"THE WOMAN PLACED HERSELF IN HIS WAY," 50
"EDGAR STRUCK HIM WITH ALL HIS STRENGTH," 102
"WITH A DESPERATE RUSH THEY REACHED THE SAILORS," 123
"THE ARABS WITH WILD YELLS CHARGED UPON THE SQUARE," 196
"A SHOT HAD PASSED THROUGH HER BOILER," 263
THE ARMY OF HICKS PASHA ON THE MARCH, 342
"IT IS RUPERT'S VOICE, BUT IT CANNOT BE RUPERT!" 357
" Battle of Abu Klea, 17th Jan. 1885, 138
THE DASH FOR KHARTOUM: A TALE OF THE NILE EXPEDITION.
In a room in the married non-commissioned officers' quarters in the cantonments at Agra, a young woman was sitting looking thoughtfully at two infants, who lay sleeping together on the outside of a bed with a shawl thrown lightly over them. Jane Humphreys had been married about a year. She was the daughter of the regimental sergeant-major, and had been a spoilt child. She was good looking, and had, so the wives and daughters of the other non-commissioned officers said, laid herself out to catch one of the young officers of the regiment, and was bitterly disappointed at the failure of her efforts.
The report may have been untrue, for Jane Farran was by no means popular with the other women, taking far too much upon herself, as they considered, upon the strength of her father's rank, and giving herself airs as if she were better than those around her. There were girls in the regiment just as good looking as she was without any of her airs and tempers. Why should she set herself up above the rest?
When, however, Sergeant-major Farran died suddenly of sunstroke after a heavy field-day, whatever plans and hopes his daughter may have entertained came to an end. Her name and that of her mother were put down among the women to be sent, with the next batch of invalids, home to England, and she suddenly accepted the offer of marriage of young Sergeant Humphreys, whose advances she had previously treated with scorn. They were married six weeks later, on the day before her mother was to go down by train with a party of invalids to Calcutta. The universal opinion of the women in the regiment was that the sergeant had got a bad bargain.
"No man of spirit," one of them said, "would have taken up with a girl who only accepted him because she could not do any better. She has got her temper written in her face, and a nice time of it he is likely to have."