The United Service Magazine (Volume 1867, No. 3); With Which Are Incorporated the Army and Navy Magazine and Naval and Military Journal (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1867. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... followed success everywhere. Still the sailors and volunteers kept up their drill. An old Sepoy Subadar, whose hair had grown white in the service, often looked on approvingly (while in command of the Treasury guard, which was close to our parade ground), when the volunteers went through their exercise, and exclaimed "Very good " repeatedly, when a manoeuvre was performed to his satisfaction. Not so the Sepoys on guard, who in no way countenanced our suggestive little game of playing at soldiers. They looked on either scowlingly or haughtily defiant at all we did; and it certainly was a very cool proceeding on our part. In Calcutta and its neighbourhood, as in most other parts of the country, the Sepoys had for some months past been disarmed, and the sentries around Government House mounted guard with nothing more formidable in their hands than ramrods. But the Sepoys close to whose post we drilled every morning were fully armed, and each man had sixty rounds of ammunition in his pouch. Their comrades, three hundred in number, were not far off, and could have taken the sound of their muskets as the signal for " rising." Thus, almost any morning, a mutiny at Dacca might have been commenced with the massacre of a large number of volunteers, who might have been attacked unexpectedly when they had only blank ammunition in their pouches. But the volunteers never dreamed of anything of the kind. Everyone believed that all danger had passed away, and that the Sepoys could not possibly be so demented as to rebel when they had not the remotest chance of success in their favour. But we were mistaken. We had credited them with too much good sense. When the tide which might have borne them to fortune had receded far from them--when even if they had been momentarily successf...