
+
+But the houses on either side were not occupied merely by flaming lamps,
+for from the latticed windows over the shops the female inhabitants of
+the city, eagerly throwing off the customary reserve, peered down upon
+the passing throng.  Colour in the lighted streets and diversity were
+everywhere in company with rampant irregularity, for each decorator had
+worked according to his own sweet will.  No two streets were alike
+either in occupants or in decoration.  Sombre and sordid buildings
+crowded close upon palaces, and while one street was dark and empty,
+with its sporadic lamps, the next was crowded with a dense mass
+listening to the plaintive music of the native bands discoursing wild
+and, possibly to the hearers, delicious strains, but strains containing
+too much bagpipe and cymbal for the foreign ear.  In another, as if it
+were some gigantic old-world fair, the merry-featured, strangely robed
+throng was clustering round a knot of dancing girls, Egyptian
+Terpsichoreans.  These displayed their ideas of the poetry of motion in
+a singularly wild and picturesque manner, and were evidently frantically
+admired by the holiday-keeping lookers-on.
+
+By way of change, after hours of wandering through the crowded and
+illuminated streets, Henty describes one of the palaces where the
+principal guests were accommodated by the Khedive.  This was reached
+after a quiet drive to its site, a short distance from the town.  Here
+in the soft darkness of the Egyptian night the illuminations were
+superb, and the description exemplifies the lavish recklessness of the
+host on behalf of his guests.  In front of the palace was a space
+forming a parallelogram of considerably over a quarter of a mile long by
+some three hundred yards wide.  This was surrounded by an arched
+trellis-work, resembling somewhat in its detail the delicate tracery of
+a cathedral cloister.  The wooden structure was literally covered upon
+both sides with illumination lanterns, and looked like some gnome or
+fairy fabric of fire.  Round it was a carriage drive which passed
+between it and the palace, and against the walls of the palace itself
+glittering lights were fixed in the same order as upon the wooden
+framework, so that to the spectator it was as if he gazed down a vista
+of two interminable walls of fire connected by arches of coloured lamps.
+The effect was exquisite, heightened as it was by the ascending rockets
+which burst and showered down coloured stars in constant succession.
+Pyrotechnic fires burned here and there, and threading as it were the
+falling stars, the strains of band after band of music blended their
+enchantment with the beauty of the scene.
+
+This is but a slight description of one of the many sights embraced by
+the enormous fete provided for the Khedive Ismail's world-invited
+guests, and picture after picture Henty painted of these scenes by night
+and by day.  He also visited the various points of interest in the
+neighbourhood, notably the Pyramids, going by the road to these ancient
+monuments which had been slave-constructed by order of the Khedive, as
+if in a fit of lavish recklessness he had determined to emulate the
+doings of some Pharaoh of old, so that his French empress visitor should
+have a special way made smooth across the desert to the old world-famous
+pyramidal tombs.  Visitor and special correspondent Henty was, but he
+spoke out as the quiet, thoughtful Englishman in translating the words
+of the wise old Orientals who thoughtfully shook their heads and added
+their quiet _Cui bono_? over the thriftless wanton expense.  There was
+banqueting and feasting, and all at a time when the treasury was
+depleted, when the civil and military forces had their payments in
+arrear, and when national debt heaped upon national debt.  All this
+could only end in the bankruptcy which too surely came.
+
+Most of this renowned spectacle was preliminary to the long-expected
+opening of the canal, and, ignoring the head-shaking of the thoughtful,
+the great mass of the light-hearted Egyptians, rich and poor alike, went
+to see and share in the festivity, and took no thought of the future.
+The world had come to see the opening of the canal, the finish of a
+stupendous undertaking, the inception of a clever western, but
+thoroughly Egyptian and Pharaoh-like in its audacity.  At last the
+shovel and basket of the drudging slaves as well as workers for hire,
+were cast aside, and the waters flowed through what American visitors
+sardonically styled "the ditch", opening nearly a hundred miles of
+waterway extending from Suez to Timsah, now re-christened, or
+Mahommedanised into Ismailia.  Along this "ditch" there was a grand
+procession of state barges, steam launches, and visitor-bearing craft,
+all made the more imposing by the presence of a squadron of British
+battleships, whose approach to the entrance with the saluting thunder of
+their great guns Henty dwells upon, though, apparently with a grim
+chuckle of British irony, he relates how two of the marine monsters got
+aground.
+
+The procession, however, seems to have been petty in comparison with the
+innate grandeur of M. de Lesseps's enterprise and what it meant to the
+future of the civilised world.  Later, as if to make up for his words
+respecting the grounding of the huge iron-clads, which were doomed to
+flounder like whales in a rivulet before they got off, Henty hastens to
+paint vividly and evidently with a feeling of pride the aspect of the
+ships of war of every European nation, the dark line of sailors who
+manned the yards, cheering vociferously, the clouds of powder smoke
+mingling with the volumes from the funnels drifting slowly across the
+water, the lofty lighthouse, and the populous town which had sprung up
+as if under the wand of a magician.  And that magician was M. de
+Lesseps, the sun of whose greatness sank in sadness years after, when,
+as if vaulting ambition had overleaped itself, he died half-forgotten
+and broken-hearted at the temporary failure of his other great venture,
+the canal to join Pacific and Atlantic, which, these many years after
+the great man's death, promises to be the accomplished fact of the
+twentieth century.
+
+George Henty was always a sailor at heart, and never happier than when,
+hatless in a brisk breeze, he was watching the easing off or the
+tightening of a sheet, while his hands played with the spokes of the
+wheel which governed a vessel's course.  So it is not surprising that in
+his description of the grand fetes and rejoicings over the opening of
+the canal he should find a businesslike corner at the bottom of one of
+his letters to talk about the chances of a vessel passing easily through
+the sand-bordered ribbon of water which joined the Mediterranean and Red
+Seas.  He says: "I have been favoured with a log of the soundings taken
+on board the _Cambria_ during her passage through the canal,"--he speaks
+like the man in his element--"and I am bound to say that they are far
+more favourable than from all other accounts I could have believed
+possible.  The total number of soundings were seventy-six.  They were
+taken, with the exception of the passage of the Bitter Lakes, during the
+whole passage at intervals of a nautical mile, and of the seventy-six
+soundings no fewer than fifty-six gave a depth of twenty-seven feet and
+over, while of the remaining twenty only four were below twenty-two
+feet, one only giving as little as nineteen feet of water.  This table
+of soundings shows that the canal is upon the average of a depth of
+twenty-six feet; and although it is unquestionable that the vessels
+drawing only eighteen feet did scrape the ground in several places
+during their passage, the soundings taken by Mr Ashbury showed that
+these must have been, with the exception of the lump of rock at
+Serapium, mere accidental mounds and banks which had been left in the
+process of dredging."
+
+And here, too, it will not be out of place to add a few words written
+after the inauguration, and _finis coronat opus_ had been added to
+Henty's descriptions of the great event.  Just overleaf it was the
+sailor speaking upon the achievement and the canal's possibilities of
+carrying out the objects for which it was designed.  He is now speaking
+as the thoughtful leader-writer, and somewhat in these words he begins
+to count the cost of the entertainment provided by the Khedive.
+"Admitting," he says, "that the cost of all this enterprise has been
+enormous, amounting as they say here to two millions sterling, to what
+good has this sum been spent?  For it is not the viceroy's private
+money, but the national revenue, and one feels in the position of the
+guests of the directors of some public company, One says, `Yes, it is a
+splendid banquet; but what will the unfortunate shareholders say?'  I
+can reply that the shareholders do not like it at all.  Why should
+French journalists, German professors, and English heads of chambers of
+commerce be taken up the Nile at the expense of the people of Egypt?"
+
+But it is only fair to say that this was not written in a grudging
+spirit, for Henty had found time to praise warmly the admirable
+management and kindly welcome given to the Khedive's guests, and his
+final remarks were veined with a feeling of sorrow that the hospitality
+should have been so profuse.
+
+At the dispersal of the crowd of visitors it seems as if it occurred to
+Henty that this would be a most favourable opportunity, after making
+himself acquainted with the land of the captivity and the ancient works
+in Egypt, to take in reverse the journey made of old in the days of
+famine, and visit the Holy Land.  This happy thought he put into
+execution, and making a tour through the Holy Land, he ended by visiting
+Jerusalem before his return to England.
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
+
+THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR.
+
+There was very little time for rest in this life of work between the
+Egyptian festivals, Eastern travel, and the terrible European disaster
+looming ahead, the crisis which culminated in the declaration of war
+between France and Germany in the June of the year following his return
+home.  But somehow or other, before starting for Berlin Henty contrived
+to have one of his first boys' books upon the stocks, and this was
+published at the end of that year--1870--during his absence.
+
+Meanwhile he started for the front, and on his way he writes: "We had a
+break of nearly two hours at Cologne before the departure of the train
+for Berlin.  Here for the first time I had before me the actual
+preparation for war.  In France, in Brussels, and at various stations
+along this line, soldiers in uniform had been conspicuously absent.
+Here they were everywhere busy.  Baggage wagons moved hither and thither
+loaded with stores; tumbrels with ammunition rumbled along the streets.
+Here was a company of soldiers each with two new needle-guns upon his
+shoulder; there another party was dragging stores in hand carts.  Going
+on to the bridge and looking down on to the river, I saw a steamer with
+some field-gun carriages packed on her deck, while a gang of men were
+loading her with countless coils of field-telegraph wire.  Upon the
+walls was a notice that two thousand labourers were required on the
+following day for work upon the fortifications.  Judging by the number
+of troops I saw about, the garrison of Cologne must at present be very
+large indeed, and every hour must increase it as the reserves flock in.
+All the young men are leaving."
+
+The waiter at the hotel where he dined, a delicate-looking young fellow,
+told him that he was off directly to join the infantry, while a comrade
+who came in to say good-bye was on the point of starting for the
+cavalry.  There was no brag or pretence of indifference about any of the
+young fellows.  The country required them, and they were perfectly ready
+to go, and, if necessary, to die for her.
+
+At the station the confusion was tremendous.  Trains had come in, and
+other trains were starting.  The one for Berlin was of enormous length,
+and literally crammed.  Cheers and counter cheers were being exchanged
+by the occupants and the people on the platform.  Hands and
+handkerchiefs waved adieux, which in many cases would be for long
+indeed.  There was but little weeping on the part of the women, of whom
+only a few were present.  No doubt they had wept over the parting ones,
+and blessed them when they left, remaining behind to pray rather than
+shake the confidence of their loved ones at the start.  As the train
+moved slowly out of the station, across the bridge, and out into the
+level country beyond, the darkness was falling and the mist rising; but
+on through the night they went, stopping occasionally, taking in men and
+more men, adding carriage after carriage to an already enormous length,
+until, had not the line been perfectly level, the two powerful
+locomotives could not have drawn the load.  Trains were waiting at the
+various junctions, all crowded, and at every halt, as daylight came,
+labourers were seen gathering to work upon the fortifications, showing
+that Germany meant to be fully prepared for the worst, while side by
+side with the manifold preparations for war there was smiling peace,
+with the crops extending as far as eye could reach.  The wheat was ripe
+and ready for the sickle, the oats and barley coming on, while the
+ground was covered with the blossoms of the poppy and the bright yellow
+of the lupins.  The crops were unusually heavy over the whole of
+Prussia, and there were to be no hands to gather them, save those of the
+women and old men, for the whole country was joining the ranks of the
+able-bodied and marching for the seat of war.
+
+At length he was in the city which the French anticipated entering when
+in their mad enthusiasm they paraded their own streets, shouting "A
+Berlin!" and from here, now grown to be one of the band of trusted war
+correspondents, Henty writes to the journal he was again representing of
+the wild state of confusion and growing excitement connected with the
+Prussian preparations.
+
+Matters, moreover, did not work easily for the war correspondent, for he
+had to pass his time in Berlin in a series of attempts to obtain
+permission to accompany the Prussian army to the front.  Delays and
+promises followed each other, and he was kept eager and fretting with
+disappointment like a hound in the leash, hoping and yet doubting, till
+at last all he could get was an official reply to his application,
+stating that it had been decided to follow the example of the French and
+refuse permission for correspondents to accompany the army, or even to
+hover after it to pick up information in the rear.
+
+To hesitate and not take action in some shape Henty felt might prove
+loss of time, and perhaps the missing of some vastly important piece of
+news for the journal he represented, and this at a time when rumour was
+quietly whispering that before long a mandate would be issued from
+head-quarters that postal as well as travelling communication would be
+almost entirely cut off.
+
+Henty was a thoughtful man of stern determination, and once he had made
+up his mind he satisfied himself by making a final application to the
+authorities.  All he could learn though was that his requests were under
+consideration, and that a decision would be given later.  This decision,
+he felt sure, would be in the negative, and he determined to return to
+England for the purpose of making a fresh start.
+
+He made for the station at once, to find that the difficulties had
+already begun.  A fierce struggle for tickets was going on among those
+who wished to leave the city, and he was informed by a clerk that
+tickets were only issued for a short distance on the way.  This, of
+course, meant that the railways were already in the hands of the
+government for the conveyance of troops, and pretty evident proofs of
+this change in the state of affairs were all around him in the shape of
+piled rifles ornamented with _pickelhaubes_, the spiked helmets of the
+Teutons.
+
+It would be of no use, he felt, to wait the pleasure of the stolid,
+head-shaking Germans, fretting and worrying, while possibly he would be
+receiving from his own head-quarters, from an angry editor, letters
+asking what he was about in keeping him waiting for that which is the
+very life-blood of a newspaper in time of war.
+
+It was all plain enough, that he had come to a wise decision.  The great
+dislocation of the German railway system had begun, and ordinary
+passengers were having to make way for the movements of troops.  In
+spite of his energy he was stopped again and again, before finally
+reaching Frankfort, whence he gained England, and in roundabout fashion
+crossed to France, where after endless difficulties he managed to get
+pretty close to the French army, and saw what he could of the war.
+
+During his enforced sojourn in Berlin, and while waiting impatiently for
+his official permit to accompany the German army, the soldier within him
+was not idle, and, doubtless with a map at hand, he began to make his
+notes, in the shape of a letter dwelling upon the position, and the
+possibilities of how the men would fight.  He dwelt upon the dash and go
+of the French in the role of invaders, and came to the conclusion that
+if France took the offensive, crossed the Rhine, and struck first at
+Stuttgart and then at Munich, the Prussians would be at their best, for
+they would be fighting in defence of their native soil.
+
+These conclusions were come to at a time when he was still waiting, for
+he writes: "To my application to be allowed to accompany the army I have
+as yet received no reply."  In the event of an acquiescence to his
+request, he says: "I shall have no further difficulty, but shall go
+where the army goes.  In the event of a refusal, my object will be to
+gain some central point and then wait events."
+
+All these surmises were followed by the stern refusal, as aforesaid,
+which turned him back, to learn afterwards how futile were the
+conclusions to which he had come, for, as will be well remembered, the
+battle-cry of the French, "A Berlin!" proved to be so much vanity, the
+Germans themselves assuming the offensive and sweeping everything before
+them almost from the first.
+
+Afterwards he was one of the lookers-on when maddened France was in the
+throes of those wild scenes which are history now--times of disorder and
+disorganisation, of brigades being marched here and there in purposeless
+movements until, when at last they did encounter their foe, defeat
+followed defeat; the civilised world meanwhile watching with bated
+breath for the next news of disaster till there came _la debacle_, the
+crowning horror of Sedan, and the surrender of the emperor.
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
+
+THE COMMUNE.
+
+Early in the year 1871, after the signature of peace, Henty in pursuit
+of his journalistic duties entered Paris, and during the wild days of
+its occupation by the Commune he passed a life of adventure of which
+volumes might be written, for, in brief, he saw all the fighting very
+closely.  It was a wild time, in which no man's life was safe, and in
+the absence of law and order an Englishman bound to investigate and
+report upon the proceedings of the ill-governed city dare hardly call
+his soul his own.
+
+During this period Henty's letters teem with information, all showing
+his keen observation of minutiae.  He describes the gathering and
+marching down the Rue de Rivoli of one of the first armies of the
+Commune, an army the more dangerous to the republic through so many
+trained fighting men of the regular army having joined its ranks.  The
+determination and hatred of the settled government of the motley company
+made up for their want of uniformity.  With respect to their weapons, he
+describes how a great many in the ranks, numbering in all some ten
+thousand, were armed with the chassepot rifle, but the majority had old
+muskets converted into snider breech-loaders, while a certain percentage
+had nothing better than the old muzzle-loader.  It was an armed mob,
+though mingled with it were battalions of the National Guard in the pay
+of the Commune.  Later, when encountering the forces of the regular
+army, the solidity of the much-talked-of fraternity was exemplified at
+the first encounter, for, amidst cries of "Vive la Republique!" and
+patriotic outbursts, one side would appeal to the other with a touching
+cry: "Surely you will not fire on your brethren!"  The answer to this
+would be a volley, with the weaker side making a rapid retreat in search
+of shelter.
+
+Henty was very soon saying to the newspaper he represented: "I write my
+daily letter in doubt as to whether it will ever come to hand.  The post
+has ceased to run, and we are cut off from all news from the provinces.
+The gates of Paris are closed, we are in a state of siege, and the
+passengers of such trains as are running are told that they will not be
+allowed to return."  The misery and suffering connected with the great
+siege were quite forgotten, the fighting began again, and once more the
+streets of the brilliant city were echoing with the rattle of musketry,
+a sound punctuated with the sharp thud of the field-pieces that were
+more and more brought into action, and whose shells in the early days
+had a startling effect upon the insurgent members of the Commune.  For
+Henty observed the steadiness of the National Guards, who remained at
+their posts and showed no signs of flinching, while on the other hand
+the inexperienced, undrilled men of the insurgent ranks were prone to
+throw themselves down flat in the road at each flash of a cannon and
+remain there until the shell had burst, perhaps three hundred yards
+away.
+
+In these early revolutionary days, sometimes a strong body of the
+Communists, in a state of wild excitement, would be on their way to
+attack the regulars and carry all before them, when one of the forts
+would open fire and send shells among them.  To use the writers words,
+"the effect was magical."  About one-half of the column "skedaddled back
+to Paris."  It was not a retreat; the war element had evaporated much
+more quickly than it had been generated, and doubtless if the leaders of
+law and order had been more energetic, the Commune would have been
+crushed in its infancy.  Indeed the men of the lower orders from the
+wildest parts of Paris were so utterly cowed, that they gave up their
+muskets, refusing to have any more to do with the business.  One man was
+heard to remark naively, "If you call this fighting, I have had enough
+of it," while one of the leaders of the mob, a self-dubbed general, an
+enthusiast and a fanatic, but a man of courage, a _rara avis_ in the
+party which his mania induced him to join, was seen no more.  Presumably
+he was shot, and died a soldier's death.  Throughout his descriptions of
+the fighting, of the firmness and pluck of the trained men, and of the
+cowardice and shuffling of the mob, eager for plunder and rapine if they
+could get the upper hand, and only too ready to escape into shelter,
+Henty seems to consider the Commune as a thing gone stark-staring mad,
+while its leaders were incited at this critical juncture by the
+ill-judged articles that fulminated in the Red Press.
+
+As an example of the state of affairs in these early days of the
+Commune, and of the way in which he did his duty as a correspondent,
+whatsoever the risk, Henty once related to a friend a couple of the most
+exciting incidents in his life, which took place soon after his arrival
+in Paris on account of the proclamation of the Commune.  The first
+occurred in the Place Vendome, which was being held by the National
+Guards, just at the time when the head-quarters of the Insurrection were
+at the Hotel de ville.  The latter had been strongly fortified with
+barricades and was held by thousands of the Communists, who had
+strengthened their position by a battery of field-pieces.  Matters had
+arrived at a pass when a strong feeling of bitterness existed between
+the body of order and those who were in favour of an entirely new form
+of government, and the general feeling prevailed that unless the
+insurgents realised the futility of their aims, bloodshed would ensue.
+In his search for information Henty had learned that the loyalists were
+about to make the first advances in the shape of a peaceful
+demonstration in order to point out that matters might be easily settled
+if the insurgents would listen to reason.  But on going into the streets
+and studying the appearance of the rough-looking mob that had gathered
+in the neighbourhood of the Hotel de ville, the result of this
+inspection was so unsatisfactory, that Henty felt full of doubt as to
+whether the peaceful demonstration would have a peaceful end.
+
+The demonstrators would have to come in procession down the Rue de la
+Paix, and, wishing to have a good view of what would take place, he
+chose a position near the Vendome Column, so as to see whether the body
+of Communists who held the place in military force would allow them to
+go by.  After a time the head of the procession was seen approaching.
+It appeared to be a well-dressed crowd selected for the occasion--people
+of repute, in black coats and top hats, many of them even in evening
+dress, and the most striking point of all, as evidence of their peaceful
+demonstration, was that they were all unarmed, while in their midst a
+white flag was carried, bearing the words, "Vive l'ordre!"
+
+Apparently the party, about five hundred strong, were members of the
+business classes, and in this form, that of a large deputation, they
+began to descend the Rue de la Paix.  But immediately upon this,
+indications as to what their reception was to be began to be heard.
+Directly after, sharp military commands rang out from the lines of the
+defenders who held the Hotel de ville, on the Place Vendome bugles were
+sounded, and a body of the National Guard advanced at the double and
+formed four deep across the end of the Rue de la Paix.  This thoroughly
+blocked farther advance, while, to form a reserve, the Place was
+occupied by a strong body of nearly three thousand National Guards, who
+stood looking calm and determined and ready to prevent the party of
+order from passing.  Looking more peaceful than ever, the demonstrators
+came steadily on without the slightest suggestion of military formation.
+
+Henty relates that he did not anticipate trouble, for he felt sure that
+the demonstrators would not attempt to force their way through the solid
+body of Communists, and, satisfied with his excellent position as
+spectator and gatherer of news, he stood fast.
+
+As the black-clothed body of men drew near the line of National Guards
+they began to wave their handkerchiefs, shouting, "Vive la Republique!"
+or "Vive l'ordre!" and then, seeing that the Communists stood firm, they
+distributed themselves across the street and began to enter into
+conversation.  They formed an irregular group some five or six feet
+deep, and everything appeared as if it would come to an amicable
+conclusion.  The excitement of the gathering of armed men had passed
+away, and nothing was heard but the murmur of conversation.  So far from
+anticipating danger, Henty had joined the demonstrators, and was
+standing in the second row facing the Communists, when all at once
+something occurred which was like the dropping of a spark into a heap of
+gunpowder.  A musket went off.  The Communist who held it had fired in
+the air, whether accidentally or of malice intent it is impossible to
+say.  The result was that, startled by the report, the lines of unarmed
+men who faced the Communists took a step or two backward; then, as if
+ashamed of their alarm, in the silence that followed, a cry arose that
+it was nothing, an accident, and directly after there was another shout,
+that of "Vive la Republique!"
+
+But the spark had fired the mass.  Another shot was fired.  A sensible
+and visible thrill ran through the front line of the Communists, they
+levelled their guns, and the next moment, as if without orders, they
+commenced a heavy fusillade upon the unarmed lines in front.  The French
+citizen who stood next to Henty, and with whom he had just been in
+conversation respecting the probable termination of the affair, fell
+dead at his feet, and many of those in the front row met the same fate,
+for they were so near the Communists that the hitter's muskets almost
+touched them when the firing began.
+
+There was utter paralysis for the moment, and then a wild rush began,
+men turning upon their heels and running straight up the Rue de la Paix
+along which they had approached, while others, Henty included, turned
+off to the right down the first street, a short distance from the
+entrance to the Square.  It was a state of wild excitement, a _sauve qui
+peut_, men stumbling and tripping over each other in their desperate
+haste to escape the storm of bullets that were whistling by them, too
+many of which reached their mark, probably without aim in the excitement
+of the discharge.  It was a matter of minutes, but the time seemed long
+enough before the angle of the street was turned and the retreating
+crowd were in comparative safety, though all were in full expectation,
+as they tore on, of hearing the Communists' advancing tramp and halt as
+they stopped to fire down the street.  This did not follow, for the
+insurgents were too busy in expending their cartridges upon the flying
+men who were running straight up the Rue de la Paix, giving Henty and
+those with him time to escape up the next street before they fired in
+their direction.  How many were killed was never exactly known, but it
+must certainly have been sixty or seventy; and he recalled, long years
+after, the rage of the peaceful demonstrators against their cowardly
+assailants.  This was undoubtedly the match that fired one of the long
+trains of disaster that ran through Paris during the holding of the
+Commune.
+
+It might have been supposed that, warned by the risk of mingling too
+much with the excited people, Henty would have held aloof and avoided
+too near proximity to the explosive race, ready to take fire without a
+moment's warning.  Yet his thirst for news would not allow him to stay
+in the background when information reached him a couple of days later of
+the possibility of there being a regular battle in the streets.
+
+At this time the quarter of the Bank was strongly held by the National
+Guard of that _arrondissement_, and every approach was thoroughly
+guarded.  A messenger came to Henty at the hotel where he was staying,
+with the information that the Communists were astir in earnest, and had
+sent two battalions of their infantry with a battery of artillery to
+seize the Mairie of the First Arrondissement.
+
+Hurrying off, he reached the entrance to the Place Saint Germain
+l'Auxerrois as the head of the column of Communists came up, to find
+themselves much in the same position as their victims of the peaceful
+demonstration had occupied two days before, for they were immediately
+facing a strong party of the National Guard, who were faithful to the
+body of order.  These men were drawn up eight deep across the street,
+the windows of the houses on either side were also filled with men who
+commanded the approach, while the main body of the Reserve occupied the
+Place.
+
+Everything looked threatening in the extreme, for upon this occasion it
+was not the armed against the unarmed, but two strong bodies of
+determined men face to face.  The Communists as they marched up filled
+the whole street; and while their officers advanced and began to parley,
+their battery of field-pieces was brought forward and took up position
+threateningly in front of the attacking party.
+
+There was an excited interval.  The defenders of the Mairie absolutely
+refused to give way, and the angry conference went on, for the
+Communists were determined to carry out the orders they had received
+from head-quarters and to obtain possession of the place.
+
+At length, after angry debate, fierce bluster began, and the commander
+of the Communist force shouted to the gunners in front to load with
+grape--an order which was immediately carried out.  Henty states that,
+in his eagerness to see and learn everything that passed, he was
+standing on the footway with a couple of civilians in a line with the
+officers parleying.  He now shifted his position a few yards to an open
+door leading into one of the houses, which was held by the party of
+order, so as to be able to rush into shelter when the first shot was
+fired.
+
+Still the excitement grew.  Nothing could have exceeded the calmness and
+determination of the defenders who stood facing the loaded cannon ten
+paces away.  Meanwhile, though, their comrades who occupied the houses
+on either side of the line had their pieces levelled in readiness to
+shoot down the artillerymen as soon as matters came to the worst and the
+officers in front had withdrawn from their conference.  So firm and
+commanding, indeed, was the position of the defenders, that Henty felt
+convinced that, in spite of the field-pieces, had the orders to fire
+come, although outnumbered by fully two to one, the scowling ruffians
+bent on advance would have been driven down the street, leaving their
+battery in the hands of their foe.  This, however, could only have been
+a short-lived success, for there were thousands of their comrades at the
+Communists' head-quarters, with several batteries of cannon.
+
+Be that as it may, the tension was extreme.  The defenders of the Mairie
+stood silent and waiting for the worst, whilst a roar of angry
+denunciations and revilings came from the Communists.  In spite of the
+threats levelled at them, the defenders of the Mairie stood fast,
+waiting for the orders to be given, and this without even attempting to
+load.  Their instructions were to fix bayonets ready for the order
+"Charge!" and there they stood with their pieces levelled, waiting for
+the signal before springing forward with a dash to clear the Place and
+street with the bayonet; the signal was understood to be the firing by
+the enemy of the first gun.  It was, as has been said, a time of extreme
+tension, and the firm aspect of the defenders had its effect upon the
+insurgent mob.
+
+The blustering on the part of the Communist officers was succeeded by
+thought.  These men, these leaders of the Communists, were the noisy
+demagogues and declaimers of the various cabarets; they were men
+selected not for political knowledge, nor for military instinct, nor for
+ability as men of brain, but entirely on account of their policy of
+bluster, their savageness of language, and their denunciation of
+everything that was opposed to decent policy and order; and now they
+felt that they were face to face with defeat and probably with their own
+death.  They were being put to the test, and it was no time for carrying
+matters with words.
+
+They gave a look round, and at the first glance saw muskets at all the
+windows aimed at them as well as at the gunners at their posts, and the
+sight of these menacing muzzles made such courage as they possessed
+begin to ooze.  They fully realised that their notion of being able to
+overawe the defenders by ordering the field-pieces to the front and
+having them charged was a failure, and they felt pretty certain that
+were a field-piece discharged they would be among the first of the
+victims of the defence.  Accordingly the leaders gathered together and
+exchanged whispers, the result of which was that the parley which had
+come to an end in a fierce bullying way was reopened in a much tamer
+spirit.  There was no shouting, no gesticulation, and at the end of a
+minute or two these self-constituted heroes of the moment issued fresh
+orders to their followers, with the result that the battery of
+field-pieces was run back about a hundred yards.  Henty and his
+companions, who were standing, as it were, strung up and waiting between
+two fires, now began to breathe again, seeing as they did that the
+threats of the Communists upon that occasion were empty wind, for the
+latter had backed down and dared not carry out their threats.  The
+struggle with all its horrors was averted for the time, and to the
+intense satisfaction of the civilian spectators, the Communist infantry
+fell back level with their guns; mounted officers who acted as
+aides-de-camp to the leaders of the enemy cantered to and fro to the
+Hotel de ville with messages and fresh orders, with the result at last
+that each party agreed to hold its own till after the elections that
+were about to take place.  Henty, who had stood fast through all,
+narrates that of all the episodes he witnessed during the Commune, these
+were the most exciting incidents through which he passed.
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
+
+THE VENDOME COLUMN.
+
+Of course there were patriots and patriots, but, as an observer, Henty's
+intercourse with those who vapoured under the self-assumed title seems
+to have aroused in him scarcely anything but scorn, and more than once
+he attaches the adjective drunken to the savage barricaders with whom he
+came in contact during his busy watching of proceedings and his visits
+to barricade and trench.  He describes vividly the state of the streets
+which had been under fire--shop fronts smashed in, windows shattered,
+gables and roofs riddled with shrapnel, trees splintered.  Every second
+lamp-post lay a battered wreck on the ground.  Here and there a yawning
+hole revealed a gas-pipe laid open.  In another place there would be a
+pit made as if by pickaxe and shovel, showing where a shell had plunged
+into the soil, and where the earth had been thrown up as if by some
+internal revulsion.  And everywhere, when firing had ceased, spectators
+collected to see what mischief had been done where shells had entered
+and shattered walls.  In one spot, where there was something to attract
+the curious seekers after novelty, upwards of fifty people had collected
+like a London crowd at an accident, risking their lives as they watched
+a foolhardy fellow who was digging out a bomb which had not exploded.
+It was exciting in the extreme, and the spice of danger added to the
+interest, though the people were so crowded together, that if, as the
+man dug, the bomb had exploded, the tale of killed and wounded must have
+been awful.  Shakespeare writes of him who gathered samphire half-way
+down the Dover cliffs, and speaks of it as "dreadful trade", and this
+man's occupation of gathering shells, though profitable, was full of
+risks.  Still it went on, and in spite of the horrors connected with
+these revolutionary times there were plenty of quick-witted men ready to
+speculate and take their chances of making an honest penny.  Planted in
+spots where they were out of fire, telescopes were propped up on the
+side-ways, offering views of the enemy at work in the forts.  There was
+a busy time, too, for the French representatives of the owners of
+Pantechnicon vans, which bulky vehicles were drawn up at many a door for
+the removal of the furniture where the houses were within reach of
+shells.
+
+Horrors were plentiful, and among the statistics gathered by the learned
+in such matters Henty mentions the fact that the mortality in the
+National Guard during this stupid civil war was greater in fifty days
+than for the entire period of the Prussian investment.
