we embarked.  It was the first time I had ever been on a troopship, and every moment was of interest.  As spick and span as a man-of-war, with her wide, roomy decks, it was difficult to imagine there were 2,000 souls on board the Victoria, and only in the morning, when the regiment paraded, appearing like ants from below, and stretching in unbroken lines all down both sides of the ship, did one realize how large was the floating population, and how strict must be the discipline necessary to keep so many men healthy, contented, and efficient.  There were a few other civilians going home on leave, but we were the only so-called “indulgence passengers.”  The time passed all too quickly, the monotonous hours of all shipboard life, between the six-thirty dinner and bedtime, being whiled away by listening to an excellent military band.

We were told to be dressed and ready to disembark by 6 a.m. on the morning we were due at Durban, as the Admiral had given stringent instructions not to delay there any longer than was necessary.  I was therefore horrified, on awaking at five o’clock, to find the engines had already stopped, and, on looking out of the porthole, to see a large tender approaching from the shore, apparently full of people.  I scrambled into my clothes, but long before I was dressed the tug was alongside, or as nearly alongside as the heavy swell and consequent deep rolls of our ship would allow.  Durban boasts of no harbour for large ships.  These have to lie outside the bar, and a smooth sea being the exception on this part of the coast, disembarking is in consequence almost always effected in a sort of basket cage, worked by a crane, and holding three or four people.  When I got on deck, the prisoners were still on the tender, being mercilessly rolled about, and they must indeed have been glad when, at six o’clock, the signal to disembark was given.

I shall never forget that striking and melancholy scene.  The dull grey morning, of which the dawn had scarcely broken; the huge rollers of the leaden sea, which were lifting our mighty ship as if she had been but a cockleshell; and the tiny steamer, at a safe distance, her deck crowded with sunburnt men, many of whose faces were familiar to us, and who were picturesquely attired, for the most part, in the very same clothes they had worn on their ill-fated march—­flannel shirts, khaki breeches, high boots, and the large felt hats of the Bechuanaland Border Police, which they were wearing probably for the last time.  As soon as they came on board we were able to have a few hasty words with those we knew, and their faces seem to pass in front of me as I write:  Sir John Willoughby and Captain C. Villiers, both in the Royal Horse Guards, apparently nonchalant and without a care in the world; Colonel Harry White—­alas! dead—­and his brother Bobby, who were as fit as possible and as cheery as ever, but inclined to be mutinous with their unwilling gaolers; Major Stracey,[6] Scots Guards, with his genial and courtly