lumbagh, I had been much
longer on my feet than the rest of the men; in fact, I was tired out
before we started on our march on the afternoon of the 27th, and now,
after having covered forty-seven miles under thirty hours, my condition
can be better imagined than described. After I became cold, I grew so
stiff that I positively could not use my legs. Now Captain Dawson had a
native servant, an old man named Hyder Khan, who had been an officers'
servant all his life, and had been through many campaigns. I had made a
friend of old Hyder before we left Chinsurah, and he did not forget me.
Having ridden the greater part of the march on the camel carrying his
master's baggage, Hyder was comparatively fresh when he got into camp,
and about the time our canteen-sergeant got up and was calling for
orderly-corporals to draw grog for the men, old Hyder came looking for
me, and when he saw my tired state, he said, in his camp English:
"Corporal _sahib_, you God-damn tired; don't drink grog. Old Hyder give
you something damn much better than grog for tired mans." With that he
went away, but shortly after returned, and gave me a small pill, which
he told me was opium, and about half a pint of hot tea, which he had
prepared for himself and his master. I swallowed the pill and drank the
tea, and _in less than ten minutes_ I felt myself so much refreshed as
to be able to get up and draw the grog for the men of the company and to
serve it out to them while the colour-sergeant called the roll. I then
lay down, rolled up in my sepoy officer's quilt, which I had carried
from the Shah Nujeef, and had a sound refreshing sleep till next
morning, and then got up so much restored that, except for the sores on
my feet from broken blisters, I could have undertaken another forty-mile
march. I always recall this experience when I read many of the ignorant
arguments of the Anti-Opium Society, who would, if they had the power,
compel the Government to deprive every hard-worked _coolie_ of the only
solace in his life of toil. I am certainly not an opium-eater, and the
abuse of opium may be injurious, as is the abuse of anything; but I am
so convinced in my own mind of the beneficial effects of the temperate
use of the drug, that if I were the general of an army after a forced
march like that of the retreat from Lucknow to the relief of Cawnpore, I
would make the Medical Department give every man a pill of opium and
half a pint of hot tea, instead of rum