+
+A propos of the mock patriots of the Commune engaged in this imbecile
+insurrection, Henty with his military instincts and contempt for vanity
+has a word or two for a great soldier.  Bonaparte, he says, has left a
+name that is imperishable in the annals of his country.  He fought for
+France at the head of the French armies.  He was the idol of the people,
+and, dying, his last thoughts were of France.  "I desire," he said,
+"that my ashes shall be laid to repose on the banks of the Seine, in the
+midst of the people I love so well;" and his remains were brought back
+from Saint Helena to be interred as he had asked.  Yet his people
+assisted at the degradation of the memorial raised to his fame--not all
+the people, but the very dregs of it.  "I am no convert," says Henty,
+"to the faith of conquest as foreign policy, and an autocracy as the
+best of domestic governments, but I avow it did cost me, a stranger,
+something like a pang to see the Vendome Column fall down on a litter of
+stable dung, amidst the obscene ribaldry of a mock patriotic rabble and
+the unmusical fanfares of a make-believe soldiery.  Out of the purest
+love for the nations, they pretended this was done, and as a guage of
+amity to the world all round.  These hypocrites seized a moment when
+their country was prostrate and galled by defeat in a war with a foreign
+invader as the fit one to kindle the flames of civil war!  They profess
+that when they rule there shall be no more bloodshed.  It shall be the
+millennium.  And yet at the same moment they condemn the generals of the
+Second Empire for not having overwhelmed the hordes of the German army,
+and they press their own unwilling fellow-citizens, under pain of
+court-martial, to go into the ranks to slay or be slain by their
+brothers.  With all their declarations of attachment to the Goddess of
+Peace, they would be ready to bow to the popular clamour if it took up
+again the shout, `A Berlin!  A Berlin!' sooner than lose the power they
+have momentarily succeeded in: clutching within their grasp, and this
+while they jabber of despotism, and swear they have pulled over the
+pillar to Bonaparte because he was a despot.  The circumstance that the
+tricolour was hoisted on the column before it fell, and waved so that
+all might see it, is safe evidence that these ignorant Frenchmen knew
+not what they did.  For the tricolour is the national emblem, and these
+harlequins desired that this national symbol should go down into the
+dust with the emperor's statue before their sheet of unhallowed crimson.
+It was but a poor victory to raise the red flag of the Commune over the
+tricolour in the heart of the disarmed city, while the same red was
+retiring before the tricolour in the outskirts.  As I looked on at this
+sorry spectacle from the head of the Rue de la Paix, I overheard a
+Forfarshire man remark in Doric English to an acquaintance among the
+bystanders, `I am not sanguinary, but I own I would not weep if a volley
+were fired into those blackguards.'  Neither am I sanguinary, but I own
+I could almost sympathise with the Scotchman's wish.
+
+"As soon as this piece of vandalism had been perpetrated a picket of
+cavalry some score strong, which had been keeping the ground, trotted
+backwards and forwards for a few minutes to prevent the mass of
+spectators from pushing on to the scene where the colossal memorial in
+bronze and stone lay like a corpse.  When the crowd found there was no
+danger, it streamed along the thoroughfare, and the members of the
+Commune yielded to the desire of the public to walk by the fallen
+monument.  As soldiers are marched by the dead body of a comrade who has
+been shot, the Parisians that chose had the privilege of penetrating
+into the Place by batches, and leaning over the fallen Caesar.  National
+Guardsmen stood on either side on the top of the barricade, barring the
+entrance, and behind them on the crest of the work were ranged
+masquerading mariners, some with revolvers in their belts and cigars in
+their mouths, a few gaping miscreants in the uniform of soldiers of the
+line, and of course the Paris urchin with his bold, merry face, who
+turns up in every scene of popular commotion.  The base of the column
+was still erect on the Place, its jagged surface, where the shaft had
+broken off, covered over with plaster dust as if snow had fallen there
+recently.  Red flags had already been fixed on cross poles on the
+platform it afforded, and captains of the staff, with the inevitable
+vivandiere, lounged in graceful attitudes, looking on the world beneath
+from their novel and unaccustomed elevation.  The capital of the column
+seemed to have turned in the fall, for the figure of the emperor lay
+buried in the litter with the face to the sky."
+
+Some of those admitted to the spectacle of great Caesar low had the bad
+taste to spit on the face, thus proving how thoroughly justified was the
+English correspondent's feeling of utter scorn for mob patriotism.
+Henty ends his description of the fall with the words: "I should have
+mentioned that the only display of bunting in the Rue de la Paix during
+the fete of the rabble was on the houses of the British and American
+residents, and their flags were floating merely to signify that the
+property beneath was foreign.  One flag peculiarly suited to the Commune
+at the time was conspicuous by its absence--the black flag of death."
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
+
+THE DAYS OF REPRISAL.
+
+The day which marked the fall of the Vendome Column heralded the coming
+of the end, the termination of the short-lived triumph of the Commune.
+For the party of safety was fully awake now to the necessity of saving
+France from what threatened to prove a perhaps more bloody repetition of
+the Revolution of 1793.  MacMahon's commands came sharp and to the
+point, and every week made the position of the Communists so desperate,
+that it seemed as if in feline rage they had determined to die fighting,
+marking their end with every mischievous piece of destruction they could
+effect.  Hence it was that not only was fire set to buildings, but the
+destruction was rendered more furious by the application of mineral
+oils.  Civilisation shuddered as reports were sent in of the work of the
+petroleuses, which seemed to indicate that the fairest city of the world
+was doomed to become a heap of ashes.  In these latter days Henty writes
+that "never since the days of Saint Bartholomew has Paris passed through
+such a terrible twenty-four hours as those which I spent there.  I
+question if even that famous massacre was more terrible.  I do not
+remember the number of victims which history records to have fallen
+then, but since the troops entered Paris seven or eight thousand of the
+Communists were estimated to have been shot, and to this slaughter must
+be added the horrors of the conflagration.  To make a comparison, it was
+a mingling of the great Protestant massacre and the burning of Rome.
+The smoke of the blazing city, after hanging like a pall, as if to hide
+the horrors, drifted slowly away, and flakes of incandescent paper,
+which fluttered down in the suburbs as thick as snow, were some of them
+carried a distance of fifty miles away.  At this time it was apparently
+lawful for anyone to shoot his neighbour.  An unguarded word, a movement
+which an excited man might consider suspicious, and a cry was raised, `A
+Communist!'  The voice of the accused was drowned in the tumult, and the
+unfortunate man was lucky if he was not at once held up and shot by the
+first armed men who came upon the scene.  Innocent and guilty alike fell
+victims; and, as instancing the risk of strangers being about, two of
+our English officers, not being in uniform, had got as far as the Louvre
+just as the troops were about to advance against the Hotel de ville.
+They were at once seized and questioned.  The answer was: `We are
+English officers.  We have our papers to prove our position.'  The reply
+to this was: `Messieurs, we have no time to examine papers now.  Fall in
+behind, and if you attempt to escape you will be shot.'  There was
+nothing for it but to obey.  The regiment went off at the double; the
+officers followed.  Another regiment seeing these two officers in mufti
+running behind the troops, at once seized them.  Question and
+explanation were again postponed, for there was no time to talk.  `Put
+these fellows in front,' said an officer; and this time in front of the
+troops they went forward under a tremendous fire, until, the insurgents
+falling back, there was time to inspect papers.  This is the sort of
+thing," Henty concludes naively, "to which one was every moment exposed
+in Paris.  I can assure you that a special correspondent's duties were
+no sinecure."
+
+For the fighting in Paris was now going on more fiercely than ever.
+Grape-shot and shell from the batteries of field-pieces, from the
+various barricades and the forts engaged, worked dire havoc, and just at
+this time in particular, Henty relates the fact that from nearly every
+house and almost every window in the better streets hung the gay
+tricolour flag, in proof that the occupants were anti-Communists, and
+opposed to the red.  In the boulevards and elsewhere the openings,
+whether gratings or windows, were all covered up with heaps of wet sand
+or mud, or by tightly-fitting boards.  This precaution was taken on
+account of the fiendish women belonging to the Commune, who were going
+about pouring petroleum into the cellars and then throwing down lighted
+matches.  On one day alone, marked by fresh fires constantly breaking
+out, Henty saw lying on the pavement the bodies of two women, who had
+just been taken in their deadly pursuit and shot.  Six more were lying
+close to the ruins of the Palais Royal.  The death sentence had been
+promulgated by MacMahon, not only for the protection of the city, but of
+the lives of the troops as well, for the Communists were desperate, and
+again and again wires laid for communication with mines were torn up;
+this saved the principal buildings.  Despite all the horrors of
+destruction and the retribution that followed, it was necessary for
+orders to be issued as to the early closing of public buildings.
+Something had to be done to put an end to the sight-seeing of the people
+who were prowling about, eager to get a glimpse of a stray corpse or a
+pool of blood, or to follow the troops leading off a prisoner, man or
+woman, to be shot; any sensation, no matter how terrible, was followed
+up with the same eagerness with which at home in England people would
+hurry to a race meeting or to some royal event.
+
+That monstrous cataclysm, the Commune, was in its last throes, though
+dying hard.  Its lurid sun was setting in blood.  Retribution was
+falling heavily and sensational reports were in the air.  One of the
+Parisian papers that had shown a ghoul-like thirst for blood, and had
+exhibited the desire further to inflame the fury of the victorious
+party, asserted that a hundred and fifty firemen had been shot at
+Versailles on the date previous to its appearance.  This, on authority
+which Henty considered unimpeachable, was utterly false, for there had
+been no summary executions there.  Soon after, as a special
+correspondent, he had to read a communication addressed by a Frenchman
+to one of our English papers, charging his colleagues with exaggerating
+their accounts of the wholesale and summary executions which they
+witnessed, and with feeling undue compassion for the men, women, and
+children thus butchered.  In reply to this Henty says: "No correspondent
+that I am aware of has ever regarded as other than inevitable the fury
+of the troops whose duty it was to avenge the burning of the Tuileries
+and the murder of the hostages.  That they would give no quarter was
+what everyone supposed.  Such deeds done in hot blood, horrible as they
+may be to witness, are common incidents in warfare, and though the
+correspondents might regret to find a regular army so entirely beyond
+control, they would hardly be surprised.  But that which the
+correspondents saw with feelings of horror and disgust was people
+arrested on a mere hue and cry of their being insurgents or having
+thrown petroleum, and then dragged away amidst showers of blows from the
+ruffianly middle-class mob that had tamely put up with the Commune, and
+shot down like dogs.  To make my meaning clear, I will give you a couple
+of instances.  At the corner of one street there was a barricade.  The
+insurgents had run away when the troops came up and carried it.  It was
+not until the following morning that the neighbouring houses were
+searched for fugitives.  Six men, and a boy in the uniform of the
+National Guard, were found.  The men pleaded piteously for their lives;
+the boy, who had retained his musket, resisted to the last, and wounded
+two men before he was disarmed.  Then all the seven were put up against
+the barricade and shot.  This is bad, but it is not what my colleagues
+or myself mean by atrocious reprisals.  But what will the French writer
+of the letter to the English press say to this.  At a house in the
+Faubourg Saint Germain there was a native of Chaillot, who fled thither
+with his family to escape being forcibly incorporated in the troops of
+the Commune.  He had belonged to the National Guard during the first
+siege, and had retained the _kepi_ which most Frenchmen then wore.  The
+troops searched the house, dragged the man down into the street, and
+without listening to a word of explanation blew out his brains.  In the
+wholesale razzias that were made, prisoners overcome with fear and
+falling down from utter nervous exhaustion were dragged out, shot, and
+left lying in the road.  As regards the women supposed to be going about
+with bottles of petroleum to set houses on fire, all I can say is that I
+have seen what has made me understand the old cry of `A witch! a witch!'
+with us.  Any ugly old crone, who might be mingling with the crowd, was
+liable to instant execution, and many were thus butchered.  I will only
+add that so far as I have seen, the correspondents of the English press
+have rather underrated than overstated what took place, and so far as I
+am concerned, I have never reported what I did not see myself, and have
+even carried my scruples so far as not to mention the wholesale
+butcheries of which a well-known general was guilty, and from which a
+former officer in our artillery was rescued by something little short of
+a miracle.  As for the troops, they did not, that I ever saw, exhibit
+any ferocity.  They left that to the cowardly curs who were crying `Vive
+la Commune!' the very day before the Versaillais came in.  Had all the
+insurgents been put to death, I should not say a word.  Such atrocities
+are part of the business of war.  But what I do say is, that thousands
+have been sacrificed without their executioners taking the trouble to
+ascertain their identity.  The clamour of the mob was considered to be
+sufficient proof of guilt."
+
+Henty was very reticent about a good many of his adventures in Paris and
+just outside the Ville Lumiere during those days streaked with political
+trouble and dire calamity which followed the close of the war.  He
+looked on at the Commune just as a soldier thoroughly accustomed to
+_horrida bella_ might, and what is more, he saw through its egotism and
+hollow pretence, and criticised its _opera bouffe_ absurdities and its
+crimes.  When the Commune was at its height, however, he got out of
+Paris and set out to join the investing Versaillais.  From the vantage
+point of Meudon he and one or two other correspondents used to watch the
+firing of the Communists, and came to entertain a very poor opinion of
+it, except from a spectacular point of view.  To the uninitiated,
+shell-firing seems a form of warfare of the most deadly kind; but that
+is where the mistake comes in, for, as Henty says, "in no case is
+artillery fire really dangerous except at point-blank range."  With
+elevation, a shell, to do great damage, must "drop straight on top of
+you."  Then, of course, the effect is bad; otherwise there is a good
+deal of sound and fury signifying the vagaries of shells, and with a
+properly constituted "obus" the looker-on has time to decide, as he
+watches the firing, which way he had better go to avoid any unpleasant
+consequences.  Henty seems to have rather enjoyed the sensation, as a
+matter of fact, and he pricks the bubble--of the cannon's mouth, as it
+were--by destroying a popular delusion as to the awful results bound to
+follow from heavy shell-fire.  To read what he says, one is driven to
+the conclusion that the projectiles in question have been masquerading
+as far more dangerous than is really the case, in the same way as the
+Russian has built up a bogus reputation for fearsomeness on the strength
+of the big boots he wears.  "Why, in the Turco-Servian War," Henty
+writes, "I was with some four thousand men on a knoll twice the size of
+Lincoln's Inn Fields.  Into that space the enemy dropped three thousand
+shells in eight hours, and killed three or four men!"  One chance in a
+thousand was fairly small.
+
+But to return to that charming spot, Meudon, at the time when it was
+residentially risky.  What is the sensation like of being under fire?
+Henty, of course, was fortunately constituted, and did not mind little
+things.  "At first," he says, "you are too flustered to be really
+afraid, and when you get used to that you've got your business to think
+about.  You're there for a purpose, you must remember.  Besides, use
+enables one to estimate danger very quickly, and often that estimate
+reveals the fact that there is no danger at all."
+
+He gives a vividly interesting, and yet a matter-of-fact impression of
+watching shell-firing.  "When the flash showed at the far-off battery,
+one listened for the missile--that horrible whistle, growing louder and
+louder as the shell travelled towards one.  Until it was about thirty
+yards away it was impossible to tell whether it was coming within
+dangerous proximity or not.  Thirty yards off, the sound altered if it
+was moving at an angle that would carry it out of range.  If the sound
+didn't alter, one fell flat on one's face; if it did, one stood still.
+A matter of nerve, perhaps, but nerve backed up by knowledge."
+Familiarity, of course, produces an easier way of looking at such
+things, but viewed in this way the ordinary everyday idea of artillery
+fire has to be considerably altered.  Henty's observations might well be
+incorporated in some little manual on etiquette when meeting shells.
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.
+
+A WORD ABOUT POLITICS.
+
+It is impossible not to admire the single-mindedness and directness of
+purpose which characterise Henty's letters from Paris written at this
+period of dire trouble, when chapters which rival in tragedy and sadness
+any of those that have gone before were being added to the history of
+France.  He viewed this time of heart-stirring crisis in a
+matter-of-fact style, such as was to be expected from a man of his
+temperament and businesslike attributes.  He went straight forward with
+the work of the day, chronicling details which came under his notice,
+and keeping to hard plain facts at a time when visionary speculation was
+the rule, and when all those who followed the prodigious happenings in
+France were amazed and bewildered by the complexity of the situation,
+and by the startling suggestiveness of what the morrow might have in
+store for the high-strung and imaginative French people.  He kept
+sedulously to the point, despite of all, notwithstanding the rumours
+concerning what Thiers meant to do, and what Marshal MacMahon had said
+to the Comte de Chambord regarding the possibility of the latter being
+received at Versailles as "Henri Cinq."
+
+Outside the heated arena of politics in Paris there were all these
+larger issues of extreme importance, issues of such significance that
+they brought into the tumult of that day the quieter spirit of the old
+past.  At the dinner tables, and in the _salons_ of Paris, and elsewhere
+as well, even up to 1875, the talk was of the coming of Henry the Fifth,
+the king of the old line, the great-nephew of his majesty, Louis Seize,
+and of King Louis the Eighteenth, and the grandson of Charles the Tenth.
+Such an advent would have been in curious contrast to the wild
+"chicken-and-champagne" days of the corrupt and materialistic Second
+Empire, for the Comte de Chambord had lived in monastic seclusion ever
+since his protest in the early "fifties."  Maybe in his mimic court at
+Frohsdorff, surrounded by all the respect and divinity of a prince who
+represented an illustrious tradition, and who found in religion his
+greatest solace, the heir to the French crown was nearer to happiness
+than he would have been had he boldly come forward and assumed the reins
+of power, as he might have done had his character been of blunter fibre.
+If this had occurred, the change for Paris from the red dominion of the
+Commune to the white lilies, with all they signified, would have been
+another strikingly dramatic episode in the chronicles of France.
+
+All these things Henty saw and lived among at that time when people were
+disgusted with the preceding twenty years, and wished for something
+which was better and more earnest, though precisely what was desired it
+would be hard to say.  Side by side with rank, uncompromising Anarchism,
+were the echoes of an old and aristocratic regime, and learned theorists
+were busy weighing the various proposals in the balance, while a sort of
+hybrid military republic kept the lists.  And all this at a time when
+the streets of the capital were perhaps the most dangerous of any in the
+world, and social order had gone by the board.  At one time it really
+seemed as though the spirit of the older France would prevail, that
+certain incontestable rights would come up for final adjustment, and
+that a thread of policy, of which sight had been lost for some years,
+would be finally resumed.
+
+Vague speculation about matters which lay outside his immediate purview
+was, however, never Henty's method, but here and there a "newsy" item
+crops up in his correspondence, such as that the Prince of Orleans
+politely saw Thiers to his carriage, and that people were talking of the
+Duc d'Aumale, also that the Princes of Orleans, who had always followed
+social and military things rather than political, would abide by what
+France said.  Of course this was rather a doubtful policy, for France
+sometimes speaks with an uncertain voice.  The demagogue shouts enough
+for a hundred, but the silent thinker who disdains noise would be better
+worth hearing.  That Henty followed all these things we know, and his
+real views crop up here and there; but he was a narrator, not a
+commentator.  The empire was dead.  As an actual political power it died
+in 1867, and however much Napoleon the Third might protest against his
+deposition, the fact that he had finally lost the throne was there
+patent to all.  Even the statement of the astute M. Pietri, the
+secretary of the disinterested ex-monarch, that his master had not one
+centime in foreign funds, seems to have had no effect on the course of
+events.
+
+Henty was only a bird of passage, an observer of Paris during a few
+moments at a period when the influences of centuries were at work, and
+his was by no means exclusively a political view.  Empty theorising or
+the peering into empty houses did not lie his way; but maybe for this
+reason more than any other is it most interesting to con over his
+lengthy contributions to the newspapers of that time.  The almost
+photographic minutiae give the reader a vivid impression of the crucible
+period, for everything was in the course of remaking.  There was the
+first review after the Germans had packed up and gone away, the recoming
+of the martial spirit under the leadership of MacMahon, who turned in
+his saddle with a "There, gentlemen, what do you think of that?" as the
+battalions of cadets, the future officers of the armies of France, came
+swinging by before the staff and the foreign attaches.  There was the
+bright spot of the Belfort incident, when the devoted garrison marched
+out with all the honours of war.  It was a great and stirring time, when
+every moment was lived at fever heat; and Henty looked on as a soldier
+as well as a correspondent.
+
+Very soon the French were beginning to look up again.  "We have an army
+of 450,000 men," was the cry.  There were a few pride-saving laurels won
+in the defeat of the Commune, civil war though it was.  Then we see the
+recommencement of the social life of the capital.  Wonderful was the
+exhibition of recuperative power.  The broken bits of civic life were
+put together, and an order sent to the factories for a new outfit, as it
+were.  The Comedie Francaise Company toured in London, and refilled the
+empty exchequer; the loan necessary to pay off the more urgent demands
+was easily subscribed; and Henty fills in the picture with the unerring
+touch of a master hand.  It is a pen such as his--dispassionate,
+observing, restrained--on which the historian rightly relies.
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.
+
+ON THE LIFE OF A WAR CORRESPONDENT.
+
+Europe being once more at peace, with France settling down, Henty turned
+from fact to fiction, producing _The Young Settlers_, and later a book
+for boys, _The Young Franc Tireurs and their Adventures in the
+Franco-Prussian War_, the source of his inspiration being evident.
+
+Little more than a year though elapsed before the cry in the north and
+east was again havoc.  The dogs of war were let loose by Russia, and
+Henty's pen was again busy for his paper.  This was in connection with
+the restless Turkoman dwellers in Khiva, a name which brings up
+recollections of Captain Burnaby, who described his solitary ride to
+that city, and graphically narrated his extraordinary journey upon a
+camel in love.  Burnaby was a thorough specimen of the _beau sabreur_,
+as well set up and muscular as any Lifeguardsman (or Blue) in his
+regiment.  He was good company, and a very welcome guest at Henty's
+club, where he came one evening shortly before his departure for Egypt.
+His fate was that of a gallant soldier.  Dismounted, he stood warding
+off the spear-thrusts of the Mahdi's followers with his sword, what time
+they had succeeded in breaking the British square at Abu Klea, and he
+held them back until he received in his neck the fatal thrust which
+robbed the service of a brave soldier.
+
+Upon Henty's return from Russia the preparations for another campaign
+were not far distant, for the Ashanti expedition had been decided upon,
+and in September 1873 he sailed for Cape Coast Castle in the _Ambriz_,
+with Sir Garnet Wolseley.
+
+In speaking of a correspondent's duties he tells us how, when at home,
+he receives a telegram saying, "Come up to the office at once," he knows
+that it means that there is something serious on the way, and from
+general knowledge of what is going on abroad he is pretty well aware why
+his services are required.  On reaching the room of the manager of the
+newspaper, or that of the editor, he is told that he is to accompany
+this or that expedition, and most probably he is informed that he must
+be off the very next day.
+
+If the journey is by rail, it may be that it has to be commenced at
+once, or if by steamer, it may depend upon when the vessel starts east,
+west, north, or south, and he learns that it will be better to go and
+take his passage at once.
+
+If the conversation is with the editor, there are many things to be
+discussed, such as the length of the letters he is to send, the people
+he is to see; there is talk about passports, discussion on letters of
+recommendation, and hints about the political line he is to take, while
+various little ins and outs have to be dwelt upon.  In fact, editors
+have special ideas of their own, and often _in petto_ a disposition to
+come to conclusions as to what is about to take place.
+
+At the end of the business discussion the correspondent receives a big
+cheque, and what remains to do is soon got over.  The passage to
+wherever it may be is taken, and the adventurer--for such he is--hurries
+home to make the preparations which experience has taught him are
+necessary.  The fewer things he has to lumber himself with the better,
+but stern necessity has taught him that certain provisions must be made;
+and when a man has followed the head-quarters of an army time after
+time, he knows that he must have with him, to face heat, cold, and storm
+(often in extremes), a stock of clothes suitable for all climates,
+saddle and bridle of the best, revolvers, and a tent.  The reader may
+raise his eyebrows as he reads this list of "necessaries" and think of
+the amount of luggage.  Pooh!  One has not half done.  Our correspondent
+has to look after his health and strength, and the chances are many that
+he will starve if not provided for the worst.  He has to take cooking
+apparatus for field work.  He must be provided with waterproof sheets to
+spread on the damp ground and supplement the canvas of his tent.  He has
+to take a portable bed, three or four blankets, and much other
+impedimenta which experience has taught that he _must_ carry with him if
+he is to be in condition to write "good stuff" when he wants to commit
+the information he has learned to paper.
+
+With regard to Ashanti, Henty says in addressing an imaginary person who
+wants to know what it is to become a war correspondent: "You will
+probably pause, after visiting the bank, to buy a case or two of spirits
+and one of cocoa and milk, a few pounds of tea in a tin, and if you are
+a smoker--and I don't know any special correspondent who is not--a good
+supply of tobacco, also in tins."
+
+Then there is the health to be considered; and a man of experience knows
+how necessary it is to nip any threatening of disease in the bud.  He
+must take remedies which suit his constitution in an ordinary way, and
+certain others which are bound to be wanted by a man who is about to
+cross rivers and swamps, and force his way through tangled forest and
+the other strongholds of jungle and malarial fever.
+
+"Bless the old Jesuit fathers," he says, "for their grand discovery of
+quinine!" as he fortifies himself with that most wonderful of
+discoveries, as useful in India and in Africa as in South America, its
+ancient home.  He provides himself, too, with little blue hexagonal
+bottles of chlorodyne.  He takes aperients also, but not in paper boxes
+such as a doctor uses, with the contents to be taken two at bed-time,
+but safely garnered behind tin or glass to preserve them from the mould
+produced by damp.
+
+Then, too, there is the remedy against one of the most lowering of
+diseases, dysentery--ipecacuanha, and in addition, as a warming tonic, a
+bottle of essence of ginger, and another of that valuable corrective
+that is so strongly suggestive of a draught from a very soapy wash-tub,
+ammonia.  Thus provided with these absolute necessaries for use when the
+doctor is not within reach, he may feel that he has done what is
+necessary to guard against any trouble that may come.  And is that all?
+Not quite.  A war correspondent is a very expensive luxury to his
+employers, though the British public obtains the results of all that he
+has done for the homely penny.  He is a costly luxury, and he must be
+taken care of, even though his necessaries possess height, breadth, and
+weight.
+
+He receives hospitality and protection and permission to accompany an
+army, but this does not include anything in the nature of a tent.  "My
+own," says Henty, "which accompanied me in many campaigns, was about
+seven feet square.  It was a _tente d'abri_, to which had been added a
+lower flap about two feet high, giving it a height in the centre of some
+four feet and a half.  The two poles were joined like fishing-rods, and
+the whole affair packed up in a bag and weighed about thirty pounds.  Of
+course the bed was on the ground and occupied one side of the tent,
+serving as a sofa by day as well as a bed at night.  There was a passage
+left down the centre of the tent, whose other side was occupied by my
+trunks, which were, of course, small in size for facilities of
+transport.  Here, too, were my other paraphernalia."
+
+Thus provided for service in the field, the correspondent, as it will be
+seen, is pretty well burdened; but during his travels he is always
+independent, for he has a home where he can write and rest and recruit
+himself against hunger, albeit his cooking has to be done in the
+provided apparatus in the open air.
+
+For warmth in the bitter nights there is a watch-fire; but in some
+instances Henty depended upon his own natural warmth and a wonderful
+coat of sheep-skin tanned, with the thick wool on.  He sometimes came to
+the club in this in the winter, looking feet more in girth than was his
+natural size.
+
+One of the first things to be done on arriving at the scene of action is
+for the correspondent to apply at head-quarters for a form of permission
+to accompany the army, a general permission having been obtained from
+the home authorities before starting.  With regard to this, Henty did
+most of his campaigning in the days before generals had begun to grow
+more and more strict and reticent, until now they go so far as to refuse
+permission altogether.  In the case of the Russo-Japanese War, the
+British correspondents on the Japanese side were, in spite of every
+civility and attention, so hindered and obstructed, under the pretence
+of being protected from danger, that one of Henty's colleagues, E.F.
+Knight, gave up the duty in disgust.
+
+But to return to a war correspondent's necessities: his next task on
+reaching the front is to buy a good dependable horse to bear the saddle
+and to be guided by the bit and bridle with which he has come provided.
+In addition he should have a couple of ponies, or two of the patient but
+hardy obstinate animals known as mules, to bear the whole of his baggage
+and stores.  Lastly comes one of the most important businesses, that of
+hiring a couple of servants, one as personal attendant and general
+factotum, the other to attend to the horse and baggage-animals.  Great
+things often depend upon little, and there is a little matter called
+experience upon which depends not merely a man's comfort and
+convenience, but also the success or failure of his campaign.
+
+Henty praises warmly a class of men who seem to have devoted themselves
+to the profession of serving, and have earned for themselves the credit
+of being the best men for the purpose in the world.  These are the Goa
+Portuguese men, with European features, but looking as dark as other
+natives of India.  For many years they have been accustomed to furnish
+all ships trading in the East with stewards, and as a consequence most
+of them speak English fairly well.
+
+Henty speaks of having been fortunate enough to obtain two such men at
+different times--one accompanied him from Bombay on the Abyssinian
+expedition, the other on the Prince of Wales's tour through India.  Here
+is the admirable character he gives them: "Both were excellent fellows,
+always ready and willing, and absolutely uncomplaining whatever
+happened."  And much did happen, of course.
+
+To a young man of energy who longs to change some ordinary humdrum
+career for one of excitement, there is something wonderfully attractive
+in the career of a war correspondent.  Certainly the army always offers
+itself as a life full of wild episodes, but then there is something
+deterrent in the forced and severe discipline, as well as in the dangers
+which a soldier has to face.  The risks an energetic war correspondent
+takes are of course many, for he is often compelled to be under fire,
+and if matters are adverse he may be taken prisoner; but there is great
+attraction in being a witness of the moves in the great game of chess
+played by nations in stern reality, though there are innumerable
+troubles to be encountered that are terribly irritating in their
+pettiness, and this makes them seem exasperatingly far-reaching and
+vast.  For instance, it is maddening, when wearied out with a long day's
+march, to have to be called by necessity to help the baggage man in the
+constant readjustment of the animals' loads, which always seem to be
+slipping off through the ropes coming untied.  This is bad enough with
+ponies, but it is very much worse with mules.
+
+The Yankees have one particular way of tying the hide lariats, or ropes,
+that secure the burdens upon a mule's back.  This knot, or series of
+knots, they term the diamond hitch, perhaps from its value or its shape;
+both may be applicable.  The Goa men have ways of their own, but these
+grow useless with the cunning animals.  Sundry awkward packages have
+apparently been made perfectly secure on a mule's back, but almost
+directly afterwards they become loose, owing to the fact that the animal
+had swelled himself out when the ropes were being hauled tight, and then
+drawn himself in till everything seems to have shaken loose.  The whole
+burden then starts to slide sideways, and threatens to glide under the
+little brute, so that he begins to stumble and trip.  Much of this soon
+becomes galling to a weary man, and one has heard of people under such
+circumstances who vow that, as soon as they begin to pull upon the loose
+rope to make all taut again, a mule will draw back his lips and show his
+teeth in a hideous grin, as if he were looking upon the whole
+transaction as the best of fun.
+
+Then, too, there is the misery attending the arrival at the
+camping-ground and the selection of the place to set up the tent to make
+things comfortable, perhaps with the rain pouring down.  A pleasant
+accompaniment this last to the lighting of a fire and the cooking of a
+dinner, while ultimately the correspondent may be able to get no tent
+erected, and may be forced to lie down in the open, wrapped in a blanket
+and a waterproof sheet.
+
+This was not one of his troubles in the Abyssinian expedition, for there
+Henty encountered but little rain; but he and his companion, who
+represented the _Morning Post_ and who travelled with him, met with
+plenty of petty troubles consequent upon the behaviour of one of the
+servants, an Indian syce.  This fellow looked after the horses, but
+especially after himself, for he was always provided with the one great
+excuse to avoid his work, that he was not well.  He ended by coming one
+day to announce that Abyssinia did not agree with him, and that he must
+go down to the coast and return in some ship that was sailing for India.
+
+When accompanying a British force on an expedition like this, a
+correspondent is allowed to draw the same rations as those served out to
+officers and men--meat, biscuits, preserved vegetables, and a certain
+amount of tea and sugar--while in the Abyssinian campaign, possibly
+owing to the presence of a Naval Brigade, who worked the rockets, rum
+was served out regularly.  This, however, was given only very
+occasionally in Ashanti, where, Henty says, "it was much more necessary.
+A small quantity of spirits served out to be taken at the evening meal
+is considered a very great benefit to men who arrive utterly exhausted
+after their march in a tropical climate."
+
+Henty goes on to add that the meat served out in the Ashanti campaign
+was either that of some freshly-killed bullock which had accompanied the
+march day after day, and whose flesh was as tough as leather, or else it
+was tinned meat, upon which after a short time everyone looked with
+loathing.  This had to be washed down with a decoction of the commonest
+and worst tea, perhaps made with muddy water, and to an exhausted man it
+was well nigh impossible.  But in that awful climate the addition of a
+small quantity of spirits to the tea acted as a restorative, giving the
+stomach a fillip, and enabling the food to be eaten and digested.
+
+Fortunately, upon the Ashanti expedition the correspondents had clubbed
+together and taken with them a small supply of wine, which proved
+invaluable in bracing them up to do their work, when but for it they
+would have been incapable of doing anything at the end of some of the
+specially hard and exhausting marches.  It was to this claret that Henty
+largely attributed the preservation of his health, when so many not thus
+provided were prostrated by the deadly effects of the climate.
