Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/454

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ILLUSTRATED INTERVIEWS.
457

he had to make a trench—the connecting link between the lines—himself. He was found amongst the dead and dying, where he was picked up by a brother officer.


Before Sebastopol.

"We won some of our engagements simply through shouting," Lord Wolseley said. "We had no men, and I don't believe we had twenty-five fellows the last time we attacked. We were shouting, shouting, shouting, and afterwards I could not speak for four days, whilst some of the officers lost their voices for a week. We were firing from behind a heap of dead bodies, and I told the bugler to blow his very loudest whilst we cheered, and so the enemy thought we had plenty of men in the rear."

Lord Wolseley referred very merrily to a certain Christmas Day which he spent in the Crimea, and how he made a Christmas pudding, the result of which went a long way to prove that his culinary education had been neglected.

"In the Crimea we messed by companies," he said. "It was Christmas—Christmas in the Crimea. What more natural than—a plum-pudding! A brother officer and myself determined to make one. We had no bread nor flour, only biscuit, which we powdered up in a hollowed-out shell, with a shot for a pestle. No plums either. But we chopped up some figs, and managed to get a couple of pounds of very bad suet from Balaklava. We had some doubts in our mind as to whether it ought to be roasted or boiled, but finally decided on the latter, and wrapped our mixture up in a towel.

"Now in the ordinary course of events it was not our turn for the trenches, but the pudding had scarcely been boiling half an hour when an officer came in and ordered us out. What was to be done? Eat the Christmas concoction now or to-morrow? Decision—now. And, unmindful of the fact that Christmas puddings take a great deal longer than half an hour to boil, I confess to eating liberally. Away I went to the trenches. About twelve o'clock I thought I was going to expire. It was the only night I ever had to leave the trenches. A regimental doctor got hold of me, and I was on my way home, when the walk did me so much good that I went back again. Since then I have never made a pudding, either Christmas or otherwise."

Then came the Indian Mutiny. He was really bound for China when the Mutiny broke out, and the 90th were the first to