chment there somehow was no
surgeon, and as men were going down and something had to be done, it
devolved upon me, as having some experience in this kind of work in
previous campaigns, to undertake a spell of amateur surgery. John
behaved magnificently as my assistant. With his light touch and long
lissom hands, the fellow seemed to have a natural instinct for
successful bandaging. I was glad that we could do no more than bandage,
and that we had no instruments, else I believe that John would not have
hesitated to undertake a capital operation. As for the Afghan bullets,
he did not shrink as they splashed on the stones around him; he did not
treat them with disdain; he simply ignored them. The soldiers swore that
he ought to have the war medal for the good and plucky work he was
doing; and a Major protested that if his full titles, which John always
gave in full when his name was asked, had not been so confoundedly long,
he would have asked the General to mention the Goa man in despatches.

[Illustration: "THERE WAS JOHN WITH MY HORSE."]

John liked war, but he was not fond of the rapid changes of temperature
up on the "roof of the world" in Afghanistan. During one twenty-four
hours at Jellalabad, we had one man killed by a sunstroke, and another
frozen to death on sentry duty in the night. On Christmas morning, when
I rose at sunrise, the thermometer was far below freezing point; the
water in the brass basin in my tent was frozen solid, and I was glad to
wrap myself in furs. At noon the thermometer was over a hundred in the
shade, and we were all so hot as to wish with Sydney Smith that we could
take off our flesh and sit in our bones. John was delighted when, as
there seemed no immediate prospect of further hostilities in
Afghanistan, I departed therefrom to pay a visit to King Thebaw, of
Burmah, who has since been disestablished. When in his capital of
Mandalay, there came to me a telegram from England informing me of the
massacre by the Zulus of a thousand British soldiers at Isandlwana, in
South Africa, and instructing me to hurry thither with all possible
speed. John had none of the Hindoo dislike to cross the "dark water,"
and he accompanied me to Aden, where we made connection with a potty
little steamer, which called into every paltry and fever-smelling
Portuguese port all along the east coast of Africa, and at length
dropped us at Durban, the seaport of the British colony of Natal, in
South Africa, and the ba