+
+In a hot country like Ashanti it might have been supposed that native
+fruits and vegetables would be plentiful and easily to be purchased of
+the people at the various villages; but nothing of the kind was
+obtainable, and the correspondents had to depend entirely on the stores
+they carried with them upon their ponies or mules.  The commissariat
+supply was not abundant or appetising: for breakfast, oatmeal, eaten
+with preserved milk; but before that, at daybreak, they always contrived
+a cup of chocolate and milk.  Dinner consisted of a banquet of tinned
+rations and preserved vegetables, made eatable by being flavoured with
+Worcester sauce or pickles, and when things were at the worst and
+appetite rebelled, there was an occasional addition of boiled rice with
+preserved fruit from their stores.  Altogether, the weary correspondents
+were so lowered by exhaustion that they came to look upon their meals
+with utter disgust, consequent upon the heat and terrible nature of a
+climate which, higher up at the coast, was looked upon by old writers as
+the white man's grave.
+
+Matters were very different in the breezy, bright uplands of Abyssinia,
+where, owing to the difficulties of carriage, the correspondents were
+only allowed to carry with them a very small quantity of stores.  Here,
+however, they were generally able to eke out their rations by making
+purchases from the natives, who, as soon as they found that they could
+receive honourable treatment in the way of payment, and that they were
+not dealing with an invading army who confiscated everything in the way
+of food, began to bring to market capital additions to the
+correspondents' fare.  Now it would be eggs, now chickens, or the meals
+were truly sweetened by the contents of a jar of honey.  It was a land,
+too, of flocks of sheep, which were purchased by the commissariat, and
+the heads, which were looked upon by the officers who superintended the
+rations as what is technically termed "offal", and not to be served out
+as rations, could often be obtained by the correspondents' cook.  He was
+able to make of them a dainty dish, although he had probably never heard
+the Scotchman's remark that there was "a deal of meescellaneous feeding"
+in a good sheep's head.
+
+There was shooting, too, with an occasional present of guinea-fowls or a
+hare shot by friends; and on these occasions they generally had a small
+dinner party.  So famous was the cooking of their servants, that one
+day, when Lord Napier asked Henty and his companion to dine with him he
+said: "You will have to put up with plain fare for once, for my staff
+tell me that when any of them dine with you they fare infinitely better
+than they do with me."
+
+Henty gives an example of one of the menus on a festive occasion: Soup;
+slices of sheep's face, grilled with the tongue, and brain sauce; a
+joint of mutton, jugged hare; and an omelette with honey--a proof that
+during the Abyssinian expedition the special correspondents fared well.
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.
+
+A RISKY CRUISE WITH H.M. STANLEY.
+
+To come back, after this long digression on the life of a war
+correspondent, to the Ashanti campaign, upon which the subject of this
+memoir had now embarked, it may be taken quite as a matter of course
+that two such men as Henry Stanley and George Henty, bound on the same
+mission on behalf of the _New York Herald_ and the London _Standard_,
+should be on intimate terms together, the more especially as they were
+both men who loved being afloat, and in the pursuit of business let
+nothing in the way of danger stand in their way.
+
+It was not surprising then that when the war correspondents were
+impatiently waiting for progress to be made by the expedition, such as
+would call them to the front and give stirring work for their pens to
+record, Stanley, with his customary defiance of risks when attempting an
+adventure, and being in want of a companion, should turn to his
+colleague Henty and ask him if he would take a turn with him along the
+coast in his yacht.  It need hardly be said what was Henty's answer.
+The very word yacht was sufficient to make him accept eagerly, and he
+immediately acquiesced, delighted with the chance of a run of some
+seventy miles along the African shore from Cape Coast to Addah.  At the
+time he was only aware that Stanley had brought out a small vessel at
+the cost of his newspaper, expressly so as to enable him to take runs up
+the West African rivers, and penetrate where he pleased in comparative
+independence.  The use of a boat among the great flooded rivers was no
+novelty, of course, to the famous African explorer, and at the first
+blush, and with such an experienced pilot, there seemed to be no cause
+for hesitation, although at the time Henty was not aware in what kind of
+boat he was to be a passenger.  All he knew was that the vessel was
+called the _Dauntless_, and that it was a Thames pleasure yacht which
+had been brought out by Stanley under the mistaken idea that Lord
+Wolseley's advance upon Coomassie was to be made by way of the river
+Prah.
+
+Now, for the river Thames, where it was first launched, or for the river
+Prah, the _Dauntless_, which proved to be a little steam pleasure yacht,
+or launch, about thirty-six feet long by six feet wide, would have been
+admirably suited; but it suddenly began to dawn upon Henty that the
+craft in which he was about to take his trip, sailing in the evening and
+through the night, was about as ill-adapted for ocean work as any vessel
+that ever put out of port, and most particularly unsuited to sail out
+upon an ocean so wholly devoid of harbours as is the Atlantic upon the
+West African coast.
+
+He must have known, though possibly it did not occur to him for the
+moment, that he was in a district where landing on the surf-bound shore
+was only possible with the aid of specially built boats rowed by the
+experienced blacks, who are thoroughly accustomed to the huge breakers
+that come rolling in.  Their light boats are as buoyant as corks, and
+the rowers take a capsize and the filling of their craft as merely an
+excuse for exercising their great swimming powers, regarding it as an
+easy task to right their surf-boat and row on again.  Stanley's steam
+launch, however, was made heavy and unsuitable by the dead weight of its
+engine and machinery, to which for a long run would of course be added
+heavy clumsy coal by the ton.
+
+In describing his trip, and speaking as a man who is no mean sailor,
+Henty says that he is bound, in justice to his own character as a man
+who preferred to take reasonable care of his life, to say that when he
+accepted the offer he had not seen the boat.  It was then lying moored
+up the Elmina river, and soon after, when entering into conversation
+with friends, who began to expostulate with him about the risk he was
+going to run, he felt disposed to laugh at them.  One said it was
+madness, another that it was folly, and that it might be all very well
+for a reckless, venturesome man like Stanley, who dared go anywhere to
+find Livingstone, or penetrate the dense forests of Central Africa, but
+that the expedition was not one on which a sane man should embark.  To
+quote the words of the counsellor, "You are an ordinary Englishman, and
+father of a family.  Take care of yourself and your paper; for if you go
+out to sea in that little miserable tea-kettle of a thing, you will
+never come back; and we can't spare our colleague."
+
+Expostulations from other friends followed, in the shape of prophecies
+of all sorts of evil things, and matters began to shape themselves in a
+manner that was not likely to prove encouraging.  In his quiet way there
+was an enormous amount of firm determination in Henty; but it is not too
+much to say that he began to pass through a phase of indecision, and to
+wish that he had not given his word.  Certainly he would much rather not
+have gone, but he was not the man to throw a friend over by breaking his
+promise at the last moment.  All the same, though, he began to think and
+to turn matters over in his mind.  Assuredly the _Dauntless_ was a
+thoroughly non-seagoing boat; but if Stanley could go in her, why he,
+Henty, could go in her likewise, and he was perfectly aware that Stanley
+had at once started for Elmina to bring the boat down.
+
+He felt himself nevertheless in a very different position from that
+which he would have occupied at home when calculating whether he should
+go out in his own fore-and-aft-rigged boat, in a sea whose currents he
+understood, and whose waters he knew how to sail.
+
+But, Englishman-like, as the hours glided by he grew more firm and
+determined, and was almost ready to accuse himself of cowardice; so that
+when about ten o'clock at night he was joined by Stanley, who announced
+that he had brought the launch round, that the men were busy coaling,
+that the moon was up, and all would be ready for a start at midnight,
+Henty assumed a cheerful and gratified expression of countenance and
+promised to be there.
+
+Now it may not be out of place to say that even in the calmest weather
+the breakers that come booming in upon that coast are quite sufficient
+to shake the nerves of even the most stoutly built, and to put out to
+sea in a Thames steam yacht, specially built for smooth water, was
+enough to make a brave man think twice of what he was about to do.
+
+However, Henty put together a few necessaries, and was prepared for the
+start when some friends dropped in ready to shake hands with him, and to
+assure him encouragingly that this was a final good-bye; then he started
+for the beach, with the roar of the breakers thundering in his ears.
+
+There was a little delay as he joined Stanley at the place from which
+the surf-boat was to start, to be rowed out to where the steam yacht was
+lying, for the coal had not yet all come down; but after about half an
+hour the final sacks were brought down and placed in the bottom of the
+boat, he and Stanley took their places, the black rowers ran the light
+craft out, sprang aboard, and began to paddle, and fortunately they got
+through the line of breakers without a wetting.  Then they made towards
+the tiny launch, which, as they rose high upon the swell, before
+dropping down into the trough of the sea, they could perceive showing a
+light about a quarter of a mile off the shore.
+
+And now it was that Henty could see clearly what manner of vessel it was
+in which he was to make his voyage.  For about six feet at either end
+she was decked, with the engine and boiler taking up half the remaining
+space, but just leaving a cockpit of about six feet long at either end.
+
+When Henty boarded her he found that these open spaces were for the time
+being piled full of coal, of which ponderous awkward lading the little
+vessel had somewhere about two tons on board, and this was quite enough
+to bring her down within a few inches of the water.  In fact, when steam
+was turned on, the water was awash over the after-deck, a state of
+affairs pretty startling for any but the most reckless.
+
+As a matter of course, Henty (a businesslike and thorough seaman, who
+knew what he was about in the management of a sailing boat) must have
+set his teeth hard; but war-correspondent-like, he was ready to make the
+best of things, and after running his eye over the little steamer in the
+moonlight, he cheered himself with the thought that, as they went on,
+the weight of the coal would gradually grow less, and the launch become
+lighter in the water.
+
+It was past the time for starting, so the anchor was soon drawn up, the
+little engine commenced to pant and rattle away merrily, while the
+lights upon the shore began to grow faint, for, in spite of being
+heavily laden, the steam launch showed herself worthy of her name,
+rising easily over the long heavy Atlantic swell.  To Henty's great
+satisfaction it seemed to be time to enjoy a calm and thoughtful pipe,
+for it was at once apparent that unless the wind freshened and made the
+sea get up, and this was only probable in the event of a hurricane,
+there was no cause for any uneasiness as to the safety of the little
+yacht.
+
+In about half an hour they had settled down, for Henty was thoroughly at
+home on board the smallest of craft, and loved to see things ship-shape.
+Thick mats were spread over the blocks of coal, rugs were unrolled, and
+preparations were made for indulgence in the ever-welcome cup of tea.
+
+The crew, all told, were only six in number.  Stanley, the skipper; an
+English lad, who acted as his amanuensis and general help; the engineer,
+two black boys, who acted as servants and assistant stokers; and Henty
+himself.  The last mentioned immediately began to talk business, and was
+for the time being the most important man on board, for it was not in
+him to be aboard a vessel of any kind without being ready to consider
+where their bearings lay and what effect the local currents would have
+upon their course.
+
+Things were a little haphazard on board a vessel made only for steering
+by the shore, for the most part at the mouth of a river, so they had
+only a pocket compass.  Quite nautically, Henty says that he knew that
+their course was slightly to north of east; but all the same it seemed
+extremely doubtful whether they ought to steer by such bearings, for
+they had no means of knowing how far the iron of the engine would affect
+the compass; "and besides, as there was a strong set of the current on
+the shore," he continues, "we agreed to steer by the land."
+
+He goes on philosophically to say that steering by the land is simple
+enough by daylight, but at night, situated as they were, it was no easy
+matter, for though the moon was up, the customary African haze hung on
+the water and rendered the outline of the coast so indistinct that it
+was difficult in the extreme to judge the exact distance.  Sometimes,
+too, the land lay so low that they could see little besides the white
+line of the surf, with here and there the head of a palm-tree.  Once or
+twice, feeling that it was necessary to go cautiously, steam was turned
+off, and they stopped a few minutes to oil heated bearings or to tighten
+a nut; and then in the stillness of the night the loud roar of the surf
+seemed startlingly near.
+
+Then on again and on, not knowing what was to be their fate, for there
+was always the possibility that they might be carried by a current too
+near one of the breakers and then be caught up, borne along at a
+tremendous rate, till, striking upon the sand, the little vessel would
+be rolled over and over, prior to being cast ashore a complete wreck.
+
+In this way they steamed through the dull half-transparent haze, a
+feeling of ignorance and helplessness troubling the man to whom the
+navigation was most strange.
+
+They took it in turns to steer, and the one who was off duty was
+supposed to take a nap; but Henty says quietly, "I do not think there
+was much sleep on board the _Dauntless_, and there was a general
+satisfaction when the morning broke."
+
+The general idea of a reader is that the West Coast of Africa is a land
+where the surf rushes in over the cast-up sand to where the dull
+olive-green of the weird-looking mangrove fringes the shore.  But
+between Cape Coast Castle and Accra, although the seashore lies flat for
+a few miles inland, it, for the most part, impressed Henty as a
+beautiful undulating country, with the hills rising occasionally from
+the very edge of the sea and attaining at times a thousand feet in
+height, the highest eminence in the neighbourhood being double that
+elevation.
+
+And yet, he says, this beautiful hilly portion of the coast is as
+unhealthy as, if not worse than, the low shores with their mango swamps.
+This evil repute is said to apply most strongly to parts where the land
+is rich in gold, and it deters the adventurous who are disposed to
+exploit the precious metal.  There is no doubt about its presence, and
+abundance might be had, but gold is too dear at the cost of life; and
+though it might be considered that the native black would prove immune
+if employed at gold-digging, it has been demonstrated again and again
+that the fever--the malaria--that is set free as soon as the earth is
+disturbed, is just as fatal to the black as to the white.  The latter,
+with a smattering of science, attributes it to the disturbance of the
+soil and the setting at liberty of the germs of disease buried therein,
+and points to the fact that where new plantations of coffee, cinchona,
+or india-rubber are being made almost anywhere in the Malay Peninsula,
+the effects are, at the first cultivation of the soil, precisely the
+same, though in time, when the ground has been stirred again and again,
+it becomes healthy.
+
+The West Coast black, however, has a very different theory, which he
+will freely impart, but with an almost awestricken whisper.  Death comes
+to anyone who digs for gold, because it is fetish.  It is of no use to
+laugh at his superstition.  He knows that this is the case, and if any
+careless, contemptuous personage ridicules his superstition, he is
+angered; if a more rational explanation is propounded, he pities the
+enquirer's ignorance.  It is fetish, and fatal.  Fatal enough, but
+unfortunately the horrible fetish belief is utilised in connection with
+poison and the destruction of an enemy.  Hence the power of the Obeah
+man, the impostor-like native priest, witch-doctor, or medicine man.
+This fetish idea lingers still in the West Indies, where it has been
+handed down by the early unfortunate slaves from the West Coast, who
+formed the trade of the old plantation times.
+
+This by the way.  There were no further troubles about the steering in
+the bright morning sunshine, and Henty spent his time probably dreaming
+of future stories and mentally describing the beauty of the plains and
+hills.  Birds abounded as they drew near to Accra, and they caught sight
+of little African antelopes dashing across the plains.  For in this
+neighbourhood horses, mules, and oxen can live; and, in fact, the town
+itself is one of the most healthy along the coast, while, strange
+anomaly, it is one of the filthiest.
+
+Upon reaching Accra in safety the engineer discovered that the intense
+saltness of the water had encrusted up the gauge, rendering it necessary
+to blow out the boiler, allow it to cool, and fill it again before
+proceeding.  So the _Dauntless_ was moored to a hawser from the stern of
+one of the ships at anchor.  While leaving the engineer to put all
+right, the two correspondents prepared to go ashore and see what the
+town was like.  Henty found time to note the tremendously rampant
+population of pigs, which, with the help of dogs and fowls, were the
+scavengers of the place.  He makes no allusion, however, to the quality
+of the pork, but goes on to discourse upon the intense love of the women
+of the place for beads.  These ranged from the tiny opaque scraps of all
+colours used by children for their dolls, to cylinders of variegated
+hues, yellow being the favourite, which were sometimes as long as the
+joint of one's thumb and as thick round.  The women wear these round the
+wrist, round the neck, and round the loins, while the occupation of
+threading the lesser beads is one of their greatest pleasures.
+
+At seven the next morning they started back, congratulating themselves
+that they had met with no serious accident.  But they were not fated to
+escape scot free, for on their return journey it was found that the
+rudder was gradually losing its power, proving at last to be broken, and
+when at length Addah was reached, and the _Dauntless_ made fast to the
+stern of one of the vessels, they had to whistle for nearly half an hour
+before any effort was made to send out a surf-boat.  When at last one
+was on the way, they began to understand the reluctance of the boatmen
+to make the trip, for over and over again, as the boatmen strove to
+cross the breakers, their vessel was thrown almost perpendicularly into
+the air, so that only a foot or so of the end of the keel touched the
+water.  To quote Henty's own words:--
+
+"As we watched she still struggled on, though she was so long in getting
+through the hurtling foam that we began to fear that the men would give
+it up as being impracticable; but at last they got outside the surf, to
+lie upon their oars, utterly exhausted and waiting to recover from their
+exertions, when they rowed out to where we lay and took us on board.
+
+"Nothing could have been better than the way in which they managed the
+landing.  They hung upon their oars as we watched them breathlessly, and
+then, keen-eyed and watchful as they waited their time, they caught the
+exact moment when one of the breakers was, as it were, balancing itself
+as if waiting to pounce upon the surf-boat and its occupants.
+
+"It was a race between man and nature, and man won, for the black
+boatmen seized the exact time, and then went at it with racing speed.
+Their steersman was one of the finest specimens of the negro I have ever
+seen.  Nothing could be finer than his attitude as he stood upon the
+seat in the stern, one hand resting upon the long steering-oar, while in
+the other he held his cap.
+
+"For some time he stood half-turned round, gazing keenly seaward, while
+the boat lay at rest just outside the line of breakers.  Then all at
+once he waved his hat and gave a wild shout, which was answered by his
+crew, and every man plunged his oar into the water, rowing desperately,
+while their helmsman cheered them on with his frantic shouts.
+
+"How they pulled!  And it seemed in vain, as if we had started too late,
+for a gigantic wave was rolling in behind us, looking as if it were
+about to curl over, break into the stern, and sweep us from end to end.
+
+"But the boatmen knew what they were about.  They rose upon the wave
+just as it was turning over, and in an instant they were sweeping along
+a cataract of white foam with the speed of an arrow.  The next wave was
+smaller, but it carried them onward, and before a third that had been
+pursuing them hard could reach the boat, they were run up on the
+dripping sand.
+
+"Just then a dozen men rushed out to meet them.  The occupants of the
+boat threw themselves anyhow upon their shoulders, and directly after
+they were high and dry upon the sands."
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.
+
+THE "WEAKER SEX" IN ASHANTI.
+
+Almost at the start of his campaigning in Ashanti Henty found himself
+confronted with a serious problem, and anyone who, like the present
+writer, had known him intimately for years will find it easy to imagine
+the look of annoyance, puzzlement, and wrath that his features must have
+displayed upon waking up to this fact.  He was bound upon an important
+mission, one which compelled him to keep in company with the
+expeditionary army, or portions of it, just about to start from Cape
+Coast Castle for the river Prah, in order to follow its windings through
+the dense tropical forest; he was a thorough athlete, and ready to make
+any shift to forward his progress that was possible, but he was now
+brought face to face with the unexpected.  An expedition, he found,
+would start upon the following day at three, and as a matter of course,
+in spite of experience and the knowledge that he must not burden himself
+with what the old Romans so aptly called _impedimenta_ during a
+campaign--a knowledge which had made him cut down his luggage to the
+narrowest limits, in fact made him take nothing more than he was obliged
+to take--he found to his dismay that it was impossible to procure
+hammock-bearers.  It was not that he wished to travel in luxurious
+style, but nature had ordained that, to a European, walking through the
+prevalent intense heat was an impossibility; not because of the intense
+sunshine, for the way for the most part was through the shadow of the
+dense tropical forest, but because of the strange lowering prostration
+which followed the slightest exertion and compelled the most robust,
+able-bodied men to throw themselves down and rest after walking a
+distance that was absurdly short.
+
+Hammock-bearers, however, he found it impossible to procure.  He had
+engaged eight men for the purpose, but they had all been summoned by
+their chiefs the night before, and the whole of the men in the
+neighbourhood who were not under arms as combatants were engaged by the
+government as porters.  In his ignorance of what he had to contend with,
+he was ready to abandon the idea of having hammock-bearers, and prepared
+to trust to his own walking powers and start afoot; but matters looked
+very serious when he was informed by the native merchant he had employed
+that it was impossible to find even four men to carry his tent and
+necessaries.  Four women could be obtained, and that was all!
+
+Women!  Henty indignantly declined, and turned over in his mind what he
+should do.  Then the idea struck him that the Army Control Department
+might have more men than they wanted, or would possibly spare him a few.
+Going up to the Castle Yard he found all in a state of animation and
+bustle, with plenty of labourers rolling casks and carrying cases up
+from the beach; but to his utter astonishment there were a hundred women
+working with them, chattering and laughing, as they worked more
+vigorously than the men.  A few questions to one of the Control officers
+brought the explanation that they were short of hands in consequence of
+the number of men at work upon the roads and at the various stations,
+while numbers more had obeyed the summons of their chiefs and deserted
+to go to the war.  There was a vessel laden with war stores that must be
+unladen, and consequently the Control had been driven to enlist women
+carriers to take up the bales of military greatcoats, blankets, and
+waterproof sheets, in addition to other stores.
+
+Henty began to think, urged on as he was by dire necessity, what is
+sauce for the goose under certain circumstances may be sauce for the
+gander.  In other words, if it was not undignified for her Majesty's
+officials to make use of women labour, he began to see that it ought not
+to be bad form for him at such a supreme moment to follow their example.
+So under these circumstances he went back to the native Whiteley and
+accepted his offer to supply female bearers, and very shortly afterwards
+four women were brought forward for him to inspect.  He objected to two
+of these at once, for one of them had what must be a great drawback to
+her power of carrying a load, in the shape of a child of two years old
+clinging to her back.  The other was similarly circumstanced, but her
+little one was a mere infant.  It was, however, these or none; and as
+the other two were smart good-looking girls of about sixteen years old,
+and as many of the women working for the Control were handicapped with
+children, he made no further demur, in spite of a lingering feeling of
+doubt about the banter which he would receive from his colleagues and
+the officers with whom he was brought in contact.  It was so evidently
+the fashion, however, to employ women, that he hoped to escape scot
+free.  But it was not so, for Henty's _Standard-bearers_ became one of
+the jokes of the expedition.
+
+Sir Evelyn Wood, in his exhaustive and chatty work, _From Midshipman to
+Field-Marshal_, alludes to the state of affairs in connection with
+bearers at the same time and place.  He says: "The women have most of
+the qualities which are lacking in the men.  They are bright, cheerful,
+and hard-working, and even under a hot fire never offer to leave the
+spot in which we place them, and are very strong.  As I paid over 130
+pounds to women for carrying my loads up to Prahsu, I had many
+opportunities of observing their strength and trustworthy character, for
+to my knowledge no load was ever broken open or lost.  They carried
+fifty or sixty pounds from Cape Coast Castle to Prahsu, a distance of
+seventy-four miles, for ten shillings, and the greater number of them
+carried a baby astride of what London milliners used to call a `dress
+improver'."  High praise, this, for the weaker sex, when Sir Evelyn
+describes the male bearers as being prone, as soon as they came under
+fire, to throw their loads down on the ground and run for their lives.
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.
+
+WARFARE IN THE BUSH.
+
+It was only natural that wherever he went for an expedition there were
+two points to which Henty made frequent allusion.  One was hospital
+practice and the care of the sick and wounded; the other the
+Commissariat Department and the supply of wholesome drinking water.
+
+Plenty of such references are found in his account of the march to
+Coomassie.  There is mention of the women bearers rolling the
+water-casks, and the native bearers, as they came in sight of one of the
+village markets, depositing their burdens upon the ground, to make a
+rush to the stores to lay in an extra supply for their wants during the
+tramp through the forest, these supplies consisting of native bread and
+dried fish.  A rose by any other name, it is said, may smell as sweet;
+so it may be taken for granted that the native name for bread--"Kanky"--
+may not seriously affect its qualities.  But when it comes to the dried
+fish, of which the blacks are very fond, Henty has some remarks to make.
+It is, though, by the way, rather curious what an instinctive liking
+the natives of some countries have for preserved fish.  For instance, in
+the Malay Peninsula the natives have a great fancy for a concoction
+which they term _blachang_, as an appetiser to flavour the dull
+monotonous tameness of the ever-present boiled rice.  This blachang is
+compounded of shrimps, saved up till they are in a state of
+putrefaction, and then beaten into a paste, the odour of which puts the
+ripest snipe to the blush.
+
+The dried fish of the West Coast of Africa are to an Englishman (unless
+he has learned to like the flavour of asafoetida from long experience of
+the smoked dainties called in India Bombay ducks) excessively nasty,
+being smoked with some herb strongly resembling foetid gum in smell and
+flavour.
+
+But to turn from fish to soup.  Henty discourses very wisely about the
+latter in connection with the weariness and exhaustion consequent upon a
+long tramp through the forest.  After an experience of ten miles or so
+of the hot, oppressive air there is no desire for eating, only a longing
+for a cup of hot cocoa or tea, as soon as a fire can be set going--not
+always an easy task in a land where the tropical downpours are
+tremendous, saturating everything and rendering the superabundant wood
+unfit to burn.  Hunger, even after many hours' march, is completely
+quenched, and it might be expected that the weary traveller would be
+prone to fly for a stimulus to the commissariat rum.  But to quote
+Henty's own words, spoken from experience, "Soup is undoubtedly the
+thing in this country"; and it grew to be the custom on the march, for
+the first party who arrived at the halting-place to start a fire and
+prepare what the soldiers spoke of as a jorum of hot broth, ready for
+the next comers.  "After a fatiguing day's march one has no appetite for
+solid food, but a basin of soup sets one up at once."
+
+This march to Coomassie was a dreary tramp through a jungle.  The way
+being along a narrow native path, the progress was so slow, encumbered
+as they were with the necessaries of the journey, that on one occasion
+it took more than two hours and a half to accomplish four miles, for the
+heat was terribly trying.  Yet to an observant eye the vegetation and
+the mighty trees were most attractive.  The undergrowth of the forest
+consisted of broad-leaved plants, sword-bladed flags and the like, above
+which the great plantains, looking like Brobdingnagian hart's-tongue
+ferns, spread their great green, often split and ragged leaves, while
+every here and there the cotton-trees, lovers of moist swampy land, rose
+to an immense height.  The heat all the time gradually increased, and
+the men suffered severely during the delays caused by difficulties with
+the baggage, or from the column having to climb over trunks of trees
+that had fallen across the path, while sometimes it was necessary to
+pass through swamps in which the water varied from ankle to knee deep.
+
+On such occasions the halts were most trying, for a small obstacle
+caused considerable delay in the passage of a column in single file.
+Men would pause for a moment to pick their way before entering the
+swamp; others would stop to turn up their trousers; and so the stoppage
+would often accumulate until what was merely a second's wait of the
+leading man became five minutes with the five hundredth.  A wait of even
+two minutes in the sun when there was not a breath of wind was most
+trying, for great as was the heat, it was not felt so much while moving,
+partly, perhaps, because the attention was directed to picking the way,
+but more because of the profuse flow of perspiration.  In reference to
+this, though, Henty adds:--
+
+"We did not suffer so much from the heat upon this coast as we do in
+parts of India; but this was because there was always either a sea or a
+land breeze blowing, which kept down the temperature in the shade to 84
+or 85 degrees, which was by no means unpleasant.  But when the sun
+blazed down the heat was really intense.  A thermometer placed in the
+sun upon the wall of the hospital marked over 150 degrees for some hours
+three or four days during the week, and I should say that the heat of
+the bush, where there was no shade, was fully as great.  Under these
+circumstances it was not to be wondered at that a certain number of men
+at the end of each day's march were found unfit for further work, and
+had to be sent back in hammocks.  Still, the number that fell out was
+very small indeed, for men struggled to the last rather than give in."
+
+When the men broke down, the officers noticed the poor fellows' flushed
+faces and dull eyes, and said that they could only speak coherently with
+an effort.  These were cases of attacks by the sun, not of sunstroke,
+for they were not sudden.  The doctors called them sun-fever, and the
+cure adopted was for the poor fellows to be sent back in hammocks to the
+coast and placed on board ship, where in most cases the sea air restored
+them to health.
+
+Henty is pretty severe in his description of the Sierra Leone men, the
+over-civilised and spoilt blacks with whom he came in contact during the
+advance.  He describes them as "the laziest, most discontented, most
+self-sufficient and most impudent set of rascals the world contains.
+They are no more," he says, "to be compared with the Fantis, or any of
+the other native tribes, than light is to darkness."
+
+In one case they started a mutiny, refusing to work unless money was
+paid to them instead of stores; but they had Englishmen to deal with,
+and when two of the ringleaders offered to strike the Control officers,
+the latter at once seized them single-handed, forced them apart, and
+treated them with firmness.  Subsequently, as the men grew more
+threatening and determined in their refusals to work, one of the naval
+officers of the expedition, Captain Peel, interfered, and in true naval
+fashion threatened that the first man who refused to obey orders should
+be had up to the triangles and receive three dozen lashes.  If the
+fellow resisted after this, he declared he would summon his sailors on
+shore, take him on board ship, and give him five dozen; while, if his
+companions and fellow-mutineers attempted any violence, he would without
+hesitation give orders for the sailors to fire.  The threat sufficed.
+
+The term "spoiled" has been applied by Henty to the Sierra Leone negro,
+and he is not the first writer by many who has dealt with the vanity and
+conceit that inflate the half-educated native.  Allusion may be made to
+the humorous description of Captain Marryat concerning the Badian boy:
+"King George never fear, sir, long as Badian boy 'tan' 'tiff."
+
+The Sierra Leone negro, says Henty, is in his native country lord and
+master.  He believes that he is the white man's equal in every point,
+his superior in most.  But this game of indolence and insolence did not
+pay at Cape Coast.  The negroes were enlisted in the service of the
+Queen for six months, and although the work they did was less than that
+which a Fanti girl of twelve years old would get through, it had to be
+done without insolence or mutiny.
+
+Night in the jungle produced its memories.  After his day's tramp with
+the troops and bearers, nine o'clock in the evening saw all but the
+sentries lying down, and Henty retained for many years very vivid
+recollections of these nights in the forest on the way to Coomassie--
+close nights, with scarcely a breath of wind stirring.  Somewhere
+outside the hut where the correspondents sheltered, a native would be
+demonstrating that chest troubles are not peculiar to our bronchitic,
+foggy isles, for here in the midst of this tropic heat one of the blacks
+would keep up a perpetual coughing that made sleep next to impossible;
+next, a legion of rats could be heard gnawing and scratching, as they
+tore about the shelters and raced in every direction over those who were
+seeking for rest; and then there were the insects.  The mosquitoes would
+begin, and it seemed as if they knew the command in the old opera "The
+Siege of Rochelle"--"Sound the trumpet boldly!"  Every now and then,
+too, upon fell intention bent, they would make a raid from above on some
+unprotected face, while, to supplement this trouble, a colony of the
+wretched insects which make their attacks from below--thin, flat,
+silent, and secretive--carried on their assault, and retired afterwards
+singularly misshapen, grown, to use the old countrified expression,
+"quite out of knowledge."
+
+"Now," says Henty, "I imagine that here were assembled all the elements
+which make night horrible, with the exception only of indigestion after
+a heavy supper.  Had I been in any other country, I would have moved my
+rug outside and slept there, but here such a proceeding would have
+entailed an attack of fever.  Consequently I had nothing to do but lie
+still till morning."
+
+Henty relates a sad incident in connection with the encounters with the
+warlike Ashantis.  He tells how the first of their merry party on the
+screw steamer _Ambriz_, the vessel on which Sir Garnet Wolseley went out
+to take up his command, had fallen, and "as usual," he says, "death had
+taken one of the most gentle, brave, and kindly spirits from among
+them."  Lieutenant Wilmot, of the Royal Artillery, had fallen, fighting
+like a hero, and the news of his death, when it was brought in, produced
+the keenest regret among those who knew him.  A promising young officer,
+attached to his profession, a zealous worker, and a favourite with all
+because of his quiet cheerfulness and modest unassuming manner, he was
+one of the leaders in a reconnaissance that had been thought necessary.
