Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/147

 that they were placed on a par with commissariat cattle. In addition to this they looked upon the act as a breach of contract. They had enlisted for service in India only. Service in the Queen's army involved service anywhere in the Queen's dominions. This was not in their agreement when they enlisted. Regarding themselves as domiciled for the rest of their lives in India, they had married women of the country, East Indians and natives, and raised families. Their wives were not suited to live in any but a tropical country ; they foresaw that if they were ordered to Canada or some similar place with a temperate climate their wives would not go with them. The two circumstances together caused them to object with all the argument they could summon to their assistance against the new arrangement. Argument failing, they asked to be discharged. Some of them found other employment in the country; some accepted the offer of a passage home with the private determination to re-enlist in regiments coming out to India.

A batch of such men were sent home in a hired trooper round the Cape, under the command of Captain Ponsonby Hill of the 1st Royals. They were sulky and ill-tempered, smarting under their grievance and the separation from their wives and families, and they gave trouble from the very beginning. They declined to assist the sailors in the usual way expected from soldiers on a trooper. They said that they were not soldiers, but only commissariat cattle; the difficult problem of bringing them to reason in as simple a manner as was possible was left to Captain Hill. The plan he adopted was to fall in with their view of the case; he gave orders that they, not being soldiers, were not to be employed on deck. They spent the hours in triumph until dinner-time came, when the soldiers were fed as usual. They were left without food and the dinner tables were cleared away. This resulted in a deputation