'On his arrival in Malta he was appointed musketry Instructor at Pembroke Camp. The men's shooting did not come up to the standard which it was thought it ought to reach; and one day Sir John said to me: "Wauchope is making himself perfectly ill with his anxiety about it. If he would only be anxious twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four I would not mind so much, but he is anxious all the twenty-four hours of the day!"
'At that time, however, Wauchope was anxious not only about his professional duties, but he was concerned about himself, for he knew that his life was a most precarious one, scarcely worth a day's purchase. The slug which pierced his chest had not been extracted. It kept moving about, and at any moment might cause death. { 57} This he knew full well. He consulted the best surgeons in the island, but they were unable to do anything. It was not, I believe, till about a year afterwards that the slug was at last extracted by an Edinburgh surgeon.
'During this period of Wauchope's stay in Malta, when there was, as it were, this drawn sword hanging over his head, although he maintained a quiet exterior, he felt that there was but a step between him and death. I saw a great deal of him then. He had brought a letter of introduction to me from his law-agent in Edinburgh, my old friend the late Mr. Colin Mackenzie, W.S., and from the first he honoured me with his confidence. He spoke freely of the possibility, not to say the probability, that his time on earth might be short, but he showed no craven fear. He said he wished to know as much as he could about the world into which he might soon be going--that "undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns." I have seldom met a man further removed from fanaticism, and at the same time so full of reverence. From his earliest days he seems to have feared God. He had not, however, escaped from the doubts and difficulties raised by the sceptical spirit of the age. He shrank from taking a leap in the dark. He wanted to be sure that there was no mistake, and he took the best means of becoming sure. "If any man will do His will," Christ says, "he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." This is what Wauchope did. He put the desire to do God's will into every duty which fell to him. He followed on to know the Lord, and he came to know the truth of the Gospel, not only as a truth of faith, but a truth of personal experience.'