+The force consisted of a hundred of the West India Regiment, nine
+hundred native allies, and some of the Hausas with rockets, the last
+being under the command of the young officer.  It seems that when he
+approached the Ashanti camp an alarm was given, and the fight began at
+once.  The bush was extremely dense, and from out of its shelter the
+enemy poured a fierce fire, and in those short minutes the British
+officers had a severe lesson in the amount of confidence that could be
+placed in the native allies.  Out of the nine hundred levies only about
+a hundred stood firm, and these might, for all the good they did, have
+followed their king or chief.  This "noble" warrior headed the party who
+took to flight, and he, with his company, did not cease to run until
+they were safe back at camp, while many did not even stop there, but
+continued right on till they reached their own villages.  Those that did
+stand fast made use of their muskets in the wildest and most useless
+manner, in contradistinction to the West India Regiment, which behaved
+with great steadiness and gallantry, and for two hours kept up a heavy
+Snider fire at their invisible foes, the Ashantis.  Lieutenant Wilmot
+had dependable men in the Hausas, who had been well trained in the use
+of rockets, weapons formidable and awe-inspiring to natives; but early
+in the fight he received a severe wound in the shoulder from one of the
+Ashanti bullets fired from the bush, and this tore through flesh and
+muscle and narrowly missed the bone.  The wound was bad enough to have
+necessitated immediate retirement; but it meant the loss of their leader
+to the Hausas, and in spite of the severity of the wound and the acute
+pain, he held on to his task, encouraging his men for two long hours,
+during which time the rockets discharged against the enemy dislodged
+them again and again from their strongholds.  At last, when the gallant
+young officer's work was pretty well done, another bullet struck him
+down, and this time it was no mere painful flesh wound--the missile
+found its way straight to his heart, and he fell back dead.  With the
+exception of one native, poor Wilmot was the only man killed.  But the
+Ashantis had stood their ground well, and the wounds of the attacking
+party were many.  So vigorous indeed was the defence of the brave
+savages, that just about the time when Wilmot fell, Colonel Festing, who
+was in command, and was also hit, seeing that an attempt was being made
+by the enemy to cut off his retreat, fell back upon the village from
+which the attack had been made.  The many wounds were for the most part
+very slight; for though put down as severe because received in spots
+where a rifle bullet wound would have been a serious matter, they were
+mostly inflicted by slugs from clumsy muskets.  These pellets only
+penetrated a short distance, with the result that the injuries only
+entailed a day or two's confinement.
+
+The death of poor young Wilmot moved the whole camp to deep feeling, and
+the funeral took place at the cemetery of Cape Coast on the following
+day.  Sir Garnet Wolseley and the staff and nearly every officer in the
+town attended, while the navy was represented by the officers from the
+fleet.  The procession was solemn and impressive, bringing to the minds
+of many the sad little poem which recounts the burial of Sir John Moore.
+The body had been brought down from Prospect House, to which it had
+been first taken, and was placed in a room of the General Hospital.  A
+gun was brought, dragged by a party of marine artillerymen and marines,
+who, commanded by a naval officer, had come ashore for the purpose.  An
+officer of the Royal Artillery superintended the preparations and
+followed as chief mourner.  As the coffin, covered by a flag, was
+brought out and placed upon the gun carriage, all the officers saluted
+their dead comrade, and then fell in behind at a slow march.
+
+"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note."
+
+There was no military music, but Henty says: "I think the slow measured
+tramp was more moving than any pomp or military display could have been.
+Never before has such a procession of officers been seen on the Gold
+Coast; and a crowd of natives assembled to look on."
+
+The road led by the sea, and the dull moan of the surge was more
+appropriate music than any made by mechanical instruments.  A quarter of
+a mile brought them to the cemetery, and as they stood around and
+listened to the solemn words, "it is, I trust, no derogation to our
+manliness to say that many a lip was bitten hard, many a hand dashed
+across the face to hide that emotion which, however great the cause,
+Englishmen always strive to conceal."
+
+"During his month's stay at Cape Coast, Lieutenant Wilmot had assisted
+Captain Rait to turn the wild Hausas into steady gunners.  He had won
+all hearts, and among us there was but one feeling--that of deep regret
+for the unselfish young fellow who had left us but a few days before in
+high health and spirits, and who was brought back only to be laid in his
+lonely grave by the never-ceasing surf of the Atlantic Ocean."
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY.
+
+THE MARCH UP COUNTRY.
+
+The lessons learned in dealing with the native allies in the attack upon
+the daring savages who had set the British forces at defiance were too
+sharp to be neglected.  There was, of course, something very attractive
+and cheering about being backed up by some hundreds, or even thousands,
+of well-armed, fierce-looking, stalwart natives.  They were wonderfully
+skilful in performing upon the tom-tom, or in producing thunder from the
+war drum--sounds which could be kept up, suggesting dire threats, all
+through the night, and were often accompanied by yells and shouts such
+as would send dismay into any enemy's breast--while, when they were
+partially drilled and supplied with musket or rifle and cartridge-box,
+they were looked upon as being invincible, and even believed it
+themselves.  But the proof of the pudding is said to be in the eating,
+and the flavour of the compote of native allies proved only to be vile.
+Indeed, in the opinion of our officers many of the blacks seemed to be
+only of use for the labour of road-making, preparing stations, and
+accumulating stores up the country, business, all this, which would have
+been much better carried on by the women, who had already proved
+themselves invaluable for carrying loads.
+
+Encounter after encounter had taken place with the Ashantis, in which
+the native allies had done a great amount of shouting when they stood
+their ground; but they had more often done this shouting while in full
+retreat, for they seemed to consider it a duty to alarm everyone in the
+rear.  Hence it was decided to do away with our native army, which had
+proved itself to be worse than useless; and the police were ordered to
+arrest all the men belonging to the Cape Coast contingent as they came
+sneaking in through the bush when the fights were at an end.
+
+Their arms were taken away from them, and orders were given for them to
+be marched up under a guard to where the road had been commenced towards
+the interior for a more strenuous attack to be made on the enemy.  This
+was considered to be a move in the right direction, but all wished that
+the entire force of the allies had come in to be disarmed, for as long
+as they remained under arms they were a trouble and an anxiety.  They
+had to be fed; they expended ammunition largely; they had to be driven
+towards the foe, and when they reached his neighbourhood they proved
+themselves to be more likely to shoot their friends than their enemies.
+In fact, where the British regiments were strengthened--such was the
+term--by these native allies, the latter proved to be an immense anxiety
+and cause of weakness to any troops they accompanied.  Even now their
+measure is not quite taken.  They proved to be useless as scouts; they
+would not go in front; and they were dangerous in the rear.  They were
+unreliable even as watch-dogs, for they would run from their own shadow,
+and they would blaze away at nothing for half an hour if they heard a
+night bird flutter in the bush.
+
+But with all these disadvantages and objections to their presence, the
+leaders of the expedition could not but feel the difficulty of taking
+such a step as to disarm them _en masse_.  There was the risk of
+incurring the wrath of the whole population of Cape Coast, as these men,
+if they could do injury in no other way, might refuse altogether to work
+or carry loads.  There was also the fact that the British had no force
+which could compel a thousand men to go out and labour on the road.
+They might have been taken up, of course, under an escort, but no
+contingent which the little British army could spare could prevent these
+allies from taking to the bush the first day they went out, and so
+finding their way down again.
+
+Finding that the men would not come forward to carry loads after the
+disarmament, it occurred to one of our officers to appeal to the women,
+as they had proved to be so much better than the men; and this proved to
+have excellent results, two of the wives of the chiefs going round and
+haranguing their sisters in very able speeches.  They called upon the
+women to come forward and help the white men by carrying loads up the
+country.  The white men, they said, had come there to protect them from
+the Ashantis, and the people of Cape Coast ought to help in every way
+they could.  The men, they said, had not done well.  They had refused to
+fight; they had disgraced themselves.  Let the women come forward, then,
+and do their best, and let every one of them go and offer to take a load
+up the country.
+
+These speeches produced a good deal of talk and excitement among the
+women, who came to a general agreement that they ought to do as they
+were asked.  Whether they would come forward in any numbers remained to
+be seen, for, as related by the American humourist, each woman was ready
+and willing that all her female relations should come forward as
+carriers, but each was disposed to view her own as an exceptional case.
+However, after much talk, the assistance of the women did prove
+valuable, and later, when the Control was much troubled about getting
+the loads up into the interior for the use of the troops, a brilliant
+idea occurred to one of the officers of the department.  This was, that
+the services of the children of the place could be utilised, and that by
+paying half the usual price for the carriage of half the usual load,
+they might get the troublesome little barrels of provisions taken up the
+country.  The idea was carried out with immense success, for no sooner
+was it known that boys and girls could get half wages for carrying up
+light loads, than there was a perfect rush of the juvenile population to
+the store where the barrels were served out.
+
+Three hundred were sent off the first morning, nearly four hundred the
+second, and a large number of applicants were told that they must come
+next day.  The glee of the youngsters on being employed was worth
+watching.  They were all accustomed to carry weights, such as great jars
+of water and baskets of yams, far heavier than those which they had now
+to take up country, and the fun of the expedition and the satisfaction
+of earning money proved delightful, while as four hundred boys and girls
+carried up ten thousand pounds of rice, this addition to the army of
+carriers was no small help.
+
+The march to Coomassie proved to be a time for carrying out invention.
+Wants had to be made up for, and in accordance with the proverb that
+necessity is the mother of invention, our officers appealed pretty
+largely to that mother.
+
+For instance, during a long halt before making a serious advance, one of
+the most amusing sights in the town was provided by Captain Rait, of the
+Royal Artillery.  He had a certain number of guns to get to the front,
+and he very soon discovered that, for purposes of hauling a field-piece
+through a dense tropical forest, the native black was worse than
+useless.  This discovery, too, was made at a time when there were no
+Jacks available from the men-of-war to harness themselves on to the
+limber and run the light pieces up to the front in sailors' cheery
+fashion.
+
+But Captain Rait made his plans, knowing as he did that in camp there
+were a number of young bullocks which had been sent down from Sierra
+Leone to the contractor who supplied the meat.  "Why," said the gallant
+officer, "should not these young bullocks be broken in to draw my guns?"
+
+Why, indeed?  But here was where the amusing side--amusing to the forces
+who looked on--came in, for as soon as the attempt was made to yoke or
+harness the oxen, they began to object.
+
+The heavy dull oxen have never been known to display much understanding,
+but had they known that the acquirement of the hateful accomplishment in
+which they were being instructed was saving them from immediate
+slaughter, they might perchance have become more tractable.  The French
+have a proverb that it is necessary to suffer so as to become beautiful.
+The oxen were not required to become beautiful, only useful, and, says
+one of our writers, the useful and the beautiful are one.  At any rate,
+they were called upon to suffer but slightly.
+
+The animals were small, but the weight behind them was not very great--
+an old-fashioned howitzer weighing, with its cannon and limber, about
+two hundredweight.  The artillery officer acted as driver, and the Hausa
+gunners ran alongside, leaving the oxen alone when they progressed
+slowly and steadily, and, when not so disposed, giving them a thrust
+here and a push there so as to keep the sluggish brutes straight, while
+others urged the guns along whenever the beasts did not submit readily
+to the yoke.
+
+So every afternoon for some days the artillery captain drove these
+peculiar war chariots about the place to the no slight risk of his neck,
+for the roads were ill-made and intersected by drains, some of which
+were two feet deep.  But the gallant officer faced all this, to the
+delight of the lookers-on, and he was quite happy and contented, for no
+accident beyond the occasional breaking of a pole took place.  Finally,
+as a reward for his perseverance Captain Rait had the satisfaction of
+taking his guns up to the front drawn by these sturdy bullocks, which,
+though not entirely broken in, were yet sufficiently so to draw their
+loads in very fair order.
+
+At this time bullocks were being driven regularly up to the front, so as
+to give the white troops a meal of fresh meat twice a week, and the
+sailors and marines, who were accustomed to the salt junk served on
+board, got on very well with an occasional change.  "But," says Henty,
+"for white men not so used to salt meat, it would be difficult to
+imagine a more objectionable food for a tropical climate," and, he
+continues, once more well launched upon the Commissariat Department,
+"the preserved meat, which was issued much more frequently than the
+salt, was no doubt healthier, but men grew very sick of it.  Australian
+meat at the best of times is not an appetising food, but once or twice a
+week one can eat it without any great effort.  Four or five times a
+week, however, in a climate where the appetite requires a little
+humouring, it is really a trial; so that the discovery that bullocks
+could at any rate live for some time up the country, and that they were
+able to pick up a subsistence for themselves in the old clearings, was
+an immense benefit for us all."
+
+Cattle were brought from Sierra Leone, from the Canaries, from Madeira,
+and even from Lisbon, and in this way an abundant supply was obtained
+for the use of the white troops.  "Had they," says Henty, "been obliged
+to subsist solely upon salt and Australian meat during the march up and
+back again, I believe that the mortality would have been vastly greater
+than it really was."
+
+After one of the encounters with the Ashantis, rumour began to reach the
+British from prisoners and escaped slaves that the enemy had lost a
+great number of men, and that immediately the action was over they had
+begun to retreat.  But upon the day after the fight the partly-conquered
+black army was met by reinforcements seven thousand strong, bringing
+orders from the king that they were not to retreat, but to attack the
+English and drive them back.  This the retreating army refused to do,
+declaring that they had done all that was possible and that they could
+do no more.  The new-comers, struck by their wretched appearance, and by
+their tales of misery and distress, which they now heard for the first
+time, refused to advance alone, and the whole force fell back together.
+Several slaves now made their escape, and brought the news that the
+Ashanti army was crossing the river in canoes and on rafts.  But such
+intelligence could not be relied upon, and Sir Garnet Wolseley, after
+much enquiry, finding it impossible to obtain trustworthy information,
+called for volunteers to go on ahead and discover whether the Ashantis
+had really got across.  His troops had plenty of pluck, and two men
+belonging to one of the West India regiments at once undertook the task,
+which meant an advance alone some twenty-five miles to the river Prah.
+
+They found how severe had been the enemy's defeat, for all along the
+whole route of the retreat men were lying dead, while on reaching the
+banks of the stream it was to find that the survivors of the beaten army
+and the reinforcements had all crossed.
+
+Elated by their success, the two scouts stopped on the river bank to
+write their names on a piece of paper and fasten it on a tree to prove
+that they had been there.  This done, in the coolest manner possible
+they fired their rifles across the stream in the direction of the enemy,
+as if in contempt for their prowess, and then in the most matter-of-fact
+way shouldered their pieces and marched back towards their general's
+camp to bear their news.
+
+"This feat," Henty writes, "appears to me one of the most courageous, if
+not the most courageous, which was performed during the whole campaign.
+Nothing could have been more trying to the nerves than that long march
+through the lonely forest, with the knowledge that at any moment some
+body of Ashantis who had lingered behind the rest might spring upon
+them, and that, if not killed at once, they were doomed to a lingering
+death by torture at Coomassie."
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.
+
+THE BATTLE OF AMOAFUL.
+
+At last, after endless hindrances, the expedition was within measurable
+distance of coming into direct touch with the Ashantis, and Henty
+records in dramatic style the great decisive battle of the campaign,
+when, after five hours and a half of stubborn fighting, the Ashantis
+were completely discomfited.  The Battle of Amoaful will long remain a
+memory in Ashanti, where it is a superstition to swear by the days which
+have brought misfortune in their train.  And the last day of January in
+that eventful year, or the word Amoaful, will for centuries be the most
+solemn of words to the Ashanti people--an oath by which kings will be
+bound; a legend with which children will be awed.  But yet there was no
+shame in the defeat.  The Ashantis fought like the brave men they are,
+and though worsted they added to their reputation, while nothing but
+admiration can be felt for the manner in which they came on time and
+again, notwithstanding the fierce musketry fire which was intended to
+stop their assaults.
+
+On the day of the battle the marching orders came early.  The Naval
+Brigade and the 23rd Regiment had to come from Kiang Bossu.  These
+united at Insafoo with the 42nd, the Rifle Brigade, and the artillery of
+Captain Rait, the officer who had succeeded so well in his attempt to
+utilise oxen for hauling the guns up country.  At Quarman things were
+well under weigh at dawn, but it was half-past seven ere the head of the
+42nd Regiment entered the village, through which they swung without a
+halt.  Following them came Rait's artillery, a company of the 23rd, and
+the Naval Brigade, which included the Marines, eighty in number, who
+distinguished themselves like their comrades.  Henty, in reference to
+the disappointment that was felt in England at the doings by the Marines
+not being specially commented upon, rightly points out that it would
+have been difficult to go into details respecting the deeds of this
+small body, wholly apart from the force with which they were linked.  It
+was enough that they shared in all the glory of the brigade of the
+"handy men."
+
+Wood's regiment had only three companies and Russell's four, owing to
+the garrisons which had necessarily to be left _en route_, and these
+regiments took their position in the rear of the naval men, whom they
+were to follow in the fight.
+
+When the staff reached Quarman, Henty learned that the difficulties of
+transport were at last surmounted.  Colonel Colley proved an excellent
+transport officer, and had succeeded in amply provisioning Insafoo.
+Henty proceeded with the staff in the rear of Russell's regiment, and
+had not been more than ten minutes on the march ere the brisk rattle of
+musketry told him that the 42nd were busy at work clearing the village.
+There was a short pause, and then the firing began again.  At this time
+he was annoyed at the progress being so slow.  In front there was much
+lumber in the way of ammunition and hammocks, which impedimenta was in
+the charge of a large number of bearers--"somewhat scared and wholly
+stupid men."  Still, he managed to get a very good panoramic view of the
+proceedings, and in the course of his exciting narrative he describes
+accurately the position of all the leaders of our troops, from Sir
+Garnet downwards.  He says that the first shot was fired a few minutes
+before eight, and it was nearly half an hour later that the troops came
+out into the open place of Agamassie, a village of six or eight houses.
+The firing was unceasing, and with bush all round there was heavy work
+for the engineers in clearing a way for the baggage.  The enemy's fire
+came from the front and right and left, and the English progress was
+slow.
+
+At the entrance to Agamassie Captain Buckle, of the Royal Engineers, a
+brave man and a brilliant officer, was found breathing his last, shot
+with two slugs just above the heart, while the doctors were hard at work
+attending to the wounds of several men of the 42nd.  Not far away Dr
+Feagan, of the Naval Brigade, was also busy, having taken up his station
+under a tree--a tree which Sir Garnet promoted to be his head-quarters.
+
+Here three roads converged, and he was able to receive reports from
+Colonel McLeod on the left, Sir Archibald Alison in the centre, and
+Colonel Wood on the right.  It seems that the 42nd drove the enemy's
+outposts helter skelter out of the village, and then pushed on for
+nearly a quarter of a mile, when they were checked by a tremendous fire.
+The undergrowth was dense in the extreme, and the Ashantis contested
+every inch, while a great difficulty which our men had to face was the
+risk of firing at friends, in consequence of the intricacy of the bush,
+which was so bewildering that all idea of the points of the compass was
+lost.  Sir Garnet sent orders to commanding officers to warn their men
+against this danger, and to prevent it from happening the rear of
+Colonel Wood's column was swung round so that it advanced more towards
+the right.  "Five minutes with the Naval Brigade," Henty says, "showed
+me sufficiently that I should gain nothing in the way of incidents by
+remaining there, for no enemy was actually in sight, while I was running
+a very considerable risk of being knocked over.  I therefore returned to
+the head-quarters at the village."
+
+It was now ten o'clock; wounded men were coming in fast--42nd Rifles,
+Naval Brigade, and native allies.  On the left the firing had nearly
+ceased, and a despatch was received from Colonel McLeod saying that all
+was comparatively quiet on his side.  Orders were accordingly sent to
+him to bear to the north-east until he came in contact with the enemy.
+In so doing he came upon a partial clearing, where a sharp opposition
+was experienced.  The Hausas carried the clearing at a rush, but the
+enemy, as usual, opened a heavy fire from the edge of the bush.  The
+Hausas were recalled and a fire was opened with the rockets, which soon
+drove the Ashantis back.  The 42nd were meanwhile in the thick of
+things, and the men were admirably handled by Major McPherson; but
+generalship availed nothing in a swamp where the firing was terrific, so
+the regiment suffered a temporary check.  The enemy could not be seen,
+but every bush had its white puff of smoke, and the air was full of
+slugs.  At this juncture Captain Rait's guns proved their efficacy.
+Assisted by Lieutenant Saunders, the Captain advanced boldly in front of
+the line and poured round after round of grape into the enemy, with the
+result that their fire slackened and the 42nd were enabled to continue
+their advance.  Through the camp and up the hill they went; and now the
+effect of the English fire was to be seen, for the dead Ashantis lay in
+heaps.  Beyond the camp upon the hill the bush was thicker than ever,
+and here, where it was impossible for the white soldier to skirmish, the
+Ashantis made a last desperate stand.  The narrow lane up which alone
+the troops could pass was torn as if by hail with the shower of slugs,
+but a large tree which stood nearly in the centre of the path, and
+caused it slightly to curve, afforded some shelter to our men, and they
+sent back a storm of bullets in return.
+
+The 42nd suffered greatly, and Major McPherson had been shot in the leg;
+but he declined to go to the ambulance, and, helped by a stick, still
+led his men.  Eight other officers were wounded, and the total of 104
+killed and wounded out of a force of a little over 450, showed plainly
+enough how hard fought was the day.  However, victory was not far off.
+The Ashantis found the bush a trifle too hot, and had to take to the
+open, where the Sniders and the guns proved too much for them.  From
+this point the advance was rapid.  Led by Sir A. Alison, the 42nd went
+with a rush up the narrow path and out into the clearing beyond.  There
+was desultory firing from the houses, but the men drove the enemy out of
+these, and a single shell down the space (hardly a street) which divided
+the village burst in a group at the farther end, killing eight and
+completing the work.
+
+It was mid-day then, but the Ashantis were not finally beaten, and
+throughout Henty has high praise for their courage and tenacity, which
+was evidenced once again in a determined but abortive attempt to retake
+the village.
+
+Finally, when Sir Garnet gave orders for the general advance, a number
+of our allies, who had fought admirably while on the defensive, raised
+their war-cry and, sword in hand, rushed on like so many panthers let
+loose, while by their side, skirmishing as coolly as if on parade, were
+the men of the Rifle Brigade.  The latter searched every bush with their
+bullets, and in five minutes from the beginning of the advance the
+Ashantis were in full retreat.
+
+Such is the story of the Battle of Amoaful, a battle which reflects as
+much credit on all engaged in it as many affairs in which the number of
+combatants have been ten times as large.
+
+"Never," says Henty, "was a battle fought admitting less of description.
+It is impossible, indeed, to give a picturesque account of an encounter
+in which there was nothing whatever picturesque; in which scarcely a man
+engaged saw an enemy from the commencement to the end; in which there
+was no manoeuvring, no brilliant charge, no general concentration of
+troops.  The battle consisted simply of five hours of lying down, of
+creeping through the scrub, of gaining ground foot by foot, and of
+pouring a ceaseless fire into every bush in front which might conceal an
+invisible foe."
+
+The scene in Agamassie after the day had been won was full of interest.
+In the centre of the village Sir Garnet was busy issuing instructions
+and making sure that his orders were carried out.  Fortunately for the
+wounded, there was but little sunshine, and Henty has a word of praise
+for the fortitude of the natives, who submitted to the operation of
+probing and extracting slugs without a murmur.  There were in all 250
+casualties, but only fifteen or twenty deaths.  One poor fellow of the
+42nd, unluckily, was separated from his comrades in the bush and was
+killed, while when found later he was headless.
+
+It was difficult to estimate the number of natives engaged.  The total
+might be anything from fifteen to twenty thousand.  No accurate details
+could be obtained from the enemy, for the Ashantis seem to be unable to
+count anything higher than thirty.  Beyond that the figures are to them
+too vast for comprehension.  They always carry off their killed and
+wounded unless extremely hard pressed; but after the Battle of Amoaful
+their dead lay very thickly together, often in groups of five or six.
+Henty considered, too, that numbers of the wounded could only have
+crawled away to die.  In and about the village eighty bodies were found,
+and he estimates the Ashanti loss at two thousand, and these the best
+fighting men.  Ammon Quatia, a famous leader, was among the slain, and
+Aboo, one of the six great feudal kings, fell also, likewise the king's
+chief executioner.  The Ashantis were wretchedly armed, and yet for five
+hours they held out against picked troops who were equipped with the
+best weapons of precision.  The choice of a position, too, was, he
+considered, admirable.
+
+After the din of the battle the succeeding silence was very strange, but
+this was soon broken by the rattle of firing to the rear.  The Ashantis
+were still in force along the road, and the first convoys of wounded
+were forced to return, while Quarman had been attacked--"unpleasant news
+to a man whose baggage was in that town, and who knew that the garrison
+was a small one."  Fortunately, a few hours later the village in
+question was relieved.
+
+Amoaful was found to be a dirty town, capable of housing about two
+thousand people.  It was divided into two parts by the high road, some
+thirty yards wide, and down this road grew three or four shady trees.
+Under these officers and men sat in groups, the central tree being left
+to the officers, just as in a French town one cafe is tacitly reserved
+for their use.  There was nothing to eat, apart from the limited
+haversack ration, but everyone was in high spirits.  Fortunately an
+immense supply of grain was found, and this came in usefully to the
+Control.  It was served out to the carriers, who much preferred it to
+rice.
+
+Bequah, only a mile and a quarter from Amoaful, was the capital of a
+powerful Ashanti king.  Here on the following day the enemy were only
+dislodged after a severe fight, they being in great force; and Henty
+attributes this victory in part to the moral effect produced by the
+proceedings at Amoaful.  The place was burned down, which action of
+course proved a damaging blow to the prestige of the king, though so far
+as permanent damage went, the houses with their palm-leaf roofs could
+easily be rebuilt.
+
+The many villages that they passed were much like each other, and the
+programme of the troops in the course of the march onward to Coomassie
+was marked by a good deal of repetition--bush dangers, sudden
+fusillades, and then a searching of the scrub in every direction before
+camp was formed.
+
+Some of the convoys suffered, and in the Quarman attack several officers
+lost their kits, and were reduced for the remainder of the campaign to
+the clothes on their backs.  This was in consequence of the action of
+the cowardly carriers, who threw down their loads and ignominiously ran
+away.
+
+The native troops fought well, and "rushed" several of the villages in
+good style; still, the advance was slow, the enemy hanging on the
+flanks.  Here and there, though, in the villages there was evidence of
+panic--war-drums, horns, chiefs' stools and umbrellas being scattered
+broadcast.  Up to the time, however, of a message being received from
+General Sir Archibald Alison to the effect that all the villages save
+the last were taken, the firing had been going on without cessation, and
+Sir Garnet himself received a blow on the helmet from a slug.
+
+A pestilential black swamp surrounded Coomassie, and after this was
+passed and the town had been entered, the General rode up to the troops,
+who had formed in line, and called for cheers for the Queen.
+
+There was a great deal to be done, and a beginning was made with
+disarming all the Ashantis possible.  The first night in Coomassie was
+eventful, for fires broke out in several directions, the result of
+carriers and others plundering.  _Pour encourager les autres_, one man--
+a policeman, of all people--was hanged at sight.  Several others had the
+lash.  The General was much vexed at these fires, as he had asked the
+king to come in and make peace, stipulating that the town should be
+spared.
+
+Coomassie was decidedly picturesque, many of its houses resembling
+Chinese temples.  But the great feature was the "fetish."  Everything
+was fetish.  Near the door of each house was a tree, at the foot of
+which were placed little idols, calabashes, bits of china, bones--an
+extraordinary medley.  Inside there was dust and litter, the result of
+years of neglect, and the chief apartments were filled with lumber, all
+kinds of paraphernalia, umbrellas, drums, wooden maces, and what not.
+
+Up to the last it was believed by the Ashantis that the fetish would
+save the day, and the optimism of the king was shown by the state of the
+royal palace.  It was in all respects exactly as he had left it, except
+that the gold-dust must have been carried off or buried.  The royal bed
+and couch lay in their places, the royal chairs were in their usual
+raised positions, only oddly enough they had been turned round and over.
+
+In the palace there was a curious jumble of gold masks, gold caps,
+clocks, china, pillows, guns, etc.  It was rather like a sale-room.
+There were many great alcoved courts, one containing war-drums
+ornamented either with skulls or thigh-bones.  In two or three there was
+simply a royal chair upon which his majesty used to sit to administer
+what passed for justice, and several stools were found covered with
+thick coatings of recently-shed blood.  Henty says that a horrible smell
+of gore pervaded the whole palace.  The nauseating odour was everywhere
+perceptible; and this was not to be wondered at, for twenty yards from
+one of the fetish trees was a charnel place where thousands had
+perished.  Here were scores of bodies in various stages of putrefaction.
+
+The palace contained fetishes of all kinds, little dolls, and other
+articles.  The king's bed-room was ten feet by eight, and the bed had a
+ledge on the near side, which the monarch had to step over when he
+sought his pillow.  Among other weapons found here was an English
+general's sword, inscribed, "From Queen Victoria to the King of
+Ashanti", presented to his predecessor.
+
+There is only one term that can be applied to Henty's work in connection
+with the march to Coomassie, and that is _thorough_, for danger seems
+not to have been considered for a moment.  What the troops had to do, he
+told himself, that he had to see, and self was never spared.
+
+After the desperate fighting was at an end, and the General's offers to
+the defeated monarch had been made known, it was anticipated that the
+king would come in and surrender.  But in spite of much waiting and
+patience on the General's part nothing happened, and all delay and
+expectation were ultimately brought to an end by a terrific storm.  For
+now, after much thought, it was decided--and Henty applauded the
+decision--to mark the visit of the punitive troops by the destruction of
+the place as a warning and an object-lesson in Britain's power to the
+king and the petty chiefs around.  For the moment it was anticipated
+that to fire the place would be impossible after the saturating by the
+tremendous rains, as this, it was feared, would prevent the thatch from
+burning; but the engineers went to work with axe, powder, and palm-leaf
+torch, with the result that the whole fabric of the place was brought
+down like a piled-up pack of cards.  Palm, bamboo, and thatch, as soon
+as the flames once got hold and began to leap, rapidly disappeared, and
+it was soon abundantly clear that before long Coomassie would be a city
+of the past.  The royal residence, which was little more than a
+cemetery, shared in the general destruction, for it was blown up; and
+then the men cheered, and every heart grew light, for the task was done.
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.
+
+A CARLIST WAR.
+
+Henty's return from Ashanti in 1874 is memorable to the writer from its
+being the commencement of his introduction to a good fellowship which
+lasted till that event which turns all friendships into a memory.
+
+The meeting was in that famous old street named after the little river
+of such modest and retiring nature that it was only written down as a
+ditch, though probably in its beginnings, long before it was lost in
+Father Thames, it was christened Fleet.
+
+It was just outside the _Standard_ office that the acquaintance began
+with the singular-looking, swarthy, not sun-tanned, but blackened war
+correspondent freshly arrived from the deadly swamps and black shadows
+of the West Coast forests.
+
+Scientific writers on the physiology of man and his colouration tell us
+that the black races have been endowed by nature with a curious black
+pigment lying beneath the skin, and that this is evidently intended as a
+protection from the too ardent and otherwise injurious rays of the sun.
+In the case of Henty, his appearance on his first return from the
+Coomassie campaign was that of one upon whom nature had begun to bestow
+some of this strange protection.  He did not look embrowned, but
+blackened; so discoloured, in fact, that there was one who laughingly
+spoke of the discoloration--which lasted for some considerable time--as
+making him strongly resemble a chimney-sweep who had been trying hard to
+wash himself clean for Sunday and had dismally failed.
+
+Henty found time in 1874 to send to the press in book form his account
+of the West Coast expedition, under the title of _The March to
+Coomassie_, a work which ran through two editions.  But he was not
+allowed long for the purpose of resuming the natural tint of an
+Englishman.  Fresh work was looming in the almost immediate future, and,
+as if fate had ordained that he was to have something to do with nearly
+every warlike episode that recent history records, the summons came that
+he should start for that hotbed of revolution and insurrection, Spain.
+Here he was to busy his pen with his accounts of the long-drawn-out,
+never-seeming-to-end troubles in connection with the succession, and the
+long duel between Don Alfonso and Don Carlos to decide which should
+reign as king.  Moreover a short-lived Spanish republic was in these
+days much to the fore.  He had come back from Ashanti looking forward to
+rest and change.  The rest was withheld, but the change came in plenty.
+Peace had been proclaimed in one part of the world, and one war was at
+an end, but this other war was in full swing, and so almost immediately
+he received his orders to start for Spain.
+
+Arrived in the Peninsula, he hurried to head-quarters, where he was
+received with the greatest courtesy and furnished with the means of
+following the army before Bilbao.  Here he was soon in his element,
+penning one of his graphic letters, describing the forces and dealing
+with the fortifications, batteries, and the strategy of the contending
+armies.  There was no waiting here, no want of exciting matter such as
+would interest his readers at home, and in the pursuit of information he
+seems to have kept well to the front, meeting the sad traces of battle
+in the shape of stretcher after stretcher being brought in laden with
+the dead and wounded.
