ew English, silently making a
servant of the Ganges with our steam engines and paddles, and these
Asiatics, with shouts and screams worshipping the same river!'

He meets a cool and capable civilian, who expounds to him the
practical side of all these questions and administrative problems; and
he makes a few military friends of the higher stamp, who stand by him
in his refusal to fight a duel and in the court-martial which follows.
Then comes the second Sikh war, with a vivid description, evidently by
an eye-witness, of an officer's share in the hard-fought action at
Chillianwalla, and of the other sharp contests in that eventful
campaign. It is an excellent example of the skilful interweaving of
real incident with the texture of fiction, showing the clear-cut lines
and colour of actual experience gained in the fiercest battle ever won
by the English in India:

'The cavalry and horse-artillery dashed forward, and soon the
rolling of wheels and clanking of sabres were lost in one continual
roar from above a hundred pieces of artillery. On every side the
shot crashed through the jungle; branches of trees were shattered
and torn from their stems; rolling horses and falling men gave an
early character to this fearful evening.... The 3rd Division
advanced, with what fatal results to the gallant 24th Regiment is
well known.... Either by an injudicious order, or, as stated in the
official despatch, by mistaking a chance movement of their
commandant for a signal, the 24th broke into a double at a
distance from the guns far too great for a charge; they arrived
breathless and exhausted at the guns, where a terrific and hitherto
concealed fire of musketry awaited them. The native corps came up
and well sustained their European comrades; but both were
repulsed--not until twenty-one English officers, twelve sergeants,
and 450 rank and file of the 24th had been killed or wounded....
Oakfield counted the bodies of nine officers lying dead in as many
square yards; there lay the dead bodies of the two Pennycuicks side
by side; those of the men almost touched each other.'

The transfer of Oakfield to a civil appointment in no way diminishes
his dissatisfaction at the spectacle of a Government that has no
apparent ethical programme and misconceives its true mission:

'The Indian Government is perhaps the best, the most perfect, nay,