BOOKS.

REMINISCENCES OF THE MUTINY.* MOST readers of Mr. Kipling's inimitable military studies must have longed to come across one of the old soldiers who spun for him the yarns on which he has based his inventions. Few of them, however, can have had any very real hope that they would ever encounter such an incarnate human docu- ment. Yet, strange as it sounds, Messrs. Macmillan have just given to the world a volume of reminiscences which brings us into personal contact with exactly the sort of man who must have supplied the material for Soldiers Three. Battle-scenes and camp-life from the officer's point of view we have had in hundreds, but here, almost for the first time in literature, we have a soldier's book about war. Not merely, be it noted, the book of a man who has served in the ranks —of such there are plenty—but the book of a typical normal private soldier,—a man who dug his bayonet, like the • Rominiscencoe of the Groat Mutiny, 186740. Including tho Relief, Siege, and Capture of Lucknow, and tho Campaigns in Rohileund and awle. By William Perim-Kitchell, late Sergeant,93rd Sutherland Highlander& London: ideemillan and CO. 1895. rest, into his enemy's bowels, who, like his fellows, gossiped. by camp-fires and cut steaks off dead artillery-bullocks. for dinner, and who larked and looted with all the fascinating downrightness of the "young British soldier." Fortunately, Mr. Forbes-Mitchell, the author of the present work, knows how to tell a plain tale, and has no absurd notions of this or that matter being too trivial to be worth recording. He puts down what he remembers, and makes no bones about it. Probably he has been helped to do this by Mr. Kipling's. stories, for, as so often happens, the writer of imagination has. made many things memorable about soldiering which were- not memorable before. The effect of fiction in shaping the contours of real life is, however, "another story." What we are concerned with here is the fact that Reminiscences of the. Great Mutiny is one of the very best soldiers' books ever written. There is not a dull page in it, and exciting yarns of all descriptions follow each other without intermission. To use the conventional phrase and say that it is eminently read- able, is to do it far less than justice. No one who wants.

to be amused and to be made to feel proud of our Army should fail to read it.

Though there are no signs of Mr. Forbes-Mitchell's reminis- cences being cooked, there is a certain epic feeling about them. Sir Colin Campbell is their hero. He was specially popular with the regiment to which Mr. Forbes-Mitchell belonged—the 93rd Highlanders—for he depended on it in moments of diffi- culty, and his words and deeds are recorded with great full- ness. This is a delightful feature of the book. Who has not been tantalised by the conventional words of the ordinary military. memoir,—" The General then rode up and said a few words, of encouragement to the men ?" Here we have none of that vagueness, but the words themselves, short and homely,. and bearing the taste of battle with them still. And better even than this, we have the actual words of the men when "they greeted the Commander-in-Chief with. every sign of enthusiasm." Examples of both these voices. from the ranks and of the General's speeches are to be found in profusion. Take, for example, Sir Colin's. "Lie down, 93rd, lie down I Every man of you is. worth his weight in gold to England to-day ; " or his order when the Sikhs wavered in their attempt to storm the Seoundrabagh,—" Colonel E wart, bring on the tartan. Let my own lads at them !" As an instance of the way in which the men addressed their General in the actual moment of battle, we may quote the exclamation of an old sergeant who had, served under Sir Colin in the Punjab,—" Sir Colin, your Excellency, let the infantry storm. Let the two Thirds at them [meaning the 53rd and the 93rd], and we'll soon make short work of the murdering villains !" On another occasion, a voice from the ranks replied to one of Sir Colin's speeches, "Ay, ay, Sir Cohn; ye ken us and we ken, you. We'll bring the women and children out of Luoknow or die wi' you in the attempt !" The accounts of the actual fighting are difficult to quote, but we will extract the description of Sergeant White's coolness and literary aptitude displayed in the fighting before Luoknow. The 93rd seems indeed to. have been a very well-read regiment, for on another occasion Sergeant White regaled the men while waiting to be charged, with a portion of" The Bridal of Trier main" "In the force defending the Shah Nujeff, in addition to the regular army, there was a large body of archers on the walls, armed with bows and arrows which they discharged with great force and precision, and on White raising his head above the wall an arrow- was shot right into his feather bonnet. Inside of the wire cage of his bonnet, however, he had placed his forage cap, folded up, and instead of passing right through, the arrow stuck in the folds of the forage cap, and Dan,' as he was called, coolly pulled out the arrow, paraphrasing a quotation from Sir Walter Scott's Legend of Montrose, where Dugald Dalgetty and Ranald MacEagh made their escape from the castle of M'Callum More. Looking at the arrow, My conscience !' said White, 'bows and arrows ! bows and arrows ! Have we got Robin Hood and Little John back again f'• Bows and arrows ! My conscience, the sight has not been seen in civilised war for nearly two hundred years. Bows and arrows ! And why not weavers' beams as in the days of Goliath ? Ah !. that Daniel White should be able to tell in the Saut Market of Glasgow that he had seen men fight with bows and arrows in the days of Enfield rifles Well, well, Jack Pandy, since bows and arrows are the words, here's at you!" and with that he raised his feather bonnet on the point of his bayonet above the top of the wall, and immediately another arrow pierced it through, while a. dozen more whizzed past a little wide of the mark."