+
+He never seems to have flinched from the duty that was his, and above
+all, he never lost sympathy with the wounded, even, as in former cases,
+making a point of exploring the temporary hospitals that were being
+filled.
+
+He describes soon after his arrival at the front, and just at the close
+of one of the encounters, how he went out one night in search of
+information, stopping by the roadside for the space of a couple of
+hours.  The scene was as striking as it was sad.  There was but little
+moonlight, and by the glare of a few camp fires he saw the long line of
+stretchers go by bearing officers and men to the ambulances.  The
+procession was watched by the startled uninjured soldiers, whose faces
+showed that they were gazing for the first time on the victims of a
+civil war.
+
+Those they looked upon were in a way fortunate, for in the long line
+that passed Henty, or which he passed by, there were many who had found
+no bearers, and so had crawled along by the aid of some comrade.
+
+Here and there there were ambulances for dressing the wounds of those
+who required most attention.  Many who had been hit in the neck, arms,
+or feet, had been temporarily bandaged, and he came upon one poor fellow
+who had been severely wounded in the neck and shoulder, whose dressing
+had become disarranged as he struggled onward.  At length, forced by his
+suffering, he was resting by the way, moaning piteously, and after Henty
+had rearranged the dressing with a handkerchief and the sufferer's
+cravat, the man murmured in Spanish his grateful thanks to the young
+Englishman who had helped him in his need.
+
+It was truly a time of suffering, for hundreds of wounded had passed the
+night untended upon the ground, and even the dead could not be buried,
+as neither side dared expose themselves to the severe fire that was kept
+up.
+
+In Henty's earlier letters the sympathy above mentioned affected his
+descriptions, which were sad in the extreme, in fact those of a man who
+suffered too.  All through the period when he was with the Spanish army,
+in a quiet unobtrusive way the letters constantly showed how often he
+was placed in circumstances where there were calls made upon his
+humanity, and invariably he displayed his readiness to join hands with
+the members of the Red Cross Society and help the wounded sufferers in
+their distress.
+
+Experience and his own nature generally found him friends, who from day
+to day were ready to share with him such provision as was to be had, or
+to accept a portion of his own scanty military rations.  Then setting
+danger at defiance, he was glad to yield to fatigue and prepare himself
+for the next day's toil by sleeping anywhere, beneath a shelter if it
+was to be found, if not, rolled in a waterproof, one of his principal
+cares always being the protection of his writing-case and pens.  Here,
+however, in spite of his care, he was called upon to suffer the war
+correspondent's great difficulty.  It is comparatively easy for an
+energetic man, supplied with proper credentials, to gather enough
+stirring facts in the progress of a war to form an interesting article
+for his paper, but after hurrying to the nearest shelter where he could
+write and finish his letter, there would always come the difficulties of
+despatch.  It was not always easy to find a messenger to bear it to the
+nearest place where postal communication could be ensured, and
+afterwards only too often he had the mortification of discovering that
+the carefully-written communication had miscarried.
+
+The war which Henty was now engaged in describing was not one of great
+battles with massed brigades against massed brigades, and troops spread
+over miles of country, but it was a desultory continuance of what might
+be spoken of as village warfare.  The Carlists fought in a
+guerrilla-like fashion, and were continually being driven from one
+position to start up again unexpectedly in another.
+
+There was plenty of artillery brought to bear at times, but more often
+it was hand-to-hand fighting, kept up with very small results, as far as
+the main issue was concerned, though defeat and destruction were
+frequently the fate of either party, while the country itself was the
+greatest sufferer.
+
+In his many journeyings from place to place in search of information,
+Henty was constantly brought face to face with the more or less petty
+horrors and often mischievous ruin caused by civil war--desolated
+villages, ruined homestead and mansion, and the stagnation of the
+country's social life by the passing through it of fire and sword.  And
+for what?  Too often the answer might be given in the words which our
+own poet placed in the mouth of Old Kaspar: "I know not why they fought,
+quoth he, But 'twas a famous victory."  The politician alone can tell.
+What we know is that it seemed to be a never-ending war, one which
+supplied George Henty with the material which he afterwards made the
+basis of interesting historical tales.  For he was ever to the front,
+and seems to have led a charmed life, living as he did an existence
+wherein there was always an impending attack, with the enemy starting up
+here and there in greater or less force.
+
+One Sunday he was in a town on the banks of a river, when the Carlists
+suddenly appeared on the other bank and began firing volleys across the
+water, the bullets coming whistling unpleasantly about the streets.  He
+naively says that the inhabitants were getting into a great state of
+alarm.  Naturally!  But by mid-day on Monday the fire ceased, and by the
+evening it appears that the Carlist commanders received some news that
+involved retreat, and made them start off guerrilla-like with all their
+forces through some of the passes leading into the more impregnable
+valleys.  Then came pursuit, till cartridges and grenades began to run
+short, and a fresh enemy appeared in the shape of a scarcity of
+provisions.  Meanwhile the Carlists distinguished themselves by burning
+several houses, including a convent and a very fine mansion, which were
+in no way interfering with their attack.  In his description of this
+petty warfare Henty goes on to say: "From what I gather of the
+peasantry, the Carlists must have suffered from the shells.  Twenty
+bullock-carts with wounded were removed, and a chief is said to have
+been killed, while on the other side the Republican loss did not exceed
+a hundred.  How pitiful!  A sample this of much of the warfare that was
+carried on, and with so little result!"
+
+In another letter, written from Burgos in June, 1874, he gives a
+charming description of the beauty of the districts where the Carlists
+had again and again appeared during their January raids.  By this time,
+though, there was a fresh enemy in the field, namely the weather, and on
+a certain railway journey he had ample evidence of the havoc wrought by
+the elements.  A lowering sky, he says, and dark clouds which almost
+touched the roofs of the village churches gave warning of the severest
+thunderstorm he ever witnessed in that part of Spain.  As the train
+dashed across the plains, the storm burst with such fury that the
+hailstones actually broke some of the carriage windows, while the clouds
+were so low that the train seemed to be passing through them.  In fact,
+within human record no storm had done such damage in Old Castile.
+Finally the train was brought to a standstill in a little station, and
+the officials made the announcement that the line had been destroyed by
+the flood.  Henty with his colleagues, therefore, had to pass the night
+as best they could with the rain pouring in torrents and the wind
+moaning around.  Fretting was in vain, and the unhappy station-master
+could only shrug his shoulders and listen patiently to the upbraidings
+of the correspondents, who accused him of obstinacy in not sending the
+train forward.  But with the dawn the little party became aware that
+they had had a very narrow escape.  A previous train had become derailed
+some hours before they came up, and seven poor creatures were lying
+wounded in the station.  The daylight showed them too that, as far as
+their eyes could see, the country was flooded; fields and crops, walls
+and roads, were covered with the yellow muddy water.  The line was a
+wreck; the sleepers were held together by the rails, and the embankment
+had been washed away.  Miles and miles of rich country had been
+destroyed by the fury of the inundation, while the rays of the rising
+sun cast a lurid glare over the scene.  The correspondents had to
+continue their journey along the line on foot, passing the ruins of the
+wrecked train which had preceded them, and then onwards to the next
+quarters of the northern army.  Here they learned of the doings of the
+Carlist generals, and found that four stations had been burned, and that
+in every peaceful village in this land of vineyards the houses were
+fortified and held by the soldiery, for the war was being carried on in
+a more pitiable way than ever.  It was the custom for the Carlist bands
+to sweep down from Navarre in the dead of night, to burn farms or
+stations, then take up a few rails, or attempt to destroy a bridge,
+while by daybreak the mischief would be done and the raiders far away.
+
+It was an adventurous life for a war correspondent, and one can only
+repeat how ample was the supply of material for Henty's ready pen.  But
+the end came at last, for in spite of a brave struggle the Carlist star
+went down in gloom, and Henty returned to England to enjoy a brief rest
+before taking part in a bright and enjoyable expedition, that of the
+Prince of Wales--His Majesty, King Edward--to India.
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.
+
+THE ROYAL TOUR IN INDIA.
+
+The Royal Tour in India being a matter of supreme importance, it was
+only right that Henty should be chosen by the journal for which he had
+done such admirable work to accompany His Majesty, King Edward, then
+Prince of Wales, and accordingly, in 1875, we find him one of the select
+corps of artists and correspondents who went on this memorable journey.
+
+It was an agreeable change from the picturesque squalor and misery of
+civil war to a triumphal spectacular tour through the principal cities
+of the Indian Empire, in the train of the heir-apparent to the throne.
+No correspondent's journey can be anything less than arduous.  He is
+always face to face with a heavy call upon his energies; he must be
+continually on the strain in order that he may feel that he is doing his
+best for his paper; above all, he must miss nothing that is of
+importance and worthy of the chronicler's pen.  Still, in comparison
+with Henty's last journey, this was a pleasure trip, with all
+difficulties smoothed away.  He travelled through a country in holiday
+guise, where day after day the various rajahs and Eastern potentates
+vied with each other in the splendour of their receptions, in their
+displays of Eastern magnificence, and in the opulence of their trains.
+It was all like a long series of Eastern fields of the cloth of gold.
+Notwithstanding that this was the latter half of the nineteenth century,
+it was like stepping to where medieval pageantry was in full swing, and
+the brilliant East surpassed itself in dazzling spectacle to do honour
+to the son of the august lady who on the first of May of the following
+year was to be proclaimed Empress as well as Queen.
+
+Henty reached Bombay in November.  He was present at the receptions at
+Baroda and Goa, and then went southward to Ceylon.  Turning north he
+went to Madras, and he reached Calcutta at Christmas to be present at
+the brilliant receptions of the Indian potentates.  At the beginning of
+the following year he saw the unveiling of the statue of the
+Governor-general, the unfortunate Lord Mayo, who was assassinated by one
+of the convicts during a visit to the Andaman Islands.
+
+From Calcutta the Prince's train visited the grand old cities of Benares
+and Lucknow--name of ill omen, shadowed by the horrors of the Mutiny,
+but now glittering with splendour, the streets crowded with peaceful
+subjects eager to add to the brilliancy of the scene and to give fitting
+welcome to the son of the Great White Queen.
+
+Henty visited city after city brilliantly coloured with the pomp of the
+Orient, before the Prince went northward to Nepaul.  He was present too
+at the river-crossing by the great train of elephants in their gorgeous
+trappings, a scene transferred to canvas by his old fellow club member
+and companion of the journey, Herbert Johnson, who has also since passed
+away.
+
+It was in Nepaul that Henty was brought face to face with much of the
+barbaric splendour of Northern India, whose rulers, proud of their
+independence, have kept up much of the tradition of the past.  There are
+some among us still who can recall the display made by the Nepaulese
+ambassadors in 1850, with their prince, Jung Bahadoor, and it was
+fitting that our Prince should visit an Eastern king who fought bravely
+and stood firm for England during the horrors of the Mutiny in 1857.
+The name of the brave little hill men, once our opponents and at war
+with us, is historic in connection with many a hard fight in which they
+have done good service for England.  They have made their British
+officers proud to be in command of a Gurkha regiment, and though
+rifle-armed, they are still wielders of their ancient weapon, the
+curved, willow-bladed, deadly _kukri_.
+
+It is in Nepaul that the primeval tract of jungle, dear to all sportsmen
+under the name of the Terai, is to be found, and Henty's pen was called
+upon here to describe the hunting expeditions, with the train of
+howdah-bearing elephants and beaters in pursuit of tiger and the other
+savage denizens of the wide-spread forest.  Here the Prince was able to
+show his prowess with the rifle, and among the presents he received is
+there not still living one of the little plump elephants he brought
+back, to become in course of years a huge bearer of juvenile visitors at
+the Zoo?
+
+At Bombay Henty, of course, had to describe the brilliant illuminations,
+and he put in a word too for the marvellous coloured fires which flashed
+from the port-holes of the fleet, also for the illuminated fort and
+esplanade, in all about three-quarters of a mile of general brilliancy
+and display of loyalty.  Reference is made also to the Byculla Club ball
+and the arrival of the Prince and suite.  There was a grand banquet to
+the soldiers of the Bombay garrison and the sailors of the fleet, and it
+was a pleasant time for the writer generally, especially after
+describing the horrors of war.
+
+The display of loyalty to the young Prince was tremendous.  Fete
+succeeded fete, and Henty speaks of a banquet to the juveniles, of
+receptions galore, and of the Parsee ladies in their wonderful dresses.
+
+He, of course, saw the famed Temple of Elephants, but it has been
+described _ad nauseam_.  He has a word in season as to the overpowering
+force of the sun.  After such heat, welcome indeed was the shade of the
+Cave Temples with their religious figures.  Then came the visit to Poona
+and the approach to the _ghauts_.  There were reviews and more fetes
+before returning to and leaving Bombay.  At the reviews he was struck by
+the brilliancy of the native troops, especially the Bombay Lancers and
+Poona Horse.  He touched, too, on the trooping of the colours of the
+Marine Battalion for the last time prior to being presented now with new
+colours.  The Bombay Marine Battalion had been raised a hundred years
+previously, and enjoyed a fine record.
+
+At Baroda came the visit to the Gaekwar and Sir Madhava Rao.  Here the
+Prince mounted the elephant in waiting, his host having provided a
+majestic beast, richly caparisoned and gorgeously painted.  The howdah
+was of silver, beautifully decorated with cloth of gold, the gorgeous
+housings reaching to the ground.  It was a resplendent spectacle.  The
+base of the howdah was a platform on which stood attendants to drive off
+the flies and fan the air.  A procession was formed, all the elephants
+being splendidly caparisoned, and a small escort of dragoons rode in
+advance.
+
+In the afternoon there was an elephant fight--one of the popular
+amusements in Baroda--and on the next day a barbaric display of combats
+between other animals.
+
+The following day came a cheetah hunt, to display the skill of the
+highly-trained, greyhound-like leopards.  Shooting followed during the
+rest of the stay, including pig-shooting.  The Prince took part in the
+pig-sticking, which he greatly enjoyed.
+
+The expedition returned to Bombay and started at once for Ceylon, taking
+Goa, the picturesque and Lilliputian Portuguese Indian Empire, _en
+route_.
+
+At Colombo there was a brilliant assemblage of Europeans and native
+chiefs at the railway station.  At Kandy the thoroughfares were thronged
+with vociferous crowds, while triumphal arches were everywhere, and this
+in a land where every tropical road seems to pass under a series of
+nature's beautiful bowers.  The Prince left Kandy _en route_ for two
+days' elephant-shooting and for Colombo, and Henty describes the
+Botanical Gardens and the Temple of Buddha, where the chief head-man
+displayed Buddha's tooth.
+
+Afterwards there took place a grand torchlight procession, with fifty
+elephants, bands of native music, and natives in the guise of devils
+performing antics--a novel and successful pageant.  The town was
+illuminated, and beacon fires were lit on neighbouring hills, enhancing
+the natural picturesque beauties of the place.
+
+It was when returning from an elephant hunt at Colombo that the royal
+carriage was overturned and smashed, the Prince being thrown underneath,
+but fortunately escaping unhurt.  An exciting feature of the hunt came
+when the party was pursued through the dense bamboo jungle by a herd of
+fierce, wild elephants.
+
+At Madras there were grand festivities, with an elaborate Nautch and
+Hindustani drama.  At Calcutta the _maidan_ was lined with troops, and,
+as a sign of peace and prosperity, the National Anthem was sung by ten
+thousand school-children.  Here the renowned Zoological Gardens came in
+for notice.  Everywhere the natives flocked in thousands to see the
+royal visitor, while the programme at Calcutta also included
+tent-pegging and another procession of elephants.
+
+At Benares there were visits to the temples.  The Prince was the Rajah
+of Benares' guest in a splendid castle on the Ganges, the roof of which
+afforded a view of the magnificent illuminations.  Lucknow supplied more
+sporting features.  At Cawnpore a visit was made to the sad memorial of
+the cemetery, while at Delhi there was further military display and
+another grand review.  Henty touches on the remarkable appearance of the
+elephant batteries.  The Prince and the brilliant staff rode along the
+line of eighteen thousand troops.  At Lahore they saw the old palace of
+Jamoo, another brilliant display of fireworks, and a dance of lamas from
+Ladak.
+
+At other of the great cities of the country there were receptions by the
+rajahs.  The account of the illumination of the Golden Temple reads like
+an extract from the _Arabian Nights_.  At Agra the procession to meet
+the Prince was gigantic, a most brilliant affair in every way, several
+hundred elephants bearing gorgeous trappings marching past, while
+seventeen rajahs were present.  Every available man, horse, camel, and
+elephant were utilised on the occasion of a visit to the Taj Mahal
+monument, which was illuminated with wondrous effect.
+
+At Gwalior, accompanied by a strong British escort, the Prince was met
+by the Maharajah Sanda, who accompanied him to the old palace, the route
+of which was lined by fourteen thousand of the Maharajah's picked
+troops, who looked uncommonly well, while a sham-fight which was
+arranged was a noteworthy affair.  This, in fact, was one of the
+grandest receptions of the visit.
+
+From Gwalior the expedition moved on to Jaipur, where the Maharajah gave
+the Prince the opportunity of shooting his first tiger.  The next visit
+was to the camp at Bunbussa, where the Prince was received by Sir Jung
+Bahadoor, the ruler of the Nepaulese.  Here there was a guard of honour
+of Gurkhas, and it was worthy of remark that the Prince and Sir Jung
+were in plain clothes; but after a brief interval Sir Jung Bahadoor
+returned, with his suite, all in full dress, blazing with diamonds.  A
+durbar was held, and the Prince paid a return visit.  At each durbar
+there were presentations, and to each member of the Prince's suite the
+servants brought in trays of presents.  Two tigers in cages, many other
+wild creatures, and a splendid collection of the beautiful pheasant-like
+birds from the Nepaulese mountains, were offered to the royal visitor.
+
+Splendid sport was enjoyed here in the Nepaulese dominions, seven tigers
+being shot, six falling to the Prince's rifle.  Upwards of six hundred
+elephants were employed in beating the jungle, and the sight was of an
+imposing character.  Before leaving, the royal party had a most exciting
+hunt.  The Prince and his suite, accompanied by Sir Jung Bahadoor, went
+in pursuit of a wild rogue elephant, a splendid animal with huge tusks,
+which at the end of a long day's chase, and after charging the royal
+party several times, was eventually captured by means of tame elephants.
+
+Such were some of the scenes and incidents which Henty was called upon
+to witness and describe, and to a man fresh from the arduous trials of
+the Coomassie campaign the change must have been both refreshing and
+delightful.
+
+It is amusing to read a telegram from Aden which gives an account of
+some of the Prince's presents:--"The menagerie is quite comfortable.  It
+contains eighty animals.  The elephants walk about the deck,"--this, of
+course, meaning our two little friends that were known so well at the
+Zoo--"the deer are very tame, and the tigers are domesticated, though
+they exhibit tendencies to relapse."  So says the chronicler
+sarcastically.
+
+At the conclusion of the Prince's visit, in March, 1876, and shortly
+after Henty's return, there was more food for his pen, but of a very
+different character.  The Turko-Servian War had broken out, and once
+more he was the busy war correspondent, though this proved to be the
+last time that he went to the front.
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.
+
+AMONG THE TURKS.
+
+The year 1876, which was a memorable year in the life of Henty, is
+familiar to the elders among us in connection with the troubles in the
+East and the risings in Bulgaria and Servia.  Christian England was,
+politically, ringing with the charges made against Turkey in the matter
+of the stern suppression of the risings in the former country.
+"Bulgarian Atrocities" were made a party question, and debate followed
+debate.  All our great parliamentary speakers delivered columns of
+speeches in the House, denouncing Turkey or speaking in her defence,
+while special deputations were made to Government by leading members of
+Parliament, Mr Gladstone being foremost in the attack.
+
+It fell to the lot of the writer to be in the gallery of the House of
+Commons upon one of the most important evenings, when he had the
+opportunity of hearing Mr Gladstone deliver one of his most fervent and
+denunciatory speeches--a speech which was replied to by Mr Disraeli
+calmly, coldly, and disdainfully.  The future Lord Beaconsfield
+expressed his disbelief in the charges made by the Opposition.  He
+declared that it was not in the nature of the Turks to stoop to such
+atrocities, that they were too gentlemanly a race of men.  They might,
+when stirred up to anger and in the hot blood of war, slay outright, but
+they would scorn to commit the ruffianly acts of which they were
+accused.
+
+It was at this time that the Turks were sending their armies into Servia
+to suppress the rising in that country, in defiance of the protecting
+aegis of Russia, and Henty, as representative of the _Standard_, was
+despatched to the head-quarters of the Turkish army to fulfil one of his
+familiar missions.  His letters from the seat of war ring all through
+with a sturdy conservative belief in the qualities of the Turk as
+vouched for by the late Lord Beaconsfield; indeed, he is full of high
+praise for the patience, kindliness, and hospitality of the Turkish
+soldier.  He was well received everywhere by officer and man alike.  One
+and all were ever ready to share with the English representative of the
+press their shelter, or their last crust of bread and cup of water.
+
+The whole of Asia Minor was at the time in a political volcanic state of
+eruption, and Prince Milan's name was constantly reaching the Turkish
+head-quarters, while beneath, like a muttering undercurrent of rumour,
+there was the constant rumble of what was doing among the Russ.
+
+Henty's pen was, of course, as busy as ever, and when he was not
+reporting some attack or some defence, the creaking of the tumbrel
+wheels that bore away the wounded from the field, or the rattle and roar
+of musketry and artillery, he was making his letters attractive with
+descriptions of the beauty of the country, and of the richness of the
+orchards whose fruit was to supply the plum brandy of the country.
+Then, full perhaps of recollections of Moore's poetry descriptive of the
+attar of the rose, he reverted to the showering petals of the
+nightingale flower, and drew attention to the copper stills, to be found
+in almost every cottage or village, used by the peasantry for the
+distillation of the wondrous penetrating attar of roses.  One cannot
+help thinking, though, that in a country where the inhabitants depend
+upon obtaining their alcohol from the juice of the plum, their brandy
+may possibly by accident be occasionally obtained from the same copper
+still.
+
+Be that as it may, the descriptions of the dreamy beauty of such a
+picturesque and flowery land bring up a feeling of sadness that the
+nature of both people alike, Christian and Moslem, should tend so
+strongly towards bloodshed and rapine.
+
+Here, too, in the midst of constant travel and change of quarters, in
+spite of friendly treatment from the people among whom his lot was cast,
+the special correspondent was called upon to suffer severely from the
+intense heat and the consequent thirst, and though he knew it not at the
+time, it was to find later that he had been laying the foundation for
+much ill-health and trouble to come.
+
+But Henty was too busy making up, column by column, the long and always
+interesting letters that by some means or another he sent north and west
+on their way to the _Standard_, to think much about self.  In fact,
+every note he sent seems to have running through it the spirit of the
+earnest, hard-working man with a certain duty to fulfil.
+
+There was always something to write about, and when short of material
+and if in doubt, it seemed as if he played trumps--by this one means
+that, soldierlike, he fell back upon his old habit of giving a
+picturesque description of the uniform of the soldiery among whom he was
+cast.  In the case of the Turks the richness of its colour--blue; its
+newness and well-kept aspect came in for much praise, while at other
+times he was as graphic and true to nature about the rags to which this
+uniform was reduced.  He always noted, though, that the men's weapons
+were perfectly serviceable and bright.
+
+In spite of the friendliness with which Henty found himself greeted by
+the Moslem, Turk, and the Graeco-Christian Bulgar alike, he noted that
+invariably when he and his _zaptieh_ (servant) approached the
+Circassians--the dreaded Tcherkesses constituting the Turkish irregular
+soldiery, who were fierce mercenaries, and undoubtedly answerable for
+whatever atrocities were perpetrated in Bulgaria--they turned away their
+heads with a scowl of mingled scorn and hatred.
+
+It was here again that Henty's old training came to his aid, giving him
+the firmness and determination that impressed those whom he passed, as
+showing that he was well armed, and that he was ready, if it should
+prove necessary, to use his weapons.  For he states that in spite of
+their peaceful mission, he and his man had to hold revolver and rifle
+ready during their advances till they were quite certain that they were
+approaching Turkish regular soldiers and not Circassians, for if they
+met the regulars they were always cordially welcomed and received with
+black coffee and cigarettes.
+
+This reception may possibly be due to the fact that the Turks seem to
+have a sort of traditionary feeling that a European who is travelling
+must be a _hakeem_--in plain English, a doctor, in which belief they are
+somewhat supported by the meaning of the good old word doctor--a learned
+man.
+
+Now a glance at Henty's portrait seems to stamp him, big-bearded and
+bluff, with the learned look of one who, being a traveller, must be
+endowed with the knowledge that would enable him to treat any complaint
+with skill.  As a matter of fact, if called upon for aid in a case of
+emergency or ordinary ailment, he was quite prepared to open a medical
+battery upon a sufferer.  It is, therefore, in no wise surprising that
+during his travels in Servia the Turkish gendarmes occasionally applied
+to him to treat their complaints.  Even his own _zaptieh_, who after a
+few drops of opium was ready to cry, like the man in the old
+tooth-tincture advertisement, "Ha, ha!  Cured in a instant!" was always
+afterwards ready to spread his master's reputation and increase the
+number of his grateful patients.
+
+Of course there are some who would shrug their shoulders at this and
+softly murmur, "Quack!"  But one fails to see it.  In fact, the writer
+feels disposed to assert that the reputation of _hakeem_ was very
+honestly earned by one who had commenced his profession with a good
+sound English education, who had served a certain time in the military
+hospitals of the Crimea and in Italy, who had been a student in sanitary
+matters, who had worked hard among the sick and wounded, and to whom
+anything in the shape of a military hospital had an intense attraction.
+We must remember, too, that he had learned much from the sufferings he
+was called upon to witness in this later war, where the surgeon and
+physician were so terribly in the minority, and in a country where,
+during certain of the horrible attacks and defences, it was no unusual
+thing for the camp-followers to go round at night, and, to use a
+horrible, old, and familiar expression, put the enemy's wounded out of
+their misery.
+
+This knowledge on the part of Henty, and his readiness also and ability
+to give some slight alleviation of their sufferings and help to the
+wounded, enabled him to make sure of a friendly welcome, to say nothing
+of smiles and gratitude, almost wherever he went--except among the
+Tcherkesses.
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.
+
+PHILOSOPHY IN CAMP.
+
+No one need wonder that enthusiastic boys and young men who read Henty
+feel the spirit of emulation rise within them, while their young hearts
+glow with the desire to imitate him and to become a war correspondent.
+Well, so it would be grand; but the question has arisen since the last
+war--Is a war correspondent of Henty's type not a thing of the past?
+One writes this with the recollection of how a friend met with such
+discouraging treatment in the Russo-Japanese War that he and his fellows
+were ready to turn back homeward in disgust.  They found that it had
+become general _versus_ editor, and that the general had all the winning
+cards in his hand, while the troubles which Henty encountered during the
+Franco-German War, and in which he was worsted, had all become
+intensified.  War correspondents, in brief, were treated as individuals
+who were to be kept out of danger and hoodwinked as to what was going
+on; in short, they realised that Othello's occupation, to be
+Shakespearean, was about gone.
+
+But yea or nay, such a life as Henty's is enough to raise the spirit of
+emulation among the young, always too prone to see the bright side and
+not the dull.  It is only fair, though, that they should read both
+sides.  Of course, after the weary tramp, the sufferings from heat and
+cold, hunger and thirst, there was something very "jolly", as a boy
+would say, about the hearty welcome of the camp fire, the odorous
+cigarette, the fragrant coffee, the song, the story, and the genial
+looks of man to man in the full enjoyment of a well-earned evening's
+rest.  But then there was that other side: the places he had to stop at,
+fagged, faint, and hungry after a long day's journey; the bare mud
+floor, a mat for a bed, the momentary rejoicing at the fact that he had
+found a sheltering hut, though one innocent of window and with no means
+of fastening the door.  The correspondent is, however, only too glad to
+throw himself down and yield with a sigh to that terrible overmastering
+sleep, that letting go of everything, that slackening of the too tight
+bow-string, that general relaxation--yes, only to sleep--sleep--sleep,
+and then--ugh!--only to be awakened by the attack, fierce and combined,
+of every sort of vermin mentioned in natural history, quadrupedal and
+entomological.  Ugh!  Horrors, diabolical and disgusting these,
+calculated to promote a vivid wakefulness such as would make the war
+correspondent feel keenly that what before had seemed to be impossible
+had suddenly become possible.  With a feeling of despair at such times
+he would unbuckle his writing-case, tear open ink-holder with a snap,
+light his lantern, and begin to make notes, or set his teeth hard as he
+continued to write a portion of a letter already begun--one of those
+letters so full of picturesque description and vivid account of that
+last coming-on of the enemy and his gallant defeat, or the enforced
+retreat, with the horrible slaughter that it entailed--one of those
+letters, in short, that are so enthralling to read in the morning paper,
+and tell so well of the ability of the practised writer, but which he,
+poor fellow, has written from beginning to end in misery and also in
+supreme doubt as to whether it would ever reach its destination.
+
+But whether it did or not, whatever failure there might be to face in
+connection with the postal communication, the letters had to be written.
+How, when, or where--that is nothing to the reader.  There before the
+writer was the something attempted, and at last the something done, to
+earn the night's repose, though that repose was too often disturbed or
+made impossible in the way which one has attempted to depict in
+connection with the natural history that frequently haunted a Servian
+hut, in the lovely country where often only man was vile.
+
+Again and again, too, there was the deafening roar of the guns, the
+Turks especially being great in artillery, and the nauseous, dank,
+sulphuretted hydrogenous clinging smell of powder in the air, a most
+familiar odour to the industrious war correspondent who strives hard to
+do his duty by his paper; and this too often supplemented by that other
+sickening odour frequently associated with death, horrible when fresh,
+most horrible when days have gone by and the slain have not been hidden
+by the busy spade.
+
+The frequent smell of powder in the air to the weary correspondent is
+often enough safe and antiseptic, though still associated with the
+horrors of war and connected with death; but with so many risks to be
+run, one asks in wonder this question, how is it that the war
+correspondent usually manages to escape unharmed?  Fortunate for him it
+is that he, like so many others who have urgent duties to perform, has
+no time to think of aught save that which comes in the day's work.
+
+Then there is the food difficulty in a devastated country.  That is a
+matter, of course, which has to be got over; but it is not so easy to
+surmount the difficulties with servants, and in the Turco-Servian War
+Henty had a varied experience.  He states that he engaged one who
+professed to be able to cook, but who could not prepare food even in the
+most primitive way, while another who had undertaken to look after the
+horses, it would be quite reasonable to declare, had most probably never
+touched a horse in his life.  The consequence was that those most
+patient of beasts, which were often the very life of a war
+correspondent, suffered badly, while as to the action of the professed
+cook--for it is presumed that a man who undertakes to cook properly
+professes to be that artist, even though he may not be a _chef_--a diet
+of very bad bread, caviare, and German sausage, though convenient in the
+extreme in the way of transportation from place to place, begins after a
+time to pall.
+
+But Henty seems to have taken for his moral aphorism: "Sufficient for
+the day is the evil thereof."  Had it not been so, he could never have
+passed unscathed through what he did.  In fact, his murmurs about the
+troubles he encountered were few and far between.  So patient, indeed,
+does he show himself to have been, judging from his letters, that one is
+tempted at times to go so far as to call him a great man.  To judge from
+the calm, easy-going way in which his letters paint him as taking life,
+he seems often enough to be regarding it and its accidents as a great
+joke, while one would imagine that if there were one person whom he
+encountered who deserved to be laughed at, it was himself.
+
+His philosophy is often really great, even if he does not himself
+deserve the appellation, while his letters read as if he had reached a
+stage in educating himself wherein the ordinary troubles of life, which
+we as a rule are accustomed to regard as very serious, were during this
+campaign shrunk in his eyes to the calibre of the very small.  What he
+does set forth as being a really terrible difficulty is that of
+obtaining water for an "honest wash."
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.
+
+THE TURKISH ARMY.
+
+Henty carefully studied the ways and means of the Turkish army, not only
+the uniform and ornament, but the customs in connection with the various
+battalions.  Though the Ottoman forces are not such as can be held up as
+examples of military excellence, he extols them as being composed of
+brave and admirable fighting men who are on the whole abominably paid,
+whose pittance is shamefully in arrear, but who still go patiently and
+uncomplainingly on, content with the small mercies they receive, and the
+kindly treatment of their officers who suffer with them.  They march the
+more cheerfully from the fact that during a campaign every battalion has
+its own band, while as a rule the bandsmen have gained so much from the
+West that their performances of popular music are far above contempt.
