nder twenty-three, and as I have mentioned before, I think, very few
of 'F' have qualified for pensions. As it is, two of the seven gave
false ages. The other twenty-five are from a Portsmouth
Company--townees mostly, and to me less attractive than the village
genius: but I daresay we shall get on all right.

Our start wasn't altogether auspicious--in fact taking a draft across
the middle East is nearly as difficult to accomplish without loss as
taking luggage across Scotland. We had a very good send-off, and all
that--concert, dinner, band, crowd on the platform and all the moral
alcohol appropriate to such occasions. It was a week ago, to-day, when
we left Agra, and Agra climate was in its top form, 96 deg. in the shade
and stuffy at that. So you can imagine that it was not only our
spirits that were ardent after a mile's march to the station in
marching order at noon. An hour after the train had started one of my
lance-corporals collapsed with heat-stroke. The first-aid treatment by
the Eurasian M.O. travelling with us was a most instructive object
lesson. The great thing is to be in time. We were summoned within ten
minutes of the man's being taken ill. His temperature was already
106 deg.: the M.O. said that in another half-hour it would have been 109 deg.
and in an hour he would probably have been dead. We stripped him
stark, laid him in the full draught, and sponged him so as to produce
constant evaporation: held up the Punjab mail and got 22lbs. of ice to
put under his head: and so pulled him round in less than two hours. We
had to leave him at Jhansi though, and proceeded to Bombay forty-nine
strong.

The ten-little-nigger-boy process continued at Bombay. We arrived on
board on Monday morning: and though orders were formally issued that
nobody was to leave the docks without a pass, no attempt was made to
prevent the men spending the day in the town, which they all did.

On the Tuesday morning the crew told the men we should not be sailing
till Wednesday: and accordingly a lot of them went shopping again. But
for once in a way the ship actually sailed at the appointed time, 11
a.m. on Tuesday, and five of my gallant band were left behind. However
they were collected by the Embarkation Authorities, and together with
their fellow-victims of nautical inaccuracy from the other drafts were
sent up by special train to Karachi, where they rejoined us: the C.O.
according them a most unsympathetic reception, and senten