Page:Sir Henry Lawrence, the Pacificator.djvu/27

18 'We were ordered to march into Fort William the next morning to embark in pilot schooners. At nine o'clock that night the order was countermanded, but we were desired to hold ourselves in readiness to march at a moment's warning. At past nine on the night of the 4th June the order arrived to hold ourselves in readiness to march next morning at three o'clock, which we according did — arrived in the Fort about six, reported the detachment to the Town Major, and he told me that we were to embark at 4.30 p.m.'

But the chain of the task of embarkation was one of many links. All day long he was running about for orders, for bullocks, and for the men's pay, and could get only two guns on board that night. Next day he got two more of the guns on to his own ship, and the remaining two on to another; but not the tumbrils and ammunition: these the commanders of the vessels would not allow to be brought on board at all. So in fact Lawrence had to rush back to Calcutta, and to worry the high naval and military authorities before he could get all embarked, and to succeed in a contest for the absolute necessities of the Service against the desire of the naval officers to sail light. But Lawrence's case was not singular; under the Military Board System, the same mismanagement pervaded the arrangements for the whole of the operations; so that eventually, as he writes: —

'We were six months preparing to move a force of 10,000 men, most of our cattle having been procured from the banks of the Narbudá in Central India, at least 1,000 miles from Chittagong.'