+
+As a rule here in England ordinary people do not know much of Turkish
+music.  "The Turkish Patrol" and that very old favourite, "The Caliph of
+Bagdad", seem to belong nearly as much to the West as to the East; but
+in Servia Henty was made familiar with plenty of good Western operatic
+music, which was always bright and cheering in dreary times when on
+march.  And while discoursing upon the bands he notes that, just as in
+English regiments, they take their serious part in the war, their play
+being of course connected with the production of enlivening strains to
+lighten the dull hours of a heavy march, their work being as bearers of
+the wounded.
+
+National music such as is familiar to the people of the country is
+abundant and popular, of course; but it was amusing at one time in camp,
+when the war was dragging slowly on, to find that a band which played
+every evening under the Pasha General's tent finished up with a few bars
+of "God Save the Queen."
+
+Constantly observant, Henty was always attracted by everything connected
+with the Turkish hospitals.  He was quite fair.  If he saw anything in
+their management deserving of condemnation he spoke out.  On the other
+hand, if he noticed anything, however trifling, worthy of praise, it was
+carefully noted.  He records with something like a feeling of pride in
+his fellow-men, how an officer, having the power to command, had ordered
+that one of the bands should go down to the camp hospital to play for an
+hour every day, the Turkish officers declaring to him that the music
+raised the spirits and improved the condition of the sick and wounded.
+He continues with an anecdote of the _se non e vero, e ben trovato_
+type, namely, that a poor fellow, who had lost his arm in one of the
+first skirmishes, had been so revived by the music that he had begged
+permission to join the ranks again with a limb of wood!  Of course it
+may be true; but everyone is at liberty to doubt, and one cannot help
+giving the Turkish narrators the credit of trying a joke upon their
+foreign chronicler.
+
+During this campaign, on the principle that straws sometimes indicate
+the direction from which the wind blows, Henty grew more observant of
+matters connected with the sufferings of human life.  It was as if many
+of his notes and remarks were forced upon him by his own feelings, and
+as though his personal sensations sharpened his observation.
+
+Here was he, a man who had passed through the heats and colds of
+mountainous Africa in the march to Magdala, complaining, justly enough,
+of course, but in words that indicated how keenly he must have suffered,
+of the heat and cold of Asia Minor.  He says of the one that it is
+terrible by day, while the other is piercing by night, and both extremes
+even he, a strong man, found very hard to bear--harder terms these than
+any which he applied to the heavy stagnant heat of Ashanti.
+
+Then he speaks of the skin tents as being simply unbearable when the sun
+was up, while the flies were maddening, and he has a thoughtful word for
+the poor horses, which suffered as much as their riders, being almost
+devoured by the darkening swarms.
+
+He notes, too, that the Turkish sentinels when on duty were provided
+with a small umbrella tent to shelter them from the heat of the sun and
+from the rain; that a Turkish sentinel does not pace up and down when on
+sentry-go, but stands immovable all the time while he is on duty, and
+adds dryly that he has plenty of time for observation in the Turkish
+camp, for the army is dilatory in its movements.  Then he turns to make
+some fresh observation, as there is no fighting going on, upon the
+appearance of a battalion of Egyptian soldiers which had joined the
+camp.  The men were clothed in white from head to foot, with the
+exception of the tarboosh, which was, of course, scarlet, and, with his
+old military instinct aroused, he compares the Egyptian uniform with the
+Turkish, to the disadvantage of the latter in their blue serge.
+
+He goes on, too, to comment not only upon their dress, but upon their
+evolutions--unfixing bayonets, grounding arms, etc--and their activity.
+The Egyptians were dark brown of skin, but the Turks were no darker than
+Spaniards, often as fair as Englishmen.
+
+On another day his attention is attracted by a raid that has been made
+by the irregulars connected with the army, ending in a skirmish with the
+Servians, and a return laden with plunder, consisting of goats, cattle,
+and horses.  He ends up with a pithy memorandum that the Bashi-Bazouks
+receive no pay, so make the surrounding country keep up their supplies.
+
+With regard to the food supplies of the regulars, it seems that every
+Turk carries a leathern pouch which contains ground coffee and sugar, so
+that with a little bread and water they can get on pretty well.
+
+As for the Bashi-Bazouks, who depend upon the country, which would
+probably account for their unpopular character, Henty noted them a good
+deal.  They were a peculiarly mixed lot, apparently raised wherever men
+could be obtained, many of them being negroes of Herculean proportions.
+He notes, too, how laughter seems to go with the black, whether he be in
+the Turkish army, a negro from the Guinea Coast (such as strengthened or
+weakened our army in the Ashanti campaign), seen civilised in the West
+Indies, or serving in New York.  There is always at the slightest
+provocation the disposition to part the thick lips, bare the big white
+ivory teeth, and burst into the hoarse horse-laugh.  A rough lot, these
+Bashi-Bazouks, but Henty's eyes must have glistened with eager interest
+and flashed with the desire of a collector who had a little museum of
+his own at home, as he examined their weapons.  These were the arms of a
+dozen different nations, some carrying rusty, worthless old pistols,
+while others had damascened blades of beautiful wavy forging and
+razor-like keenness, such as could not be bought for money.
+
+Towards the end of his connection with this campaign he constantly
+recurs to the various skirmishes, many being encounters mostly brought
+on by Servian patriots--small affairs in which no military skill was
+brought to bear, and in which the injuries were, for the most part, the
+result of musket bullets, the wounds by sword and bayonet being few.  He
+goes on to complain bitterly of the Eastern callousness and conduct of
+man to man, the indifference he witnessed being revolting.  And then
+later, when at last the war became fiercer, his humanity was again
+stirred and he referred to the hospitals in one of the towns, which he
+described as "chock full", so encumbered, in fact, that wounded men had
+to lie in the streets from day to day, the people passing them by and
+noticing them no more than if they were logs of timber.
+
+In some of the rooms used there were neither beds nor mattresses, but
+simply the hard brick floor, for the wounded to lie upon in their
+blood-saturated clothes, waiting till one of the medical men could find
+time to attend to them.  The doctors were working the while like slaves,
+extracting bullets or dressing wounds, and then giving the poor fellows
+a little plum brandy before they were lifted into a bullock-cart, with a
+truss of hay for a seat, and sent to recover or die elsewhere, while
+many who could not bear transport had to stay until nature mercifully
+intervened, and glory and patriotism became the mists of another and a
+brighter day.
+
+Henty described how he was pulled up on one occasion because a river had
+to be crossed, and the army had to wait until a bridge then being made
+was finished.  At least half a dozen times did the infantry get under
+arms and the artillery harness their horses.  A more tedious day, he
+said, he never passed.  His tent was packed, he had no place to sit down
+to write, and his sole amusement was watching the Circassians and
+Bashi-Bazouks come in laden with plunder.
+
+The selection made by these freebooters had been strange and
+miscellaneous at first, but as things grew scarce, nothing was
+considered unworthy of the scoundrels' notice, for they scraped together
+trifles that would not have fetched a piastre, and they took not the
+slightest notice of the ridicule of the regular Turkish soldiers around.
+These laughed scornfully at the plundering habits of the irregulars,
+and were not above pointing them out to the English looker-on,
+exclaiming, "No bono Tcherkess--no bono Bashi-Bazouk!"  Henty does not
+scruple to call these men a disgrace to the Turkish government; but it
+seems that the army often had to depend upon them for supplies.
+
+And after this fashion the weary war went on.  The inexhaustible letters
+were despatched, each teeming with interest, till rumours began to reach
+the writer of overtures being made by the Servians to the Turks for
+peace; but these were only contradicted and followed by a desperate
+encounter, or the siege of some little stronghold.
+
+Then more rumours of peace; suggestions in the way of news; a short
+interregnum; then a recrudescence of the war, with Henty once more
+afoot, following the movements of the Turkish army or some brigade, to
+be present at an attack or to watch some threatening Servian movement
+being driven across one or other of the rivers.  All the time the quiet,
+thoughtful correspondent was supplying his columns of interesting
+material to his messengers.  The long chronicle grew and grew, and no
+mention was made of weariness, cruel suffering, semi-starvation, want of
+rest, and the difficulty of obtaining the sinews of war to carry on his
+fight.  For no matter how careful the means taken for transmitting
+funds, the difficulties of cashing orders, and the troubles incident
+upon the money passing through foreign hands, which closed upon coin and
+objected to reopen, were often distressing in the extreme.
+
+Now and then, though, a letter gives a hint about the difficulty of the
+war correspondent's task--the sort of hint for which one has to read
+between the lines--and at last, with the year waning and passing into
+autumn, and while chronicling that difficulties were arising in
+connection with the army he accompanied, and that Russia, long
+threatening and working in connection with the politics of Europe, was
+at last thoroughly taking the field and preparing to give check in the
+cause of Christianity against the Moslem, Henty touches on his own
+situation.  Now it was, too, that the time arrived for an announcement
+of the armistice that was to come into force.
+
+At this period, completely worn out, the correspondent writes: "I leave
+the camp to-morrow for England, with the conviction that the war is
+over, as it is hardly possible that the European powers can permit it to
+recommence...  But even did I think otherwise, I must most reluctantly
+have given up my post of correspondent with the Turkish army, for the
+long-continued indisposition brought on by bad food and hard living has
+at last overpowered me, and the doctors tell me that it is absolutely
+necessary for me to have rest, good living, and home comforts.  I never
+quitted an army more reluctantly, for never have I been with one where I
+have received such uniform kindness, and whose men I had so much reason
+to like.  I defy the most anti-Mohammedan fanatic to stop a month with
+this army without experiencing a complete change of sentiment, for a
+more liberal set of men than these quiet, willing, patient, and cheerful
+soldiers does not exist on the face of the earth.  I have been with the
+troops of most nations of Europe, including, of course, our own, under
+circumstances of hardship and fatigue, and I can say that none of them
+can compare with the Turkish troops in point of good humour and patient
+endurance."
+
+Henty struggled on, however, to the last, and we read of him in
+connection with the campaign in the Dobrudscha.  Here his health
+completely broke down, and for some time he was an invalid.
+
+He never did any further war correspondent's work, but for many years
+edited the telegrams and letters that came in to the _Standard_ from the
+younger and more active men who had taken up his work.  In fact, he went
+abroad no more, except on one trip through the United States to see for
+himself what mining life was like in Omaha, California, and elsewhere,
+and also to explore the rich copper country of the shores and islands of
+Lake Superior.  No better man could have been found, from his old
+experience, for the investigation.  But this was to him more of a
+holiday.
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.
+
+A BUSY CONVALESCENCE.
+
+Nature had given George Henty plenty of latitude, but now he was
+compelled to accept her warnings that he must take no more liberties
+with his health.  He was so broken down by hard work and the rough
+experiences through which he had passed that he had become quite an
+invalid, with the stern task plainly before him of doing everything
+possible to restore his health.
+
+As the old epitaph says, "Affliction sore long time he bore"; but
+physicians were not in vain, for Henty was a man of strong common sense,
+who knew well the value of self-denial.  His ailments, too, were not of
+his own seeking, for no man knew better than he the value of moderation
+and attention to hygiene.
+
+He followed out what he knew was due to a man who wished to lead a
+healthy life, and he supplemented his medical men's advice by devoting
+himself more than ever to his favourite pursuit of yachting.  He spent
+almost every hour he could spare on board his little craft, keeping her
+within easy reach of town and taking a few hours here, a day there, and
+when work did not enchain him, making his little vacation a week, with
+the result that he was rapidly restored to health.  It is doubtless due
+to the health-giving, strength-producing breezes that blow around the
+British shore that he retained the vigour of a carefully-preserved
+manhood to the very last, so that when his summons came it found him
+upon his yacht.
+
+If a candid recorder of George Henty's career is bound to set down all
+and criticise adversely, he might reasonably say that this man's one
+great excess was his indulgence in ink.  This fault, however, was not a
+very black one, for, so to speak, he softened it by using ink of a
+pleasant violet hue!  But, to be matter-of-fact, writing when at home
+and at rest in his study seems to have been a perfect stimulant, and,
+combined as it was with his open-air pursuit, a complete recreation, and
+in no sense a work of toil.
+
+Many men are great readers.  Henty, in one acceptation of the term, was
+a great writer, who, with the assistance for a score of years of his
+swift-penned amanuensis, Mr Griffith, sat down daily, not to write, but
+to call upon his wonderful imagination.  This he supplemented by what he
+had seen, and when necessary by the study of history, and literally
+passed hours of what to him must have been intense enjoyment.  Picture
+after picture of the past at these times floated before his brain as he
+set his young characters to work performing the manly tasks his brain
+suggested, otherwise there would never have been the reality, the
+variety, and above all the long series of entertaining and instructive
+works which have so largely aided the schoolmaster in Great Britain in
+the education of our youth.
+
+During the period of Henty's convalescence he was never idle, though the
+year 1876 marks the completion of his long career as a war
+correspondent.  Others took up his old duties abroad, but his pen and
+his knowledge were still of so much value to the journal with which he
+was connected, that it became his duty, as already indicated, to receive
+all the telegraphic messages sent in by the _Standard's_ correspondents
+in time of war.  He carefully read and studied the crabbed and condensed
+messages that had come over the wire, as well as the communications of
+Reuter and other agencies from different parts of the world, and rewrote
+them in the vulgar tongue so that they might be comprehensible to the
+British public.  This placed him, as it were, still at the head of war
+correspondence, so that when war broke out he was, so to speak, always
+at the front.  Even though his post was his editorial chair in his
+journal's office, the wires kept him in touch with everything that was
+taking place at all points of the compass.
+
+Fate ruled in this restless age that his work should be pretty constant,
+and the exigencies of this form of historical chronicle kept him tied
+very tightly to his journalistic duties, the late arrival or expected
+arrival of fresh telegraphic news forcing him to stay till almost the
+time of the great newspaper's going to press in the extremely early
+hours of the day; and this lasted right down through the troublous times
+and agitation in England during the Boer War.
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.
+
+CONCERNING WAR CORRESPONDENTS.
+
+There is a sadness attached to the task of describing Henty's
+capabilities as a war correspondent, from the fact that so many of his
+colleagues and brothers of the pen who knew him well and went to the
+front have passed away.  Some who shared the lot of the brave officers
+and men, ran the same risks, and died the same deaths.  Cameron was shot
+soon after being at a farewell dinner at his club, where he sat next to
+the writer of these lines; Pearce, though he lived through the horrors
+and starvation of the siege of Ladysmith--to see by the strange working
+of fate his own son ride up in the train of Lord Dundonald with the
+gallant relief party, as one of the volunteers--came back a mere shadow
+of his former self and died soon after, weakened by the privations
+connected with his duties; Archibald Forbes, possibly the hardest worker
+and most energetic of all, shortened his life in the cause of duty; and
+the same may be said of Henry Stanley; while of those who might have
+supplied many recollections or anecdotes, and who knew Henty well, death
+has claimed a long roll of brothers of the pen and correspondents,
+including Charles Williams, Godfrey Turner, Walter Wood, and Robert
+Brown.
+
+One good old friend, active as ever, William Senior, now editor of _The
+Field_, gives a genial tribute to Henty's memory from personal knowledge
+when he says, that as a special correspondent his readiness to help, and
+the practical manner in which he set about his work, combined with the
+thoroughness with which he took care of every small detail, were at once
+an encouragement and a stimulus to his colleagues.
+
+Fortunately one has at command Henty's own description of what he
+considers a special correspondent should be.  To begin with, he says
+that he should be a man capable of supporting hardships and fatigues;
+that he should possess a certain amount of pluck, a good seat in the
+saddle such as would enable him to manage any mount whose services he
+could command; and lastly, that he should have the manners of a
+gentleman and the knack of getting on well with all sorts and conditions
+of men.  This is a good deal to expect from one man, but without being
+eulogistic it may rightly be said that Henty possessed all these
+qualifications.
+
+To a certain extent he was gifted with these qualities by nature, and
+where he felt himself to be wanting in any one point, his energy urged
+him to strengthen that weakness and strain every nerve until he had
+mastered the failing.
+
+Accident has had much to do with the making of war correspondents, as in
+his own case; but Dr Russell and Wood of the _Morning Post_ had both
+been connected with the press before being sent to the Crimea.
+Sometimes, however, military men with a ready gift of writing have
+offered their services to report on the wars in which their regiments
+were engaged, as in the case of Captains Hozier and Brackenbury, who
+made excellent correspondents and still continued in the army.
+Archibald Forbes, when quite a young man, served in a cavalry regiment,
+and after leaving the army did a little reporting before going out with
+a sort of roving commission to the Franco-German War.  Thence he sent
+divers reports to a London newspaper, with the unpleasant result of
+being recalled, and this, too, at a time when he was primed with news of
+the most important nature.  So special was his information, and of such
+extreme value, that, without writing a line, as he told the writer, he
+hurried over to England with all the speed possible, presented himself
+at the _Times_ office, and asked to see the editor.  In most newspaper
+offices, when the application is made by a perfect stranger, this is a
+privilege that the busy head of an important paper is rather loath to
+grant, and a messenger was sent out to Forbes asking his business.
+Forbes's reply was that he had come straight from the front with most
+important news, and he was told, after sending in that message, that if
+he would write an article containing what he had to communicate, the
+editor would consider his manuscript, and, if it were approved, use and
+pay for it.  Forbes told me in his sharp military way that he was not
+going to write and be treated like that, knowing how important was his
+information; and he said, "I went out from the _Times_ office, walked
+into Fleet Street, and stood at the edge of the pavement half-way
+between, hesitating as to whether I should go to the _Telegraph_ office,
+or down Bouverie Street to the _Daily News_."
+
+His hesitation did not last long.  He went down the latter street and
+asked to see the manager.  He was shown in at once to the office of my
+old friend, the late Sir John Robinson (Mr Robinson in those days), who
+listened to what he had to say, and like the keen man of business that
+he was, he grasped the value of Forbes's information, and told him to go
+into a room which he pointed out and write a column.  This he did, and
+it was put into type as fast as it was written.  Soon after it was done
+he asked to see the manager again, and being shown in once more, Sir
+John Robinson said, "Have you got any more?"
+
+"Yes," said Forbes; "plenty."
+
+"Then go and write another column."
+
+This was written in turn, and after it was done Forbes, still rather
+indignant about his previous ill-successes with the press, and not being
+blessed with Henty's way of dealing with all sorts and conditions of
+men, took offence at some words spoken by Sir John, which roused his
+acerbity and resulted in his being highly offended and leaving the
+manager's room in dudgeon.  The _Daily News_ "chief" was taken by
+surprise at the way in which the hot-blooded Scot had quitted him, and,
+hurrying down the stairs out into Bouverie Street, he overtook the angry
+ex-dragoon in Fleet Street.  Having thus captured him and brought him
+back to his own room, he explained to him laughingly that he wanted him
+to go on writing until he had exhausted his information, and then he was
+to go off back immediately to the front as the representative of the
+_Daily News_, with full munitions, and to send over at his discretion
+all information that he could collect concerning the war.
+
+This was a strange commencement of the important career of one who in
+the opinion of journalists began at once to make a brilliant name for
+himself, for this, Forbes's first literary coup, placed him at one
+stride in the same rank as William Howard Russell of the _Times_, the
+well-known author of _My Diary in India_.  The opinion of the
+journalistic world was directly endorsed by the British public, who
+proved it by sending up the circulation of the _Daily News_ to a
+wonderful extent throughout the war; and this lasted until the day when,
+passing by the _Daily News_ publishing office in Fleet Street, the
+writer saw posted up Forbes's terse telegrams announcing to an
+astonished world the utter defeat of the French.  The rest is familiar
+history.
+
+Henty states that a good seat upon a horse is one of the valuable
+qualifications for a war correspondent, for it may come to pass that
+when at great risk and effort the gleaner of intelligence has obtained
+his requisite information by following the vicissitudes of the campaign
+wheresoever the battle rages, he may find himself perhaps thirty or
+forty miles away from the nearest telegraph station.  There is nothing
+to be done in such a case but for the correspondent to write his
+valuable despatch as crisply and as carefully as possible, and then ride
+away at full speed so as to get the message at the earliest moment upon
+the wires.  This task accomplished, he must, after a brief rest, mount
+once more and return to the front.
+
+Later, it was in this way that, during the Zulu War, Forbes was the
+first to send home an account of the Battle of Ulundi, bearing with him,
+so trusted was he, some of the general's despatches as well as his own
+report.  Where, however, the telegraphic facilities are not within
+reach, it is necessary for the correspondent to entrust the report he
+has written to the official post-bag, for he dare not absent himself
+long from the front, not knowing what events of importance may happen
+while he is away.
+
+In the Franco-German war another correspondent, Beattie Kingston--
+polished gentleman, scholar, and able musician, who had been
+representing the _Daily Telegraph_ in Vienna and elsewhere--was acting
+as correspondent with the German army; and of other war correspondents
+it remains to mention the familiar names of Bennett Burleigh and E.F.
+Knight, the latter of whom distinguished himself by writing the
+brilliant little account of _The Cruise of the "Falcon"_, which reads as
+graphically as if it had come from the pen of Defoe.  After Knight had
+taken up the risky duties of reporting wars, and had been sent to the
+Pamir to report our little frontier engagement with the restless
+mountain tribes, he did something more than go to the front, for in one
+of the engagements he was with a little column whose officers were all
+shot down, and with the splendid energy and pluck of the fighting penman
+he dashed into the fighting line, took the place of the fallen leader,
+and led the men to success.
+
+This struggle--not his own special fight, for he is too simple and
+modest a man to play the part of Plautus's braggart captain--he recorded
+in his work, _Where Three Empires Meet_.  Later, when journalism claimed
+him again to be the war correspondent and he went out to the Boer War,
+news came to the little club of which he is one of the most popular
+members, that he was with the advancing line of the 42nd Highlanders at
+Magersfontein and had been shot down.  He lay with the rest of the
+unfortunates of that saddening day, trusting for first aid to one of the
+sergeants of the regiment who knelt down to bandage his shattered arm,
+panting with excitement to be off the while.
+
+Another sufferer this in the great cause of gathering the freshest news,
+for E.F. Knight paid dearly for his well-earned fame.  He was sent down
+with another wounded man picked out from about forty hopeless cases,
+"just to give me a chance," and though he suffered the complete loss of
+an arm, he finally recovered, thanks to Sir Frederick Treves.  After
+this he studied and practised the art of writing quickly and clearly
+with his left hand, and from the Far East sent graphic reports of the
+Russo-Japanese War.  That is the kind of stuff of which George Henty's
+friends and companions were made.
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTY NINE.
+
+HENTY AND HIS BOOKS.
+
+For the benefit of his many boy readers with whom Henty's stories were
+most popular, a writer on the staff of _Chums_ paid Henty a visit one
+day.  He described him as a tall man, massive in build, with a fine head
+and a commanding presence, the lower part of his face adorned with a
+great flowing beard, and though his hair was almost white, the dark
+beard was only slightly flecked with silver threads.  He had the
+appearance of a man who had knocked about the world and rubbed shoulders
+with strange bed-fellows, and looked as though he would be a capital
+companion and just the sort of person with whom one would like to share
+the solitude of a desert island.  There is no doubt that the writer said
+this in the full belief that Henty would have been an ideal comrade--a
+brave man, amiable, happy in temper, straightforward, and ready at a
+pinch to dare danger to the very death.
+
+The visit paid to him was, primarily, to ask him how he wrote his books.
+"How does a man write his books?" is a question that calls for a little
+thought before answering.  One man will write them mentally from end to
+end before putting pen to paper; another will jot down sketchy notes
+which, after months of thought and labour, represent so many scraps that
+have to be picked out, set in something like order, and then fitted into
+shape as if they were pieces of a dissected puzzle; and only then, after
+much work, do they take form as a comprehensive whole.  Again, another
+will spend years over the construction of a book, sparing no pains, in
+the full knowledge that he will never be able to write another; and
+after all it may prove to be not worth the reading, or, if worth the
+trouble, it may be utterly wanting in that indescribable element which
+enchains the reader at once and keeps his attention riveted to the very
+end.  Yes, that indescribable something which is given to so few by
+nature--the few who, somehow, find themselves writing as no man to their
+knowledge ever wrote before; and so say their readers.  For there is a
+peculiarity in some men's thoughts when placed on paper in print--a
+something which attracts, through the soul that is in it, people of all
+ranks and classes--the highly-cultivated classical scholar, the student
+of other men's works, the great criminal or civil judge whose life has
+been spent in examining the ways, thoughts, and acts of every form of
+human nature, the best as well as the vilest and worst.
+
+And yet this book which affords such intense delight to its reader,
+often by its pathos, less often by its mirth--for, strangely enough, one
+finds that the gift of being humorous is extremely rare--will give as
+much pleasure to the half-educated child as it does to the man whom poor
+old Captain Cuttle, Dickens's simple-hearted child-like creation,
+described as "chock full of science."  Now, how is this?  I, the writer
+of these lines, have been a reader for seventy years, and I must frankly
+confess that I don't know, and my honest belief is that I never shall.
+But this I do know, that I found all this attraction ready for my
+reading thirst in a story entitled _Rip Van Winkle_, in the pages of an
+old, old magazine called the _Queen Bee_.  This story somehow painted a
+picture in my young brain of the Catskill Mountains and the Dutchmen
+playing ninepins, while the roll of the balls resounded and re-echoed
+like thunder, and the voice that rang out, crying, "Rip Van Winkle!  Rip
+Van Winkle!" sounds, at any time when I think upon it, loud and clear.
+There is the picture still, like a dream of the photography that I was
+to live to see in all its present beauty, only clear and bright and
+better still; for there are the colours of nature which some of us yet
+may see photographed in the continuation of these wondrous days in which
+science has given us so much.
+
+There is no saying how a man contrives to write a book; but this is the
+question that George Henty's visitor asked, as he sat near a table where
+closely-written sheets lay in a heap, apparently just as they had been
+laid together by the writer.  There was a half laugh, followed by the
+rather disconcerting reply: "I do not write any of my books myself.  I
+get a man to do them for me--an amanuensis, of course; it all comes out
+of my head, but he does all the actual writing.  I never see any of my
+work until it comes to me from the printers in the shape of
+proof-sheets.  My amanuensis sits at the table, and I sit near him, or
+lie on the sofa, and dictate the stories which I publish."
+
+So said Henty to his visitor, and he might have added, "and smoke the
+while," for nature must have needed something in the way of sedative for
+the brain so constantly upon the strain.
+
+Then questions were asked by the eager enquirer as to how long this
+writing went on for so great an output, as a manufacturer would call it,
+to result.  In the words that followed the real secret was explained--
+and it lay in the quiet, steady, regular application which is seen in
+the man who is discovered one day, trowel in hand, by a small pile of
+bricks which he goes on laying in position; he gives each a tap or two
+and a scrape, and in course of time, lo and behold! as the old writers
+say, there stands a magnificent house.
+
+"What do I call a good day's work?" said Henty.  "Well, say my man comes
+at half-past nine in the morning and stays for four hours, till
+half-past one; we can get through a good deal of work in that space of
+time.  Then perhaps he comes round in the evening for a couple of hours;
+so in the course of a day I finish a chapter, that is, about six
+thousand five hundred words.  I call that a good day's work."
+
+And so would anyone.  Six thousand five hundred words of consistent
+description and conversation, all forming a portion of an interesting
+tale which will hold a boy's attention--often a man's!  Think of it!  At
+half-past nine that morning there was nothing; when work was knocked off
+in the evening there was a chapter that would some day be read with
+satisfaction--a something made out of nothing save a few flying
+thoughts.  With George Henty that was how a story was written.
+
+Such books as these would average in length from a hundred and thirty to
+a hundred and fifty thousand words; that is to say, about the length of
+the old three-volume novel, a class of work at which Henty also tried
+his hand.  One of his first novels, _A Search for a Secret_, was
+published by Tinsley Brothers in 1867, and from time to time another was
+turned out which achieved a fair amount of success; indeed, almost up to
+the end of his life Henty wrote an occasional novel when a good plot
+occurred to him and when he felt in the mood.  But quite early in his
+career he was invited by an old club friend, the late Thomas Archer, to
+contribute a story suitable for the reading of boys to a series of
+juvenile works that Messrs. Blackie and Son were about to produce, and
+which Mr Archer was to see through the press.
+
+This was the commencement of a long series of boys' books--a long way on
+towards a hundred--which achieved universal success, and for the task of
+writing which their author, in his avocation of war correspondent and
+descriptive writer, had in a manner passed his life priming himself.
+
+In his choice of subjects, almost from the first, he drew on his old
+experience, and in one of his earliest essays he, the son of a coal-mine
+proprietor, naturally enough began upon a story dealing with the perils
+and dangers (not of the sea where the stormy winds do blow) encountered
+by the stern-visaged grimy men who gain their daily bread by descending
+with their lives in their hands into the bowels of the earth.  He tells
+a tale here of the men who, with Davy lamp in hand, go right down among
+the coal seams, to where the atmospheric pressure is light and the
+insidious gas can be heard hissing out of the strata.  He describes how,
+weary and tempted by the longing for a pipe, some weak-minded comrade
+may contrive by the help of a nail to pick the lock of his
+carefully-secured safety lamp, so as to expose the flame for a pipe to
+be lit.  Then comes the ignition of the gas in one scathing burning
+blast, the herald of death to the offender and to those nearest the
+explosion, while for those who are farther away, and who are warned by
+the thunderous roar, there is the race for life as they tear for the
+pit's mouth, to be too often overtaken by the deadly choke-damp, whose
+poisonous strangling fumes follow the firing of the gas.  Others,
+imprisoned by the falling rock and coal, after fighting hard to escape,
+have to sit and wait and pray that the help which they know will be
+trying to reach them as soon as comrades can descend, may not come too
+late.
+
+This, _Facing Death_, was Henty's first story for boys.  But a soldier
+by training, he soon turned to the military element.  It speedily dawned
+upon him that there is nothing a boy likes better than a good
+description of a fight--with fisticuffs not objected to against some
+school tyrant--and here, in his descriptions, the writer was thoroughly
+at home.  He knew how his heroes should behave, and in such encounters
+there was the vraisemblance that added power to his narrative.  Then,
+too, as war correspondent who had seen fighting in the Crimea, in Italy
+with Garibaldi during the War of Independence, with Lord Napier in
+Abyssinia, in the Franco-German War and during the Commune, in Russia,
+in the West Coast forests on the way to Coomassie, in Spain during the
+Carlist Insurrection, and in the Turco-Servian War, his mind was stored
+with material and with picturesque backgrounds for stories to come.
+
+Here was a stupendous collection of embryo "copy" for boys' books on
+fighting full of reality from beginning to end.  From his wide
+experience he knew and described how fighting should be, and was carried
+on.  When he felt a desire for change, he struck farther back, and
+enlisted as the years went by various heroes of history whose names have
+been immortalised.  At one time he would be weaving a story about the
+prowess of our men in India with Clive, at another time following
+Wellington through the Peninsular War.  He was, in imagination, with
+Roberts at Kandahar, with Kitchener at Khartoum, and with Buller in
+Natal.  He often made a plunge into naval history and dealt with our
+naval heroes.  Unconsciously, too, all this while he was building up a
+greater success for his boys' books by enlisting on their behalf the
+suffrages of that great and powerful body of buyers of presents who had
+the selection of their gifts.  By this body is meant our boys'
+instructors, who, in conning the publishers' lists, would come upon some
+famous name for the hero of the story and exclaim: "Ha! history; that's
+safe."  In this way Henty linked himself with the great body of teachers
+who joined with him hand in hand; hence it was that the book-writer who
+kept up for so many years his wonderful supply of two, three, and often
+four boys' books a year, full of solid interest and striking natural
+adventure, taught more lasting history to boys than all the
+schoolmasters of his generation.
+
+Naturally the works that dealt with his own experience were the simple
+honest truth; but the same may be said of those in which he had to deal
+with the past, and therefore had to strengthen and supplement his
+knowledge by the study of the best works he could get hold of
+preparatory to writing fiction dealing with some particular epoch.  For,
+following upon the choice of his subject, say the battles of some war
+through which he carried his heroes, he confessed that he got together a
+pile of books from one of the big libraries and stored his mind with
+material for the purpose of the story he was about to weave; so that his
+fiction was very near akin to fact, though possibly it was highly
+coloured.  No boy dislikes colour, and Henty's readers did not object to
+a little blood.  His boys were fighting boys, and very manly, full, as
+he termed it, of pluck; and though he dressed them up and carried them
+through peril and adventure galore, it was all good honest excitement,
+even if here and there a little too bright in hue.  As to that, he had
+the example of the famous romanticist of the north, the great Sir
+Walter, who said that in equipping a character in one of his romances he
+liked to give him a cocked hat and a walking-stick to add to his
+appearance.
