[5] Colonel Wilson's letter to Colonel Baird Smith, dated 30th August, 1857.
One evening, as my Commanding Officer, Captain Sanford, and I, after dining at mess, returned to the tent which we shared between us, he told me that I need not expect to enjoy that night a very long rest; for he had planned a little expedition on which I was to accompany him. He had got information from a spy of the whereabouts of a small body of the enemy at a village about twelve miles from our camp. He had already given orders for fifty of our men who had been separately and secretly told off to arm themselves and mount their horses as quietly as possible soon after midnight, and sneak out of camp, one by one, through a picquet which had been warned to let them pass. He had taken none of the officers except myself and the Adjutant into his confidence, partly to escape their importunities to be allowed to accompany us, and partly because there was no certainty that we might not be going on a wild goose chase. At the stroke of midnight we arose, dressed and armed ourselves, fortified our stomachs with a cup of hot tea, crammed into our holsters a cold roast fowl apiece and some chapatties, mounted our horses and stole out of camp to the rendezvous, where we found our party and a guide waiting for us. Placing the guide in front under the escort of a couple of sowars, and whispering to the men on the right flank to follow in single file, Sanford noiselessly led the way. Not till we had placed a couple of miles between ourselves and camp did we halt, form up, and "tell off," after which necessary proceeding we continued our journey, stumbling along in the dark over fields and by foot-paths till our guide intimated that we were within a mile of our destination. As it was still an hour or so before dawn we now halted, dismounted, looked to our girths, and loosened our swords in their scabbards. When we again moved on, preceded by a few scouts, with whom was the guide, the very faintest flush of light was beginning to suffuse the sky in the east. In a few minutes more the darkness of night had partially rolled away; and we could see, not far to our front, a group of thatched roofs, and a few tiny curls of blue smoke where some early risers had begun their preparations for breakfast. Almost at the same moment we came across two or three sepoys who had thus early come out into the field. Short shrift had they. We pressed on; and then a carbine shot broke the stillness, followed by the clattering of horses' hoofs, as a small picquet, which--strange to say--had actually been posted on the look-out, took the alarm and galloped away.