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volunteering in india

action; and the action throughout its main features resembled those I have already so briefly described.

In one respect, however, there was a novel exception, in our encountering the mutineers on this occasion before the sun had risen. They were accordingly punished with terrible severity. Drawn up in two divisions, and led by the usurper of the Gorukpūr district, they fought with all the energy of despair, until the naval howitzers and Enfield rifles had stretched their best men hors de combat on all sides. Then the Corps, en masse, were let loose in pursuit, and with hearts as hard as stones, and tempers rendered furious by aggravating exposure, they irresistibly swept over the retreating hordes, in the final scene of another sanguinary and crushing defeat.

The signs of the rainy season were now beginning to reveal themselves in the white, woolly-looking clouds, which in their airy flight had commenced to appear above the horizon; and these harbingers, so to say, of milder or cooler days were hailed with positive delight as, after the defeat of the enemy, we marched to Buste.

Here an agreeable surprise awaited us in the unexpected arrival of the 13th Light Infantry, under the command of the gallant Lord Mark Kerr. That many valuable lives might have been spared had this distinguished regiment joined the Brigade at the commencement of hostilities in this part of the country is self-evident, and so easily understood from the contents of the preceding chapters that it needs no comment in