+
+There was nothing namby-pamby in Henty's writings, for his adolescent
+characters were not so much boys as men, saving in this, that he kept
+them to boy life, and never made his works sickly by the introduction of
+what an effeminate writer would term the tender passion.  "No," he said,
+"I never touch on love interest.  Once I ventured to make a boy of
+twelve kiss a little girl of eleven, and I received a very indignant
+letter from a dissenting minister."
+
+Men who write books build up for themselves plenty of critics besides
+the authorised judges to whom their works are sent out by the
+publishers, and unfortunately the self-constituted censors do not
+possess the broad knowledge of the genuine critic.
+
+But for outspoken, downright, honest but self-satisfied criticism, no
+one equals the "cocky" schoolboy who has entered upon the phase when he
+begins to feel that he can write, and has begun to get over the natural
+repugnance to express himself in correspondence.  Early in life your
+natural boy only writes as much as he feels bound to set down with pen,
+ink, and paper.  These effusions one may call duty-letters home.  The
+next letters are those relating to his wants; they come more freely, and
+of course often savour of pocket-money.  It is later, when he has taken
+to reading, and has arrived at the stage when his spelling is more
+regular, his grammar fairly correct, and his words flow more freely from
+his pen, that he becomes opinionated, and informs those to whom he
+writes what he thinks.
+
+Sometimes an author is favoured by these young gentlemen, and more than
+one communicated with Henty and informed him that he had read his last
+book, which was, of course, satisfactory; but the criticisms and the
+points fallen foul of would have been unpleasant only for the fact that
+they formed food for mirth.
+
+One day, during a chat concerning the success of a well-known magazine
+that was current some five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, which he
+edited, Henty laughingly complained to the writer about the way in which
+boys of this type troubled him with their opinions.  One of them--it was
+in the early days when this corrupt word was beginning to be utilised in
+boy life as something very forcible and expressive--wrote and asked him
+why he put such "rot" in his paper.  One fancies one can recall at the
+present moment the grim, half-amused, half-angry expression of the
+editor's face as he related the anecdote.  But it is only fair to say
+that such young gentlemen are the exceptions, and when a boy does
+praise, he can do it with a warmth that makes his favourite author's
+cheeks glow with pride, for he feels that the criticism is very honest
+and true.
+
+And boys can write very very pleasant letters, such as set one thinking
+that one would like to know the writers.  Some of their letters show
+very plainly what the young correspondents have thought as they read,
+though they often enough cause much amusement by their _naivete_,
+especially those which come suddenly from the most out-of-the-way
+places.  These are some of the great rewards which come to a writer, and
+make up for many a long day of drudgery in the cause of duty on days
+when nature is preaching idleness to a worker, and is calling to him
+with her myriad voices to leave the pen and desk and come and commune
+with her while there is time; on days--those rare days--when she is all
+smiles, and full of suggestions of those bright days of the past, which
+seem to have become rarer as one has been growing old.
+
+Henty had a little selection of correspondents' letters sent from
+out-of-the-way places.  One was from an American boy, written with all
+the quaint _naivete_ and ignorance of one who was on his travels to see
+what the world was really like.  He writes from Italy, after "doing"
+England with his father:--
+
+  Hotel Europa, Venezia, March 22nd, 1889.
+
+  Dear Mr Henty,
+
+  I am an American boy, ten years old, travelling in Europe.  I read
+  some of your books at home, and enjoyed them so much that, as soon as
+  I arrived in London, I wanted to go to Mr Blackie's, hoping to see
+  you and all your books.  So when I had been to Westminster Abbey and
+  the Tower, my father took me there; but I could not see you, and the
+  books were shut up.  But the gentleman was very kind to me, and
+  brought some of them out, and I went home laden.  I think _The Lion of
+  Saint Mark_ is splendid.  I am reading it here, and am sure Malleo
+  lived in this house.  I have been to the very place in the Piazetta
+  where Matteo and Francis had their first conversation.
+
+  Yours respectfully, --.
+
+Nothing could be more amusing than the boy's mingling of shrewdness and
+innocence respecting the author's connection with his publisher.  There
+is something in it suggestive of the days of Newbery and Dodsley, with
+an idea evidently in the boy's mind that publishers kept authors in
+stock.  But it is the letter of a clever boy notwithstanding, blessed
+with a father aiming at increasing his boy's store of knowledge in the
+wisest way extant.
+
+Such letters come abundantly to a boys' author; but Henty thought far
+more highly of those which he received from girls, for where there is a
+girl in the same family the brothers' books are generally common stock,
+and are carefully read, appreciated, and judged.  The author declares
+that girls write more intelligently and evince greater judgment in their
+criticisms, while those who write, especially American girls, make a
+point of requesting an answer, and do not shrink from asking for the
+author's autograph to add to the collection being made.
+
+At the same time, unconscious of the estimation in which the sister is
+held by her correspondent, the boy does not fail to write in a
+half-contemptuous spirit like this: "Dear Mr -, I have read your story,
+which I and my brother think splendid.  Emmie has read it too, and she
+says it's delightful; but then, she's only a girl."
+
+A propos of the boy seeker for an author's autograph, there are many of
+these acquisitive young gentlemen who make applications by post and do
+not get one, even on days when the author is in his most amiable frame
+of mind.  Possibly this is due to the fact that they are perfectly
+unconscious of being propagators of a custom which has grown into a
+heavy tax.  Others, more wise in their young generation, make a point of
+enclosing a carefully-directed and stamped envelope, which places the
+person addressed in the position of a creditor, whose conscience
+immediately smites him with the suggestion that it would be churlish and
+rude not to reply.  And somehow almost invariably those young gentlemen
+obtain the addition to their collection that they have sought.
+
+Boys' writers most probably do not have more worries than other people,
+but they have to submit to one nuisance from the selfish and thoughtless
+which does go very much against the grain.  Fancy being a man who feels
+himself in duty bound to fulfil an engagement to write some four, five,
+or six thousand words of a story pretty well every day.  Is it not
+extremely probable that when that long tale of words is written he will
+lay the pen down with a feeling of weariness, almost of loathing and
+disgust.  Imagine his feelings, then, when he finds in his
+correspondence a letter from some absolute stranger, enclosing a long
+manuscript which he has written "especially for boys," with the request
+that "as the recipient is so clever and knows so well exactly what a boy
+likes, he will be good enough to read it at once and give his opinion
+upon its merits"?  Now, human nature is human nature, and as a weary
+writer has a great deal of that sad human nature in his composition, and
+is prone to be irritable, surely it is not surprising that for a few
+minutes he falls into a fretful state, and mentally asks this would-be
+scribe why he does not send his MS to an editor or other practised judge
+of people's works for his opinion about the unknown one's literary
+production?
+
+Henty uttered his wail to one of his visitors who recorded an interview,
+and then confessed to being as weak and amiable as many others of his
+craft, for he says: "I do generally read them, and have helped several
+men to get publishers; but, of course, the great majority of the stories
+are hopelessly unfit for boys.  One does not like to write back and say
+that the work is confounded rubbish, although I suppose it would be the
+most merciful thing to do, as it would prevent the writer from wasting
+his time.  I let them down as lightly as I can."
+
+There is a well-known old proverb, for which we have to thank one of the
+old Roman writers, who spread their Latin and their works through the
+civilised world, that a poet is born, not made, and it applies equally
+to the story-teller or writer of narrative.  Henty was a story-teller
+from quite early days; for, following up his boyish attempts, the days
+came when, as a married man, with his children gathering round his
+fireside, it became a custom for them to come and say the familiar
+good-night, with the appeal to father to tell them a story.  At first
+the stories were brief of the briefest, and doubtless versions of the
+old popular nursery tales.  These, however, soon began to give way to
+invention, and these again would be followed by flights of fancy as the
+young author's wings grew stronger, till, from being so brief that they
+only sufficed for one evening, his stories expanded and gradually merged
+into those which were cut short with, "There, it's growing too late now.
+I must finish to-morrow night."  Doubtless invention in the furnishing
+of these little narratives, composed expressly for the juvenile
+audience, soon had to give way to study, and their author began to seek
+his inspiration from some incident in history.  Gradually, too, as he
+realised the interest taken in his narratives by his own children, they
+began to be more thoughtfully designed, and grew longer, while the idea
+strengthened that they might prove as attractive to other children as to
+his own, until by a natural sequence the story-constructing took up more
+thought, grew more businesslike, and developed, as it were, into a
+profession.
+
+It is easy, too, to imagine that as some of these stories--which were
+told for the benefit of his two boys, and the two little girls who were
+carried off by consumption on the verge of womanhood--ran to a length of
+four or five nights, they gave their originator the power to compose
+with fluency and ease.  For throughout his life Henty practised
+storytelling as opposed to story-writing.  It is not everyone who finds
+dictation easy, but for twenty years he dictated all his fiction to his
+secretary and amanuensis, Mr Griffiths, even down to the very last tale
+which he finished, prior to his being stricken down by paralysis.
+
+In writing his books Henty was wonderfully practical.  He thoroughly
+enjoyed a quiet evening and a dinner with friends at his club, but,
+speaking from old experience, he never allowed this to interfere with
+the work he had on hand.  More than once the writer has said to him,
+"What! going already?"  ("already" being almost directly after dinner).
+"Yes," he would reply; "I shall perhaps have some telegrams to write up
+next door," ("next door" being the _Standard_ office).  On other
+occasions it would be, "Yes; going home.  My man will be waiting when I
+get there," ("my man" representing his amanuensis, ready for him in his
+study at Lavender Hill).  And in response to the remark, "Rather late to
+begin when you get home", "Oh yes, but I daresay I shall get a couple of
+thousand words done"; and that meant from Henty that the work would be
+done, for he was a man who meant work, and did it.  This would happen
+usually when he was extra busy preparing some book for the press.  He
+had a quiet, determined way of making hay when the sun shone, for the
+_Standard_ made great calls upon his time, requiring him to write
+matters of fact, and at such times fiction had to be laid aside.  His
+long absences from home in times of war interfered greatly with his
+peaceful avocations, but he treated all these journeys as so many
+copy-collecting trips.  They provided him with material which he would
+afterwards cleverly utilise, as can be gathered from passage after
+passage in his many works.
+
+For details of the many stories for the young written by Henty, one is
+disposed to refer the reader to the publisher's list; but to follow upon
+what has been said respecting the correspondence that reaches a writer
+from his young readers, a letter that has come to hand, written by a
+Canadian boy some years ago, is very amusing in its admiration of his
+favourite author.  It indicates such an amount of steady reading, it
+evinces so much ingenuity, and (if it should ever reach the young
+writer's eyes and he will take the criticism in the good part in which
+it is meant) displays so much need for improvement, that one gives it in
+full as an amusing list of the author's works from the boy's point of
+view.
+
+The little lad calls it "a story."  Well, it is an original story of
+stories, and, as intimated, emanates from Canada.  It is here given in a
+confidence which suppresses names, and thus cloaks the literary mistakes
+of the past:--
+
+  G.A. Henty, Esq.
+
+  Dear Sir,
+
+  Hoping you will excuse me for troubling you, but I would like you to
+  read the little story I have made (while staying home from school with
+  the measles).  I have read and enjoyed a great many of your books.
+  Following is the story made out of the names of some of the books you
+  have written:--
+
+  "Jack Archer", while travelling "Through Russian Snows", met "Captain
+  Bayley's Heir", who had been "Through the Sikh War" as "One of the
+  28th" and was "True to the Old Flag", was swimming "In Greek Waters",
+  being pursued by "The Tiger of Mysore", which had come "Through the
+  Fray" "By Sheer Pluck."  All of a sudden along came a man who was "The
+  Bravest of the Brave" while "With Wolfe in Canada" and "With Clive in
+  India"; he also showed valour "At Agincourt", which was "Won by the
+  Sword" "By England's Aid", headed by "A Knight of the White Cross",
+  who was with "Wulf the Saxon" and "Beric the Briton" in fighting "The
+  Dragon and the Raven", which were "For the Temple", met "The Cat of
+  Bubastes", followed by "The Young Carthaginian", who was "Condemned as
+  a Nihilist" for killing "The Lion of the North" and "The Lion of Saint
+  Mark", which were owned by "The Young Colonist" and "Maori and
+  Settler", who said they were "With Buller in Natal", and had come to
+  arrest him as "A Jacobite Exile", with their colours "Orange and
+  Green", in the name of "Bonnie Prince Charlie."  It happened when on
+  "Saint Bartholomew's Eve" along came "Saint George for England" "By
+  Right of Conquest."  "In Freedom's Cause" he was "Held Fast for
+  England" "In the Reign of Terror."  "Under Drake's Flag" he made "The
+  Dash for Khartoum", which "With Lee in Virginia" "For Name and Fame"
+  he fought and won "By Pike and Dyke", assisted by "Redskin and
+  Cowboy."  All this happened "When London Burned."
+
+  Trusting you will let me know if you receive this, and how you like
+  the story, Yours very truly, --.
+
+Doubtless, as was often his custom, George Henty, who was proud of, as
+well as amused by, the above letter, replied to the young writer.  One
+would be glad to know.
+
+In addition to the three-volume story, _A Search for a Secret_,
+mentioned earlier, Henty produced several more, so that he may claim to
+be one of those who saw out the old days which preceded the six-shilling
+novel.  He concluded his series of novels with another secret--_Colonel
+Thorndykes'_--but this, like those which had preceded it, only achieved
+what the superfine litterateur terms a _succes d'estime_, which is not
+the success beloved of the publisher, who has a bad habit of judging an
+author's merits by reference to his ledger and counting the number of
+copies sold.
+
+Henty's novels were well contrived and thought out, and full of
+interesting matter, but not one of them seemed to contain that unknown
+quality which nobody appears as yet to have been able to analyse, but
+which causes the British public to go reading mad over something which
+hits the fancy of the time.
+
+As a novelist he was unsuccessful; not that it mattered, for he soon
+laid the foundation of what was to prove an enduring fame, one which set
+an enormous clientele of young readers looking forward year by year for
+his next book or books--one, two, three, or even four per annum--until
+he had erected a literary column familiar in the bright young memories
+of thousands upon thousands of readers to whom the names of his works
+are well known.
+
+In the long list of his other writings, _A Story of the Carlist
+Troubles_, another volume more modern and up-to-date, relating to the
+Sudan when Kitchener was in command, and a romance telling of a search
+for the treasure of the Peruvian kings, were among his last productions,
+while editions after editions of his earlier works kept on appearing,
+and were eagerly read.  These new issues of his earlier books of course
+appealed to a much wider public than before, since the writer's
+popularity had gone on increasing with every fresh story from his pen.
+
+As is often the case with a young and enthusiastic writer, Henty in his
+early days made more than one attempt to publish his productions at his
+own cost, only to learn the severe lesson that these business
+transactions are matters of trade, and do not often prosper in the hands
+of an author.
+
+One of his hardest fights was over the _Union Jack_, which he edited for
+some years.  It was a boys' journal, which ought to have succeeded, and
+over which he worked very hard both as author and editor; but somehow,
+in spite of the names of the able men whom he enlisted as his literary
+lieutenants, the sun of prosperity did not shine upon it brightly, and
+after a last effort, in which he took in new blood, he gave it up in
+disgust.  He must have thought, after the fashion of others before him,
+that the success of periodicals is a matter of accident.  It would be
+difficult indeed to come to any other conclusion when one sees the way
+in which clever and scholarly productions, fostered by the best literary
+ability, struggle into life and hold on to a precarious existence for a
+few brief weeks or months, and then die from lack of appreciation, while
+others that are perfect marvels of all that a magazine should not be,
+rush up into popularity and become, as it were, gold-mines to their
+proprietors.
+
+So far as Henty was concerned, however, there is the consolation that
+whatever disappointments he may have had over his early productions,
+they formed a portion of the literary concrete upon which he raised a
+structure that made his name familiar to every young reader of his time.
+
+
+CHAPTER FORTY.
+
+AN APPRECIATION.
+
+Much has been said about the writing of a boys' book and the changes
+that have taken place during the present generation or two.  It may be
+taken into consideration that to go back to, say, 1830, there were
+hardly any books for a boy to read.  We had _Evenings at Home_ and
+_Robinson Crusoe_, of course, and there were some cheaply-issued stories
+by Pierce Egan the younger.  A very attractive volume, too, was a
+tremendously thumbed and dog's-eared _Boy's Country Book_, by William
+Howitt.  Marryat's and Cooper's works, with a few of Scott's, however,
+found plenty of favour with boys, who soon afterwards began to read
+Dickens, a writer who caught on with them at once.  Soon after this
+Kingston and Ballantyne had the field almost to themselves, while the
+publishers were shy about publishing exclusively for boys; even to this
+day the trade, as it is termed, class books written especially for boys
+as juvenile literature.  The term is correct, of course, for our
+recollections of Latin teach us that juvenile relates to youth; but to a
+boy the very term seems to suggest a toy-book, untearable, perhaps, with
+gaudy coloured pictures, and this begets in him a feeling of scorn.  He
+does not want juvenile literature.  His aim is to become a man and read
+what men do and have done.  Hence the great success of George Henty's
+works.  They are essentially manly, and he used to say that he wanted
+his boys to be bold, straightforward, and ready to play a young man's
+part, not to be milksops.  He had a horror of a lad who displayed any
+weak emotion and shrank from shedding blood, or winced at any encounter.
+The result is shown again and again in his pages, and though some of
+his readers may object to the deeds of his heroes, no one could look
+down upon their vigour and determination.  The fact is, he painted his
+own boyhood in all--the boy--the young man as he wished him to be, and
+the man.
+
+There was a reality and power about Henty's work which caused many of
+his characters to be remembered long after the book had been laid aside,
+though, of course, it was not really characterisation which was his
+forte, but rather the depicting of historical incidents and brave deeds
+on the frontiers of the empire.  He did a great work for the boy reader
+in throwing open for him the big doorway of history.  There was scarcely
+a book from his pen, and especially is this the case with the later
+ones, which did not serve to impress some important period of fighting
+or diplomatic action upon the mind of the reader.  Knowledge thus gained
+is generally the most useful, for it is imbibed with avidity.  Henty
+came out of long years of exciting work as a chronicler of things seen
+on the battlefields of the world, and he had the gift of ready
+portrayal, allied to a retentive and observant mind.  Amidst the purple
+slopes and white walls of Italy he seemed as much at home as on the
+Venetian lagoons or in the forests of Germany.  The entire panorama of
+the world was his sphere of action, and old-world romance suggestive of
+forgotten stairways and ancient palaces was, so to speak, a department
+in which he excelled.  He could write as few men could of that mediaeval
+tramp of crusading hosts, of glinting armour, of all that stirring
+pageantry of the old, old days which sometimes in the heat of interest
+makes our own time seem trivial and of poor account; and yet, although
+he possessed this key to romance, maybe he was really at his best in
+dealing with the thin red line of modern times.  Still, among his older
+books, _The Cornet of Horse_ stands out as pre-eminently strong and
+dramatic, and the account of a remarkable adventure during the campaign
+in the Netherlands, when the commander, who was afterwards cited as
+"Marlbrouck" to naughty French children, defeated the French at.
+Oudenarde and Malplaquet, is outlined clearly in the memory; so does the
+miller near Lille who befriended the young Englishman.  The writing was
+strong, the colour vivid, and the reader had a bird's-eye view of what
+was passing at that time when Good Queen Anne was on the throne, and, as
+a bard put it, sometimes counsel took and sometimes tea, while in France
+the Grand Monarque ruled as few kings have ever ruled before or since.
+It was a book that made boys think, giving them a wonderful impression
+of the time, making John Churchill a real live general, and showing why
+we went to war with France in defence of the stolid Dutch.  Then a story
+of quite another type is probably still a first favourite, namely, _The
+Young Franc Tireurs_, which deals with the Franco-German War in a style
+to be expected from one who was there.  How real is the talk between
+some German soldiers after the capture of Napoleon the Third!
+
+The merit of these stories is their directness.  No nervous under-view,
+no imagining of things which are not there, but the easy,
+straightforward writing of a manly Englishman who took things as they
+were, who disdained the building of structures on flimsy
+might-have-beens, but liked a solid foundation of fact.  His campaigning
+stories brought the stress of war right home.  He imparted a real touch
+to these with maps and charts.  He had been close into so many firing
+lines that these tales had the ring of absolute truth, while he knew the
+soldier by heart and could depict him to life without any sham heroics
+or exaggeration.  War's grim traffic had indeed few mysteries for the
+pleasant, frank Englishman who could talk of the graver issues of life
+with distinction and advantage to the listener.
+
+Far less known than his boys' books are his novels.  Yet there is
+ingenuity and interest in such stories as _The Curse of Carnes Hold_,
+while through one and all of his works there is to be found a spirit of
+bold endeavour and a deep insight into the apparent puzzles of life.  It
+was inevitable that a war correspondent who had had a front seat for
+years in the great arena of the world's happenings should know better
+than most men how events would shape themselves, and what occurrences
+might be looked for in the largest sphere of politics.  Perhaps this
+acquaintance with the greater issues of life gave him more sympathy.  He
+knew men, knew their failings, their ambitions.  You met him in some
+spring-time in the Strand with its unceasing rumble of traffic and its
+colour, and the glimpse of green at the end of a street leading to the
+Embankment Gardens, and you heard that he was just back from "over
+there", a long way beyond town and the Silver Streak, maybe from Ashanti
+or Abyssinia.  He had the warrior's look--the look of one who knows too
+much ever to be trivial--and the stirring days of European war were all
+familiar to him.  Perhaps this is what gives even his books which deal
+with the long ago a vital interest.  Fashions change; humanity scarcely
+at all.  On the battle-field men are much the same as when Alexander
+swept southward with his legions to India, or when the great wars of the
+Middle Ages threatened to obliterate the arts.  So it is that his
+historical books have a deep significance.  Pick up one of these, and
+you are taken back into the dim old past, and realise why men fought,
+though the reasons for the warfare are now as cold as the watch-fires of
+then.  Here we have the grandeur of the chronicler's task.  His to
+revive any latent ardour in a nation or an individual by drawing aside
+the curtain on what men did, and how they acted nobly for God and the
+king, for truth and the right, in the bygone days.  Not in vain these
+wars, though the map of Europe has changed; and the historical writer
+who re-creates the best out of the stirring times that have lapsed, who
+shows in dramatic style why this guage of battle was thrown down, why
+that edict went out from Versailles, and what really was the inwardness
+of the long campaigns, which at a casual glance seem only to bewilder
+the mind, has a task which in importance is second to none.  The young
+generation which has read his books and had its imagination fired will
+contain, of course, only a small percentage of soldiers, but the sense
+of grit and the dogged indomitable spirit to be derived from such works
+will stand in good stead to all, whether the battle be faced in the
+humdrum of daily life or actually with the forces of the king.  Henty's
+was a grand influence for good in times of easy belittlement and cheap
+disparaging criticism of many of those elemental virtues which are
+nevertheless supreme in the making of a nation.  He showed in rugged,
+graphic style what had been done--on tented field, in grim old mediaeval
+castle.  He recalled deeds which are a lesson for all time, and in his
+brilliant martial scenes there is the echo of the clash of arms.  It
+does not require a poet to give value and significance to such a
+retrospect, though in this re-creation of past scenes, of the going and
+coming, the tramp of armies, the riding in of couriers to unfamiliar
+cities, there necessarily is much poetry as well as brave and
+heart-stirring effect, for in the panorama conjured up there is the
+whole sum of life, its doubt, its passion, and its tears.
+
+As for his soldiers, they are excellent.  The soldier is the soldier all
+the ages through--full of strange oaths, and with a particular view of
+things.  In this connection it may be permissible to refer to the
+cosmopolitan side of Henty, to his intimate acquaintance with the byways
+of Europe, and to the undeniable grip he possessed of the European way
+of looking at matters--a way which is far more excitable than ours.  He
+could talk of the days before the '70 War which brought the Teuton into
+Alsace and made of fragmentary Germany a consolidated state; of the
+times when Bismarck was, comparatively speaking, a young man, and when
+men were more given to sonorous phrase-making than is the case at
+present.  He had the "behind the scenes" attitude, and with reason, for
+a war correspondent, like a diplomatist, is the one who is there.  He
+had met the leading men, the statesmen, the Herzog of the Fatherland,
+the Gospodar of Holy Russia, and the hysterical agitator of Paris who
+seized the moment of his country's downfall venomously to compass
+further ruin, and in a lighter vein he had, too, all that rare anecdotal
+interest of the man who has met the bold Bulgar in Sofia and knows him
+_an fond_, and who has fraternised with the Serb in the questionable
+security of Belgrade.
+
+Small wonder, indeed, that Henty, who knew of what the world was capable
+and what men could accomplish, held in light esteem the narrow but
+loud-talking cult which condemns patriotism, scoffs at civic merit, and
+would reduce society to an unsatisfactory incoherent brew.  He was one
+of those whose influence makes for the greatness of England, an England
+which will fight, if duty really calls, at one of those crises in a
+nation's life which show which is the true worth and which the base.
+
+His stories reflect the man, and their great and enduring success among
+boys, who are perhaps the most difficult of all to satisfy, must be
+looked for in part in the great seriousness with which he went to work.
+There was no difficulty about his style, which was as smooth-running as
+the Thames, and no parade, while he pleased his readers especially by a
+simple, unaffected touch of confidence and certainly attractive
+suggestion of doing his utmost to satisfy the legion who looked to him
+for literary fare.  With such a character, typical of many, as Signor
+Polani in _The Lion of Saint Mark_, he showed his really great skill in
+portraiture; and though season by season his books were reviewed as
+boys' books, there was much that necessarily escaped the notice of the
+critic, much that was as deeply imaginative and inwardly significant as
+passages in genre stories which received a larger measure of the
+critic's attention.  It could not have come as any particular
+disappointment to Henty when he found that his _metier_ was writing
+boys' books rather than novels.  We are told that there are many people
+who can write novels, and maybe with certain qualifications this is
+true, but there are comparatively few who can write for, and please, the
+exacting boy.  The latter severe, if not absolutely erudite, critic may
+not be able to define precisely what he wants, but he knows enough to be
+certain that Henty could and did supply the requisite article.  He knew,
+like a great artist, what to leave out, which knowledge is the prime
+factor in the making of the greatest works.  It was the intuitive
+perception of where the youthful imagination required to come into play.
+It was grateful, gracious work this, of supplying boys with literature
+which held them engrossed and helped them to think, and think well.
+Youth has its troubles, its little ennuis, its griefs, the same as the
+rest of the world, and despite disparity in years these phases are not
+to be considered in miniature, for the imagination is larger and more
+elastic in early days, and trouble assumes a very extended front.  The
+boy who is plagued by a dead tongue, or the perversity of circumstance,
+or any other worriment of the flying day, as likely as not picks up his
+favourite author to help him to forget the suggestion of the presence of
+black care.
+
+The name of Henty became one to refer to in another sort of literature--
+the smart afternoon paper with its flippant dialogues referred to him
+jocularly as the panacea for boys.  It was all correct enough.  The boys
+worshipped him; and for years he went on working, pushing as it were
+into untouched galleries in his mining after fresh subjects--and the
+simile may be allowed, as even Carlyle speaks of the pursuit of
+literature as subterranean labour.  He never lost a point.  No work was
+too arduous, no preparation too exacting; and as regards many of his
+books, a vast amount of "prep", as students dub their preliminary
+labours, was entailed.  He would have accuracy if history had to be
+dealt with, and through all the years during which he was delving for
+new treasures in the lumber rooms or cellars of the past, he kept up his
+custom of carefully studying each phase or epoch before he commenced his
+romance or made ready his mould.  He imbibed many tomes to make one.
+
+It is a great mistake to place any reliance on the glib statements
+concerning the length of time that a book takes to write.  Henty gave an
+interviewer certain facts, but it must have been with an inward smile,
+since all such figures are misleading, though not intentionally so.  One
+man will take five months to write a book, another two, and so on, for
+there is practically no limit one way or the other; but the lay observer
+who hears such statements as these generally makes a gross misuse of
+them, and in his calculations as to how many books a man may write a
+year, absolutely forgets that in writing time is not a very accurate
+vehicle for arriving at an estimate.  The author lays down his pen and
+goes to his club to dine, but he takes his work with him; it is keeping
+him close company in the train, and a new situation, or the germ of an
+additional complication, is woven into the scenery as he is being borne
+townwards.  He cannot escape.  Nothing is more pertinacious than an
+unfinished character; while in the cab as likely as not one of his
+creations is sitting by him, insisting on his being allowed a little
+more elbow-room, or a minor satellite peers at him through the judas in
+the roof.  That is to say, there are no early hours, so-called, for
+writers, no getting away from work and comfortably shutting up the shop.
+It is not in the nature of things that this should be so.  The writer
+has never done, and practically every thousand words composed by Henty
+was the result of long and careful prior work and thought.
+
+As regards many of his stories, he admitted starting them on the
+"go-as-you-please" system; that is to say, events and characters were
+allowed to shape themselves in their own way; but then it must be
+remembered that Henty had a good store to work upon, and that he had,
+moreover, accustomed himself, through many years of press work, to
+quickness of thought and the swift maturing of the line of reasoning,
+since in writing for newspapers the man who hesitates is lost, for the
+master printer takes no denial.
+
+In popularity he may be reckoned to have passed W.H.G. Kingston and R.M.
+Ballantyne, while he was, as it were, quite level with Captain Mayne
+Reid and Jules Verne; the last-named writer's skeleton frameworks rather
+than romances had deservedly an enormous vogue, partly because of their
+tremendous scope, and also on account of the fillip they gave to the
+imagination of the young reader.  With such a man as Henty it seems like
+begging the question to speak of "atmosphere"; but by whatever name that
+intangible quality is designated, certain it is that Henty possessed
+himself of it before he started work.  Francis Hammond in his gondola in
+old-world Venice, or Mademoiselle de Pignerol in the days of the Grand
+Monarque, are all part and parcel of their respective times, and it is
+this ring of truth which makes his stories prevail.  The neurotic was as
+far from Henty as are the poles asunder; but in giving to boyhood
+something more substantial to dream about than "the gay castles of the
+clouds that pass," in the story of the azure main, of England's
+greatness, and the whole stirring, many-coloured panorama of ancient
+days and battles fought on the other side of uncounted sunsets, it is
+reasonable to imagine that at times he lived and perhaps almost lost
+himself in the old world which he re-created.  The man who knew the
+byways of history as he did would be graceless and inconsistent if he
+did not feel the grandeur of all those things, seen for a flying moment
+down the winding turret stairway as the curtain is drawn aside.  It is
+as good to regard his masterly treatment of historic themes as it is
+painful to witness the wretched spectacle of feeble handling of subjects
+vast as these.  Life, as Macbeth said, is but a walking shadow; but
+there is a good deal of reality in it too, and there was nothing
+visionary about the people Henty created: they were genial,
+good-humoured, time-serving, sluggish, magnificent, or Boeotian, as
+circumstance and occasion warranted, while in delineating a soldier of
+our time his hand was unerring.  His sketch of the linesman or the
+trooper was as true as that of the mediaeval Spaniard in his shabby
+cloak, the plump landlady of the inn, the bragging mountebank in
+questionable buskins, the adventurer ready to sell his sword to the
+highest bidder, or any other of the sometimes brilliant, sometimes
+lack-lustre company with whom he had to deal on that broad white route
+of historical romance which it was given to him to traverse that others
+might appreciate these things.  It is not only a question of boys, for
+many an old stager whose life now is his club, likes these breezy,
+healthy stories, and enjoys meeting once more the grave signors who
+managed the political world in the bygone, and saluting yet once again
+the kings whose weaknesses and whose grandeur filled a world that has
+vanished.  And his treatment of these legends, or facts, as the case may
+be, is full of charm, just as his writing is simple and sincere and
+instinct with the insight of a mind which had that greatest of all
+gifts--the gift of keeping young.
+
+
+CHAPTER FORTY ONE.
+
+PERSONAL NOTES.
+
+Henty's study was an ideal room for a writer, with all kinds of
+suggestive objects around, such as would be useful to a man who wrote
+about war's alarms; for he did not go upon any of his adventurous
+journeys without keeping in mind the walls of the study, which was
+practically a museum.  It must be quite five-and-twenty years since,
+after dining with him one evening, Henty took the writer into his den to
+show and describe (from out of the cloud emitted by a favourite
+brier-root pipe which he used steadily) the various weapons hanging from
+the walls, some of which were very beautiful, in spite of the purpose
+for which they had been formed.  One memorable, clumsy-looking,
+straight, two-edged sword seemed to be about as unsuitable for causing
+destruction and death as it could have been made.  It was Indian, of
+considerable length, and peculiar in this way.  The armourer who made it
+had so contrived that the hilt was fused, as it were, into a gauntlet
+for the protection of the knuckles of the man who wielded it, and the
+handle was exactly the reverse of that joined to an ordinary sword, for
+the warrior who grasped it would have to take hold at right angles to
+the course of the blade, in fact, precisely as a gardener would take
+hold of a spade.  To us this seems a curious clumsy fashion, but it is
+one which we find repeated in many of the Indian knives or daggers, and
+to some extent in the Malay creese, which, roughly speaking, bears round
+towards right angles like the butt of a horse pistol.
