Sir George bethought himself of the men, formerly composing the German Legion, who were settled in the Colony.  He collected these with what other recruits he could entice, formed them into regiments, and sent them to Bombay.  ‘I signed the commissions for the officers,’ he recalled, ’but I’m afraid my signature would have meant nothing, after the ships were on the high sea.  In the event of the men creating a disturbance, the officers would really have had no legal authority to quell it.’  He communicated with the East India Company, desiring that the regiments should be put on a regular footing immediately they reached Bombay.

‘For raising the regiments,’ Sir George continued, ’I was charged at home with a breach of the constitution.  It was all that.  I got word that I should learn by a later mail what was to be the upshot.  A friendly member of the Government wrote me a note beginning:  “Dear Grey, you have done for yourself at last; I always feared it would come to this.”  My own position was very plain.  Here was an unconstitutional thing, but a necessary thing.

’Meanwhile I had news from Bombay, that it was the provident arrival of the Germans which, most likely, prevented the outbreak that had been feared.  I put the despatch in my pocket, with the reflection:  “Ah, they can now interfere with me from London if they will!” There, I judged, they had similar information from Bombay, for I heard nothing farther as to what was to be done with me.

’When the first tidings of the trouble in India reached me, I laid it down that all previous orders and directions from England were cancelled.  These had been given before the new position arose, and were, in my judgment, over-borne by the new perils.

’As for myself, in a personal way, I felt that I should not feel it a disgrace to be recalled for doing what I regarded as my duty.  I had not very much, but, at the worst, I had enough to live upon.’

Without a masterful Pro-Consul at the Cape, Lucknow might have fallen, before there were forces to relieve it.  That would have lit, for our rule in India, a bonfire in which Bombay would only have been a crackling twig.

It was a stirring British tune that the kilted pipers of the 93rd at Lucknow played.

XV AYE DREAMING AND DOING

Carlyle and Sir George Grey, forgathered at Chelsea, walked up and down in the open, as they often did, discussing some religious question.  Carlyle stopped, laid his hand on Sir George’s shoulder, and, looking him in the face, exclaimed, ‘Oh, that I could believe like you!’

Well, no plank in the faith of Sir George was more firm than the one marked:  ‘Mission and destiny of the Anglo-Saxon people.’  He had been planting the outposts of empire, and he saw these grow out towards each other.  Then, he beheld the old Motherland and them, twining ever closer into a mighty garland, which should sweeten the globe with fragrance.  Nay, he even saw again, in the garland, a very radiant bloom that a king’s tempest had sundered.