Page:Recollections of a Rebel Reefer.pdf/145

 Rh and requested the authorities in Washington to order his release, representing him as being the Earl of Dunmore, a lieutenant in Her Majesty's Life Guards. But the commandant of Fort Lafayette denied that he had any such prisoner and it required quite a correspondence to persuade him that a man by the name of Murray could at the same time be Lord Dunmore.

Another of the Guardsmen was Captain Richard Cooper, who, at the relief of Lucknow, was the first man through the breach in the wall, on which occasion he received a fearful wound across his forehead from a scimitar in the hands of a Sepoy, which had left a vivid red scar. Several of the young Guardsmen had never yet flirted with death; they envied Captain Cooper and would gladly have been the possessors of his ugly scarlet blemish.

The Arabia was a paddlewheel full-rigged ship. She appeared to us to be enormous in size, though, as a matter of fact, she was not one tenth as large as the modern Cunard liner. She did not even have a smoking-room, the lovers of the weed, when they wished to indulge in a whiff, having to seek the shelter of the lee side of the smokestack in all sorts of weather. A part of this pleasant voyage was very smooth, but when we struck the "roaring forties" the big ship tumbled about considerably and my commodore was as seasick and amiable as usual.