+
+On commenting upon the peculiarity of the great Indian sword, and the
+impossibility of a man using it to thrust, or make an adequate cut,
+Henty rose from his seat and gave the writer an exemplification of how
+such a weapon would be used by a native foot-soldier in a melee.
+Single-handed, he would rush into a crowd with outstretched arm
+stiffened by the steel gauntlet-like hilt, and would clear a space all
+round him by the murderous sweep of the blade which he wielded, turning
+himself into a sort of human windmill.  In fact, in the hands of a
+strong man it was about the most horrible, butcher-like weapon ever
+invented for the destruction of human life.  By comparison, as the great
+blade was replaced with its fellows, a far preferable death would have
+been inflicted by a gracefully-curved, razor-edged, exquisitely forged
+and grained Damascus blade.  This had probably been the pride of some
+Mahratta chief, some keen, dark, aquiline-nosed soldier whose hands must
+have been as delicate as a woman's, for the hilt of this, as well as
+those of its fellows upon the wall, seemed toy-like in the grip of such
+a man as Henty.
+
+He possessed quite a museum of such objects as these, and his armoury of
+trophies went on growing till his death, when he was the possessor of an
+endless number of choice little treasures.  These were considerably
+added to by his son, Captain C.J. Henty, in the shape of weapons
+collected during the late Boer War (where he distinguished himself in
+command of the detachment of volunteers of the London Irish Rifles), and
+by another son during the latter's adventurous life in the Wild West.
+
+A treasure of Henty's own collecting was a beautiful suit of Northern
+Indian armour, exquisitely damascened and inlaid with gold, the
+skullcap-like spiked helmet being provided with sliding face-guard and
+hood of chain mail, while the almost gauze-like steel shirt, with
+sleeves, breast, and arm-plates of beautiful workmanship, were all
+perfect.  From Abyssinia came a silver shield, massive and brilliantly
+polished, and trophy after trophy had been garnered in other countries,
+including weapons from China and Japan.  About one and all of these
+treasures, from the most costly weapons to the spears, arrows, and
+shields of savage warfare, the owner could discourse eloquently and
+well, for concerning each he had some history or anecdote to tell.
+
+He was much liked in the little social company he affected, and here his
+discourse and ways seemed to show how warmly he felt towards his
+companions; while of his thorough sincerity he unobtrusively gave them
+most ample proof.
+
+In such coteries of literary and artistic men, workers for the ordinary
+income as well as for the praise of the world, there are, of course,
+some who prosper far beyond their highest hopes, and, sad to say, more
+who, in spite of every effort, only gain disappointment, with its
+concomitants--poverty and despair.  It was in such cases as these that,
+with evident care that his action should not hurt the feelings of a
+friend, Henty's hand, so to speak, glided unseen towards his pocket, to
+plunge in pretty deeply, and return far better filled than those of his
+fellows who had taken similar action.  And this was not from the
+possession of wealth, but from true fellow-feeling and generosity of
+heart.
+
+He numbered fewer friends, perhaps, than others who were his colleagues
+and fellow-workers, but those whom he classed as intimates were of the
+more sterling metal, stamped with the brand of solidity, and the most
+lasting in their wear; while they on their side, possibly from their
+being the choice of one who, after the long gatherings of experience,
+was no mean judge of human nature, were no doubt as staunch as he.
+Certainly they enjoyed the satisfaction of being numbered among his
+friends.
+
+Washington Irving, in his _Knickerbocker Papers_, when describing the
+sages among the old Dutch settlers in the Hudson region, refers to the
+way in which they were looked up to for their wisdom and for the
+character they obtained and kept by much smoking and preserving silence,
+in addition to never being found out.  This comes to mind when thinking
+over Henty's quiet, stolid way in after-dinner communion at his clubs.
+He always looked calm, grave, and thoughtful, but, unlike the old Dutch
+settlers recorded by that charming American writer, he did think; he
+thought deeply, but spoke little.  When he did open his lips though, he
+was outspoken, plain, straightforward, and to the point.
+
+As a rule he left speaking to those who were gifted, or cursed, with
+fluency.  Debating was a horror to be avoided and denounced; but all the
+same it was no unusual thing for him to be chosen to preside at a social
+dinner, or to take the chair at a committee meeting, and when this
+happened he always distinguished himself.
+
+A fellow-member of one of his clubs supplies the writer with a
+characteristic anecdote, which carries with it an impression of the
+downright, straightforward character and outspoken nature of Henty in
+his utter detestation of sharp practice in every form.  The incident
+occurred during the after-dinner conversation, throughout which the
+subject of this memoir sat like a modern literary Jupiter in the midst
+of the clouds of smoke which he had largely helped to evolve.  Out of
+this smoke he could be seen glowering at one of the speakers.  This man
+was a stranger to him, and he had listened to him in silence, quite
+unaware that he was a city journalist connected with one of the
+financial papers.  The speaker had been making a great and verbose use
+of his knowledge of his own particular subject, and for a long time
+Henty had sat and frowned at him.  No better term could possibly be
+found for describing my old friend's aspect at the time.  It suggested a
+revival of Samuel Johnson visiting his old haunts, and those who knew
+Henty became silent listeners too, in the full expectation that he would
+be moved to show his displeasure, and would make some remark upon the
+revelations about the peculiar ways of transacting business occasionally
+carried out in the neighbourhood of Throgmorton Street.
+
+But Jupiter was still silent, and the fluent speaker prattled on about
+bulls and bears, about the great _coups_ that were made, and about the
+immense profits of some and the heavy losses and ruin of the weak and
+foolish who, in the fierce race for wealth, were tempted in their folly
+into city gambling.
+
+Matters went on, and Henty grew more heated.  The smoke of his brier
+pipe rolled out in increased volume; his eyes grew more fierce; but no
+interruption came, and as he still remained silent, a feeling of
+disappointment began to grow among those who knew him best.  He was only
+waiting, however, until the financial discourse died out, not for want
+of material, since, unfortunately, that is always too plentiful, but
+more probably on account of weariness on the speaker's part.  Then, to
+the great satisfaction of Henty's listeners, he growled out: "Well, have
+you done?  Now I will tell you what I think about financial newspapers
+and their conductors.--They are a set of confounded thieves."
+
+It is recorded of him that he was upon one occasion called upon to
+preside at a meeting in which someone was suspected of having been a
+defaulter in a case in which full confidence had been placed.  It was a
+serious matter, one which had been fully discussed, and at last it fell
+to Henty's lot to give something like the casting vote.  He had been
+seated very silently, full of severe earnestness, till with stern,
+solemn dignity he stood up to speak, his words shaping themselves for
+some time like those of a prosecuting counsel, till at last he finished
+by being almost denunciatory in tone, as with grim irony he exclaimed:
+"And then he told us that lie!  Now, why should he have told us such a
+lie as that, when he knew very well that he must be found out?  If he
+wanted to tell a lie," he continued, his voice growing more cutting in
+his bitter sarcasm, "why did he not choose one that we had not a chance
+of finding out?"
+
+
+CHAPTER FORTY TWO.
+
+CLUB LIFE.
+
+Henty was a man who always enjoyed mixing with his fellows, and being
+constantly associated with members of the fourth estate, it was quite
+natural that he should join certain clubs.  It followed therefore that,
+as years rolled by in a long life, he had a pretty good list in the way
+of membership to his name.
+
+He was, of course, a member of various yachting clubs; but coming to
+literary gatherings, he early became a member of the world-known Savage,
+which he joined in its old days, and his was a familiar, quiet,
+thoughtful face at the weekly dinners, while he was a welcome and
+trusted chairman at the gatherings of the committee.  Later, without
+giving up his membership, he joined, consequent upon some little tiff,
+the select band of the oldest members, who formed what, if they had been
+members of Saint Stephen's, would have been called the Cave of Adullam.
+Here, however, the little branch or lodge was dubbed the Wigwam, whose
+cognisance, still printed on the circulars which announce the chairman
+and the date of the next dinner, is a clever sketch of a Red Indian's
+wigwam.  This was drawn by a clever artist member, who has passed away
+almost as these lines are being written--namely, Wallis Mackay.  The
+skin lodge is looped back to display a group of occupants in full war
+paint, feathers, and blanket, seated smoking.  These represent in
+admirable likeness a few familiar members, numbering, among others,
+Tegetmeier the naturalist, Henry Lee of Brighton Aquarium and of octopus
+celebrity, and Ravenstein the geographer, while, glass in eye, raising
+himself like a look-out from the smoke aperture at the top, there are
+the unmistakable features of the late J.L. Toole.  To name one more,
+there is the subject of this memoir.  It is a playful little skit, with
+a grim caricature in the distance shaped like a skeleton, suspended from
+a blasted tree, as if suggestive of the fate of an intruder, while
+plainly written upon one of the folds of the skin tent is "No admission
+except on business."
+
+For many years also Henty's was a face heartily welcomed as a friend and
+fellow clubman at the quiet little social tavern club known as the
+Whitefriars, a club at which in its early days politics was tabooed.
+But as years passed on times altered, and political and social debate
+became the rule, much to Henty's annoyance.  His idea of a club was that
+it should be a gathering-place where a few old friends, freed for the
+time being from quill-driving and thinking out books, leading articles,
+and other brain-worrying tasks, should meet for a social chat, and where
+there should be no delivering of speeches, no debates.  So soon,
+therefore, as this debating and speech-delivering became the custom,
+Henty began to talk to those with whom he was most intimate of
+withdrawing his name from the club.  Such a proceeding, it was pointed
+out to him, would be depriving his oldest friends of his company.  He
+seemed to see the force of this, and matters went on, and a proposal he
+had made to a few friends that they should follow the example of the
+dwellers in the Wigwam and meet together in peace, seemed to have died
+out.  Nevertheless Henty was a man of very strong political feeling, and
+possessed all the firm attributes of a thoroughly stanch Conservative
+gentleman, one might say Tory, of the past.  If he had taken a motto,
+his would have been that of the old _John Bull_ newspaper: "God, the
+Sovereign, and the People."  Throughout his life, though gentle and
+kindly by nature, he was, when roused by what he looked upon as
+injustice or cowardice, a fierce and truculent Briton, ready to defy the
+whole world.
+
+On the whole, though, perhaps from its propinquity to the newspaper
+world, Henty was most frequently seen at that centre of which the late
+Andrew Halliday wrote that the qualification for admission was to be "a
+working-man in literature or art, and a good fellow."  Of course the
+rendezvous meant is the Savage Club--that place "apart from the chilling
+splendour of the modern club,"--the club over which so many disputes
+have taken place amongst its members as to its title, as to whether it
+borrows it from poor, improvident Richard Savage, or from its supposed
+Bohemian savagery.  Be that as it may, it is certainly the spot where
+the bow of everyday warfare is unstrung and set aside.
+
+It has long been the custom here to invite to dine at the social
+Saturday evening gathering pretty well everyone who has become famous,
+and whose name is upon the public lips, and these invitations have been
+accepted by warrior and statesman, by our greatest artists and
+travellers, whether they have sought to discover the Boreal mysteries or
+to cross the Torrid Zone.  Even those who have become great rulers have
+not disdained to accept "Savage" hospitality, and upon such nights some
+popular or distinguished member of the club is called upon to take the
+chair.  Now it so happens that there is extant a copy of the menu of a
+dinner, drawn by one of the cleverest members, which depicts in quaint,
+characteristic, and light-hearted fashion the imaginary proceedings and
+post-prandial entertainment connected with the aforesaid unstrung bow.
+In the case in question Lord Kitchener was the guest, fresh from his
+victories in the Sudan, and no better chairman could have been chosen
+than the popular war correspondent, George Henty, whose portrait and
+that of the famous general occupy the centre of the dinner card
+represented here.
+
+It would be difficult to over-estimate the interest of such a typical
+meeting at the club, one which had naturally drawn together a crowded
+gathering of men who had more or less deeply cut their names upon the
+column of popularity, if not of fame.
+
+The names of the general and war correspondent attracted to that dinner
+a distinguished company; the singer possessed of sweet tenor voice or
+deepest bass; the musician who excelled as pianist or who could bring
+forth the sweetest tones from the strings; the flautist; the skilful
+prestidigitator who puzzled the gathering with the latest Egyptian card
+trick, but who will amuse no more; the clever actor ready to give
+expression to some recitation, serious or laughable; the delineator of
+quaint phases of life; the artist whose works have provoked thought and
+admiration in the picture galleries; the scientist with the secrets of
+his laboratory gradually developing into life-saving and
+labour-economising reforms; to say nothing of the keen-visaged
+diplomatist whose range covers the mysteries of the chancelleries of
+Europe and cabinets where whispers are sacred and policies are shaped;
+and the writer to whom the wide world is but the sunning ground of
+cogitation.
+
+At the club's improvised concerts and entertainments all are ready to
+amuse or be amused; even the learned judge and the argumentative counsel
+who takes his brief from some clever lawyer, now his companion for the
+evening, meet the eye of physician or surgeon upon common ground.
+
+Later, the deeply-engaged actor, when his part is at an end, comes in
+straight from the boards, bringing with him the buoyancy and
+imaginativeness of the strange fantastic realm where he is so popular--a
+realm so different from all others, although merely divided from the
+commonplace world by a row of lights.
+
+Here all are friends, gathered by the attractions of music, song, and
+repartee.  Men who have striven greatly all their lives and have gained
+much, and maybe lost something too, are here in good fellowship.
+Irksome trammels for the time are cast aside, permitting one and all to
+partake of what seems to be like a whiff of ozone or a breath from the
+pine-scented Surrey hills, after the contracted arena of the struggle
+for life.
+
+On the particular occasion referred to above, supported as he was by
+those who had shared his past and been his companions and the witnesses
+of many a deadly battle, Henty was thoroughly at home; and it was a
+happy choice of a chairman which brought him to preside on that November
+evening when Kitchener was the special guest.
+
+It was only a few short months after Kitchener's crowning victory at
+Omdurman, which had finally crushed the Dervish power and set Slatin and
+his fellow captives free, and established law and order at Khartoum and
+through the immense territories which separate that city from Cairo.  It
+was, therefore, a bright idea that inspired Oliver Paque, to give him
+his _nom de plume_, in his merry caricature to depict the gallant
+general as a _beau sabreur_ leading a charge at full gallop and riding
+in to the feast.  He is seen, as the illustration shows, leaping
+triumphantly through a circus paper hoop supported by a swarthy
+Sudanese, and the tatters of the paper ingeniously form the map of
+Africa.  Right through Africa he leaps, as it were, into the fire of
+cheers and applause that greet him--into the smoke of the "Savage" pipe
+of peace, started by the chairman.
+
+But that memorable night is not so far back in the Hinterland that one
+has any need to strain the memory assiduously for the leading details of
+historic incidents sketched in upon the menu card.  The tattered
+indication of a map recalls Major Marchand and his march across desert
+and through forest and swamp to Fashoda.  There are pleasant
+suggestions, too, in the tribute paid to the chairman by the artist's
+pencil, which playfully deals with the fame the chairman had reaped by
+his books.  Boys are shown eagerly reading his thrilling tales of
+history and adventure, a young mother is depicted admonishing a lad who
+is engrossed in some stirring work, while the list of titles--_A Dash
+for Khartoum, True to the Old Flag, Through the Fray, By Right of
+Conquest, Held Fast for England_--is alone a tribute to the sturdy
+chairman, for though titles only they illustrate the feelings of a
+patriotic man.
+
+The pen-painter of the merry scene, indeed, notwithstanding the
+grotesqueness of the work, has contrived to suggest by many a happy
+touch little peculiarities in the individualities of his subjects.  Thus
+he gives a wonderful likeness of such a familiar member as Dan Godfrey,
+the well-known band-master of the Guards, who is shown leading the
+concert in heroic bearskin what time Handel's march of "The Conquering
+Hero" is blown by one of the most popular humourists of the club.  The
+name of another member--Slaughter--seems by the irony of fate to be
+singularly apposite at a war correspondent's banquet, while the drum and
+cymbals and the tom-tom tell their own tale as beaten by members whose
+faces are familiar to those behind the scenes.  Everything, in short,
+tended to make this dinner a great success.
+
+Sometimes when taking the chair, however, at one of these club dinners,
+Henty would fancy that the attendance was not so good as it might have
+been, and attributing it to a want of popularity, he would turn to the
+writer and whisper with almost a sigh, "Another frost!"  This quaint bit
+of dramatic slang is, of course, popularly used in the theatrical world
+when the British public displays a tendency not to throng the seats, and
+there is a grim array of empty benches to crush all the spirit out of
+the actors in some clever piece.  It was quite a mistake, though, to use
+it in connection with Henty's dinners, for he was always surrounded by
+plenty of warm-hearted friends whose presence and sunshiny aspect were
+sufficient to set the wintry chill of unsociability at defiance.
+
+
+CHAPTER FORTY THREE.
+
+HIS GREAT HOBBY.
+
+Probably Henty never so much enjoyed release from his workshop study as
+when he could get on board his yacht, the _Egret_.  He was especially
+fond of this boat, which was really a most comfortable vessel, not built
+upon racing lines, but somewhat reminding one of the small cruising
+schooners which were fashionable at Cowes in the sixties and early
+seventies.
+
+He had an honest, plain-spoken skipper and crew, who knew their business
+thoroughly, and they evidently looked upon the owner as more of a friend
+than a captain.  One of his favourite cruising-grounds was the estuary
+of the Thames.  The yacht would sometimes lie off Leigh, and sometimes
+up the Medway.  The locality is not one which many other yachtsmen would
+choose, for there are shoals and tidal eccentricities that require a
+watchful eye.  Owner and skipper, however, knew every inch of that broad
+waterway.
+
+Henty's cabin lay aft, and was well lighted from the deck.  It was
+thoroughly roomy, and by an ingenious contrivance the luxury of a bath
+could at any time be indulged in, through merely lifting a panel from
+the floor.
+
+To see Henty at his most peaceful stage was to watch him lying back high
+upon the pillows on the deck of his yacht reading some favourite author.
+This would generally be an old friend, for like many another, he was
+fond of renewing his acquaintance with writers who had attracted him in
+the years gone by.
+
+The galley was in charge of a good substantial sea cook, who could turn
+out a plain meal that was sufficient for any reasonable man's wants,
+though it need not be explained in detail that in the appointments of
+the state rooms and main cabin table there was no affectation of luxury.
+The yacht would be always well provisioned with joints that not only
+admitted, but invited a cut-and-come-again principle.
+
+Of course, everybody who knew Henty could, all his life through, testify
+to his perfect abstemiousness.  In fact, one has known many instances in
+which the serious warning spoken by Henty to young colleagues, who were
+with him on journalistic expeditions, saved them from much mischief.  He
+would deliver his little lecture on a weakness which he had noticed, and
+invariably finish with, "Pardon me for being so free, old chap, but if
+you take my advice you will watch it."
+
+Except when he went across the North Sea, the yachting cruises were of
+fairly long week-end duration, but sooner or later the yacht would be
+passing in review whatever naval operations were on the way at
+Sheerness, while a favourite mooring for the night was up towards
+Chatham at a spot where there was a wood on the northern bank.
+
+Henty always seemed to the manner born when on board his yacht, and an
+early cup of coffee, in pyjamas on deck, sometimes not a great while
+after sunrise, was invariably indulged in.  This was followed, of
+course, by the faithful pipe, which, indeed, was in constant action from
+morning to night.
+
+He was a man who used to attribute his good health and spirits as much
+to his yacht as to anything in the world, and more than once his
+friends, in commenting upon his love for the sea, have declared that no
+better representative of the old sea kings of England could have been
+seen afloat than George Alfred Henty.  No one really saw him at his best
+who did not see him in rough weather, bare-headed, with the wind
+whistling through his grey hair, and the foam torn from the waves
+bedewing his big beard and making his sun-tanned, bronzed visage
+glisten, as he stood at the wheel, firm of aspect, gazing defiantly
+before him in a kind of rapture, and thoroughly enjoying life the while
+he ploughed the waves.  If any endorsement of this were needed by the
+reader who never met the subject face to face, let him turn to the
+photograph showing Henty reading the proofs of his last book aboard his
+yacht.  The portrait was taken not long before his death, and gives a
+far better idea to the reader of the big, bluff, sturdy war
+correspondent than would pages of writing.
+
+For he was born to be a sailor, and the wonder is that he did not
+develop into being the captain of some great liner, instead of a wielder
+of the pen.  One striking phase in his character that was developed in
+his yachting pursuits was that, though he thoroughly enjoyed inviting
+and having the company of some old friend on board, to whom he was the
+most genial and hospitable of hosts, he was yet perfectly happy when
+alone with his crew.  At such times he would carry out various
+manoeuvres, and quite contentedly occupy himself with his own thoughts.
+
+One man will make friend and companion of a faithful dog; another is
+never more content than when he is with his horse.  To Henty, from quite
+early in life, his yacht took the place of some living sentient being--
+his yacht and its movement, whether driven forward under the pressure of
+a light breeze, or throbbing beneath his feet as it bounded and leaped
+from wave to wave in a gale.  For he was no smooth-water sailor, but had
+grown into a hardened and masterly mariner, who thoroughly understood
+the varied caprices of the deep.
+
+He would generally manage to be afloat somewhere about Easter, for a few
+days each week, cruising, as has been said, about the mouth of the
+Thames, and once in a way he would shoot across to Heligoland for the
+Emperor's Cup race.  He seldom studied much about the weather so long as
+he could be well afloat; though at times he would encounter a furious
+gale out in the open sea, and get what he himself termed a thorough good
+knocking about.
+
+He related to a friend that upon one occasion he passed through a
+fearful gale, with the force of the wind so great that he and his crew
+ran two hundred and sixty knots in twenty-seven hours, putting in at
+Harwich without shipping a bucket of water in the run home.
+
+One of Henty's greatest regrets when the weather was fairly fine was
+that his literary avocations prevented him from being oftener afloat.
+This was especially the case at times when there was war or rumour of
+war, for then he would be on duty at the _Standard_ waiting for the
+brief telegrams that came in at all hours from Reuter's and elsewhere.
+These were brought to him, as before mentioned, to be expanded from
+their key-like brevity into plain straightforward reading for the
+printers to set up.
+
+As already stated, in this favourite pursuit of yachting Henty heartily
+enjoyed the companionship of friends who liked the sea, but at the same
+time if men of similar tastes did not present themselves, he was well
+content to be alone.  A thoroughly social man, he had his own strong
+ideas upon companionship.  He set limits to such a means of enjoyment,
+and he could speak out very strongly against excursion trips in which he
+was asked to take part.  "I like to see things," he said.  "I like to go
+into the country on a little trip to see some object of interest, or to
+pay a visit to some historic town, but I don't like these excursion
+trips, and I won't go!"  Alluding to the parties of "trippers" so
+numerous in summer weather, who make our railway stations unpleasant for
+those who wish to travel, he denounced them in the most forcible way.
+"I like to go," he said, "with a few fellows in a friendly way.  What I
+object to is going in a mob."  In plain English, it touched Henty's
+pride to visit some excursionist haunt where he felt that his party
+would be classed as bean-feasters, or what is known as the members of a
+wayzgoose, and he resented the whole position as unworthy of the dignity
+of a literary man.
+
+Henty's love of yachting began early in life, when he was holding a
+commission in the army and stationed at Kingstown, where he owned a
+ten-tonner called _The Pet_.  It was his first craft, and very nearly
+proved to be his last, for upon one occasion he had been out sailing
+with his little crew for some distance, and had the misfortune to be
+caught in a heavy gale, which gave him and his men a very severe lesson
+in seamanship.  There was a tremendous sea, and before they were able to
+make the harbour, and anchor, their position was so perilous that a huge
+crowd collected, in momentary expectation of seeing the yacht go down,
+for it was impossible for her crew to land.
+
+To make matters worse, and to add to the excitement, the officer's young
+wife was one of those who joined the crowd, and she kept appealing in
+her agony of mind to the seagoing men around to save her husband's life.
+Finally a boat was manned by a sturdy party, and with great difficulty
+the little crew were brought ashore in safety.  This was early in the
+sixties, and after that, enthusiastic yachtsman though he was, his
+avocations and absence from England put a stop to his seagoing till
+about 1887, when, opportunity serving, he bought an old life-boat and
+converted her into a yacht.  The buoyancy of her build attracted him,
+and for some years this little thirteen-ton vessel, the _Kittiwake_ as
+he called her (and well did she deserve her name), afforded him a long
+series of pleasant runs.
+
+But previous to owning the _Kittiwake_ Henty became possessed of a small
+half-decked canoe, which afforded him an opportunity of bringing to bear
+that inventive genius which at different periods of his career had
+induced him to try his hand at various contrivances, any one of which
+might have brought him fame and fortune such as came to a fellow-member
+of his club in connection with a torpedo that was taken over by the
+British government.  At one time he constructed a spar torpedo.  This
+was during the American Civil War, and upon its completion he offered it
+to the United States authorities.  Another of his ideas, also of a
+warlike character, was an invention the necessity of which he had
+probably seen practically demonstrated.  This was a contrivance for the
+practice of long-range firing where opportunity did not serve, that is
+to say, in a limited space of ground.  By means of Henty's arrangement,
+practice up to a thousand or twelve hundred yards range could be
+indulged in, though only eighty to a hundred yards were available.  When
+finished, he offered the result to our own War Office, but, strange to
+relate, this outcome of long and careful thought was allowed to join the
+limbo of thousands of other inventions, good, bad, and indifferent, for
+it was not accepted.  He laid no more of his ideas before boards for
+consideration, but after this devoted himself to his half-decked canoe,
+which was tinkered and altered about in a pursuit which always afforded
+him intense gratification.  It filled a gap while he was waiting, and
+toiling hard, to place himself in a position in which he could, without
+pinching, purchase for himself an _Egret_--a yacht which he could enter
+for an emperor's cup.  Journalists who marry, and have sons to push
+forward in the world, and who also have to meet ordinary expenses, have
+not much money to waste, even if they are successful war correspondents.
+Henty's yachting desires, therefore, for a long time were not wholly
+gratified, and he had to occupy himself with the pen, which
+industriously built up the long series of books that made his name so
+well known to the rising generation.  Nevertheless his yachting moved by
+degrees, and he gave full vent to his inventive powers with this little
+half-decked canoe.  First, after much study, he lengthened her, to find
+most probably that she was now what a sailor would call "crank."  To
+meet this difficulty, he took a lesson from the naive and clever notions
+of the canoe-sailers of the South Seas, and fitted on outriggers with
+gratings on the outrigger spars.  His boat was then a great success when
+used for sailing about the mouth of the Thames, for the scheme answered
+admirably, and he was very proud of offering a sail therein to a friend
+or brother journalist or editor.  Still not content with his conversion,
+and doubtless incited thereto by the leeway his little craft made, he
+added to it what is known amongst boating men as a centre-board--a very
+unusual addition this to a canoe--namely, a deep keel, which acted after
+the fashion of the lee-boards of a Thames barge.
+
+His ambition growing, he next bought the _Dream_, a thirty-two ton yawl.
+But Henty was no dreamer, and he changed her name to the _Meerschaum_,
+not after his pipe, but because of his love of sending her careening
+over and through the sea foam.
+
+The _Meerschaum_ only satisfied his desires, though, for about three
+years, when he purchased a vessel better worthy of his attention as an
+enthusiastic yachtsman, in the shape of the before-mentioned _Egret_, an
+eighty-three ton schooner.  This boat he sailed with a skilful crew for
+years, indulging now and then in a handicap in the Corinthian or the
+Thames Yacht Club, of both of which, as well as of the Medway Club, he
+was a member.
+
+He had various cups to show as the reward of his prowess.  One of these,
+a handsome trophy, of which he was very proud, he would display to his
+friends with sparkling eyes, though the modest nature of the man stepped
+in at once as he hastened to say, "That was won by my men of the _Egret_
+at Cowes.  They had the money prize, and out of it purchased this cup
+for me,"--a little fact this which clearly showed the friendly feeling
+existing between skipper and crew.  The ambition to win what would be
+looked upon as a greater prize was shown more than once in his crossing
+the North Sea to enter the lists for the German Emperor's Cup.  On one
+occasion so brave a fight was made that the _Egret_ would have proved
+the winner had not fate been against her; she was ready to battle with
+the sea no matter how rough, but was helpless when the wind failed, and
+this was what happened, to her owner's intense disappointment.
+
+A propos of prize cups, the sideboard in Henty's museum-like study had a
+pretty good display of silver trophies, many of which were the prizes
+won during the time when he was a member of the London Rowing Club,
+where his broad, deep chest, heavy muscles, long reach, and powers of
+endurance made him a formidable competitor.  And it was in this club,
+oddly enough, that he first made the acquaintance of Mr J.P. Griffith,
+who, being a very rapid scribe, became the amanuensis and writer to whom
+he dictated every one of the books which, calf bound, all _en suite_,
+made such an imposing show on the shelves of one large book-case.
+
+In the summer of 1897, the Diamond Jubilee year, it fell to Henty's lot
+to describe for the _Standard_ the passing of the procession along the
+Piccadilly portion of the route, while a fellow correspondent for the
+_Standard_, Mr Bloundelle Burton, described the Queen's journey along
+the Strand.  This gentleman in the same year was acting as correspondent
+on board one of our battleships at the Naval Review off Portsmouth, and
+Henty, taking advantage of his position as a yacht owner, stationed the
+_Egret_ off the Isle of Wight, and there in hospitable fashion kept
+"open house" for his friends.
+
+He took a very keen and wholly natural pride in this graceful yacht, the
+_Egret_, perhaps because in acquiring her he pretty well reached the
+height of his ambition.  He liked to talk about her prowess in sailing,
+which he modestly veiled by setting it down to the skill of his men.
+But his pride in the _Egret_ when she walked the waters like a thing of
+life, shone out of his eyes, and he did what he could to make her fame
+lasting by having her photographed.  The accompanying admirable
+representation, which was taken for him by Messrs. Kirk and Son, of
+Cowes, shows the little yacht running free before a brisk breeze off the
+coast of the Isle of Wight.
+
+
+CHAPTER FORTY FOUR.
+
+A FINAL WORD.
+
+In all probability the portrait of George Alfred Henty, which shows him
+on his yacht, was the last that was taken prior to his death.  It is
+certainly Henty as we know him, and it shows him in his most natural
+aspect, for it was taken when he was not merely in the full enjoyment of
+his favourite pastime, but combining it with his work.  It represents
+him unexpectant, grave, and intent, reading over and making corrections
+in the proof-sheets of one of his last books.  Being a genuine
+snap-shot, nothing possibly could have been more happy, and it certainly
+deserves to be termed a perfectly natural untouched likeness.  The
+taking of this photograph came about almost by accident.  Just before
+his last cruise, Henty wished to have some alterations made in the sails
+of the _Egret_.  A local sail-maker--a Mr Ainger--came on board to
+carry out the task, and he chanced to have brought his camera.  Seizing
+an opportune moment, he took the portrait, with the accompanying
+excellent result, and in sending it to the writer Captain C.G. Henty
+adds these words, "It seems to me singularly characteristic,"--a comment
+that everyone who is well acquainted with the subject must feel bound to
+endorse.
+
+Captain Henty goes on to state: "For some years before his death my
+father suffered from gouty diabetes.  In the autumn of 1902 he
+complained of feeling very unwell, and, although he had laid up the
+_Egret_, he got her into commission again.  After a short cruise,
+however, he returned, and finally brought the schooner to an anchor in
+Weymouth Harbour, and from there he never moved again.
+
+"On Saturday morning, the first of November, he was stricken with
+paralysis, but after a few days he showed signs of recovering the
+vigorous health which he had enjoyed almost throughout his life.  His
+great powers of recuperation stood him in good stead, and he steadily
+improved to such an extent that hopes were entertained of his being
+brought up to town.  Exactly a fortnight, though, after the first
+seizure he was attacked by bronchitis, and on Sunday morning, the
+sixteenth of the month, he passed quietly away."
+
+He was laid to rest in Brompton Cemetery, in the same grave as his first
+wife and his two daughters.
+
+Heading a long article descriptive of his career, the _Standard_, the
+journal with which he had been intimately connected since the year 1865,
+says in reference to his passing: "We regret to announce the death of
+Mr G.A. Henty, which occurred yesterday on his yacht at Weymouth.  He
+had been in weak health for some time, but almost to the last he
+retained his capacity for work."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's George Alfred Henty, by George Manville Fenn
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