When, a little later, a comrade was shot clean through by an arrow, Sergeant White could not resist the inevitable quota- tion from Chevy Chase. To show Mr. Forbes-Mitchell's good eye for a story, we will quote his account of an incident he witnessed while the regiment was engaged in picking-off fugitives. One of these played the jackal trick, and shammed to fall dead :— " After he had lain apparently dead for about an hour, some one noticed that he had gradually dragged himself out of the water ; till all at once he sprang to his feet, and ran like a deer in the

direction of the gate of the Bildshkilnigh. Ile was still quite within easy range, and several rifles were levelled at him ; but Sergeant Findlay, who was on the rampart, and was himself one of the best shots in the company, called out, Don't fire, men ; give the poor devil a chance ! ' Instead of a volley of

bullets, the men's better feelings gained the day, and Jack Pandy was reprieved, with a cheer to speed him on his way. As soon as he heard it he realised his position, and like the Samaritan leper of old, he halted, turned round, and putting up both his hands with the palms together in frant of his face, he salaamed pro- foundly, prostrating himself three times on the ground by way of thanks, and then walked slowly towards the Bildslitthilatigh, while

we on the ramparts waved our feather bonnets and clapped our hands to him in token of goodwill."

That is a truly sublime picture of Asiatic courtesy.

Before we leave Mr. Forbes-Mitchell's book, we must say something of his tales about his fellow-privates. There is one excellent story, though without an end of two gentlemen- rankers called respectively Wallace and Hope. Wallace joined the 93rd just before the regiment left Dover. He was a good soldier, but though often preAsed to take promotion he never would, saying that he had come to the 93rd for a certain pur- pose, and that when this was accomplished he only wished to die. Ultimately, it became known that this purpose had something to do with the other gentleman-ranker, Hope. It was clear, however, that Wallace did not wish any good to Hope, for the men never spoke, and were clearly deadly enemies. Just before the attack on the Seoundrabagh, the most fiercely con- tested of the positions carried by the force that relieved Lucknow, Hope began to curse and swear, declaring that he would defy death, and that no bullet was yet moulded that would kill him. Mr. Forbes-Mitchell shall tell the rest of the story in his own words :— "The captain was just on the point of ordering a corporal and a file of men to take Hope to the roar-guard as drunk and riotous in presence of the enemy, when Pipe-Major John M'Leod, who was dose to the captain, said : Don't mind the puir lad, sir; he's not drunk, he is fey ! [meaning doomed], It's not himself that's speaking ; he will never see the sun set.' The words were barely out of the pipe-major's mouth when Hope sprang up on the top of the mud wall, and a bullet struck him on the right side, hitting the buckle of his purse belt, which diverted its course, and in- stead of going right through his body it out him round the

front of his belly below the waist-belt, making a deep wound, and his bowels burst out falling down to his knees. He sank down at once, gasping for breath, when a couple of bullets went through his chest and he died without a groan. John M‘Leod turned and said to Captain Dawson, I told you so, sir. The lad was fey ! I am never deceived in a fey man ! It was not himself who spoke when swearing in yon terrible manner.' Just at this time Quaker Wallace, who had evi-

dently been a witness of Hope's tragic end, worked his way along to where the dead man lay, and looking on the distorted features he solemnly said, The fool bath said in his heart, There is no G-od. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. I came to the Ninety-Third to see that mcot die!' All

this happened only a few seconds before the assault was ordered, and attracted but little attention except from those who were immediate witnesses of the incident. The gunners were falling fast, and almost all eyes were turned on them and the breach. When the signal for the assault was given, Quaker Wallace went

into the Secundrabilgh like one of the Furies, if there are male Furies, plainly seeking death but not meeting it, and quoting

the 1113th Psalm, Scotch version in metre, beginning at the first verse :

'I love the Lord, because my voice And prayers He did hear.

• I, while I live. will °all on Him, Who bow'd to me His ear.'

And thus he plunged into the Seoundrabagh quoting the next verse at every shot Bred from his rifle and at each thrust given by his bayonet : 'I'll of salvation take the cup, On God's name will I oall ;

I'll pay my vows now to the Lord Before His people all.'

It was generally reported in the company that Quaker Wallace single-handed killed twenty men."

We cannot find space to tell how Wallace killed a woman mutineer by mistake, and his grief thereat, though she had been killing his comrades from a tree-top ; nor to notice a wonderful story of a spy. Before we quit this fascinating book, we may mention, however, that it contains an anecdote which closely resembles "His Private Honour,"—that cleverest of all Mr. Kipling's soldier-stories. No doubt the fiction is the truer to human nature, but that was to be expected. We must add that there are several very curious appendices to Mr. Forbes- Mitchell's book. That on the Europeans who fought against us in the Mutiny is most striking. What a ballad Sir Alfred Lyall might write on the renegade gunner ! One word more. Mr. Forbes-Mitchell went through the Crimea, and has since spent, it appears, many years in India. Why should he not give us reminiscences covering both these periods of his life? They could not fail to be most entertaining, for he has an un- failing instinct for what is interesting. When a man has this, and has lived through big events, it is a positive duty for him to write down what he remembers.