3d. To make the Governor-General eat his words, and apologize.
The first was too melodramatic and foreign; the second would have been a triumph to my foes in the Punjaub; besides, the enemy might have been beaten!
I have determined therefore, on a trip to Calcutta.
You will, I have no doubt, agree with me that I am perfectly right in taking the field against the enemy, and not allowing the Government to rest until I have carried my point.
I have had another interview with General Anson at Simla, and nothing could have been more satisfactory. He was most polite, even cordial, and while he approved of my suggestion of going down to Calcutta to have personal explanations with the people there, and evidently thought it a plucky idea to undertake a journey of 2,500 miles in such weather (May and June), yet he said that I had better wait till I heard again from him, for he would write himself to Lord Canning, and try to get justice done me.
I do trust the light is breaking through the darkness, and that before long I may have good news to send you, in which I am sure you will rejoice.
It did break from a most unexpected quarter.
This was the last letter received in England from my brother for some months. Six days after it was written, the outbreak at Meerut occurred, and almost immediately India was in a blaze.
"Fortunate was it," my brother afterwards said, "that I was delayed by General Anson till he received an answer from Lord Canning, or I should undoubtedly have been murdered at some station on the road. The answer never came. It must have been between Calcutta and Allygurh when disturbances broke out, and was, with all the dâks for many days, destroyed or plundered."
Most fortunate, too, was it, (if we may use such an expression,) that in the hour of India's extremity, Lieutenant Hodson was within reach of the Commander-in-Chief, and available for service. It was no longer a time to stand on official etiquette. In that crisis, which tried the bravest to the utmost, when a strong will and cool head and brave heart were needed, he at once rose again to his proper place in counsel and in action.
But I must not anticipate what belongs to the next chapter. One fact, however, I cannot refrain from stating here, as an appropriate conclusion of this narrative, that within six weeks of the date of the last letter, Lieutenant Hodson was actually commanding in the field, before the walls of Delhi, by General Barnard's special request, the very corps of Guides from which he had been so unjustly ousted two years before.
