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to all appearances as good as new, a table-cloth, silk embroidered, he bought for her in a bazaar in Asia Minor. To me, on return from the same journey, he presented a cigarette-holder of rare silver filigree work, with mouthpiece of flawless amber.

It was at his table I first sat at meat with Lord Randolph. On the eve of departure in 1883 on a journey round the world, Burnaby gave, at the Junior Carlton Club, a farewell dinner in my honour. He told me he had shown Lord Randolph the list of the company and asked him whom he would like to sit next to. Between Lucy and Burnand,' he replied. So it was arranged, and a jolly evening we spent, Randolph being at his very best.

Burnaby presented me as a souvenir with a costly walking-stick picked up during a recent visit to Spain. Unfortunately I took it with me on the tour, but not further than St. Louis. Leaving it with my hat and coat on a chair in the dining-room whilst we lunched, on going to seek my belongings I found the precious stick had departed.

The last glimpse I caught of Burnaby was as he stood at the gate of his ancestral home, Somerby Hall, in Leicestershire. We had been spending a week with him, and on the invitation of our mutual friend Doetsch, who brought the Rio Tinto Mine property to England and remained one of its directors, it was arranged that in the winter we three-Mrs. Lucy, Burnaby, and myselfshould go out to Spain as his guests. Before the appointed time came the war trumpet sounded from the Soudan, and Burnaby was off at its call. It was September 1884 we were his guests at Somerby Hall. In November he started for the seat of war.

At first he was engaged in superintending the movement of troops between Tanjour and Magrakeh, but he ever pined to get into the fighting line. In a letter, dated Christmas Eve, 1884, he writes: 'I don't expect the last boat will pass the Cataract before the middle of next month, and then I hope to be sent to the front. It is a responsible post Lord Wolseley has given me here, with forty miles of the most difficult part of the river, and I am very grateful to him for letting me have it. But I must say I shall be better pleased if he sends for me when the troops advance upon Khartoum.'

The order came in due course, and Burnaby was riding to the relief of Gordon when his journey was stopped at Abu Klea. He was attached to the Staff of General Stewart, whose little force of 1800 men was suddenly surrounded by a herd of Dervishes 9000 strong. The British troops formed in square, mounted officers

directing the desperate defence that again and again beat back the angry torrent. A soldier in the excitement of the moment got outside the square and engaged in hand-to-hand conflict with a cluster of Arabs. Burnaby, seeing his peril, rode out to the rescue -'with a smile on his face,' as one who saw him tells me—and was making irresistible way against the odds, when a Dervish thrust a spear in his throat, and he fell off his horse dead.

Among his comrades was Lord Charles Beresford, who writes

to me:

'With regard to the reminiscences you ask me for, of my old friend Fred Burnaby-I remember just getting up to where he was encamped before proceeding across Biouda Desert on Christmas Eve. Lord Wolseley had sent for me to take charge of the Naval Brigade, so as to man the Gordon steamer, which we supposed would meet us at Matemah. Burnaby managed to get a plumpudding from somewhere. We had our Christmas dinner, and a cheery night we had. I started at 4 o'clock the next morning.

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The next time I saw Burnaby was when the forlorn hope formed up to go across Biouda Desert for the relief of Gordon. He was full of fun and banter. Before Abu Klea, he and I made a zareba, thinking the people would attack us at night. The enemy came very close with their tom-toms, but they never attacked. It was an exciting night. We could hear the tramp of the Mahdi's hosts close by, and listened to the beating of the tom-toms, often furiously hurried, sometimes reduced to a single beat similar to that of a heart. They drew off before daylight.

The next day we left the zareba, formed up and left for Abu Klea. In the morning the hills were full of riflemen, and we were losing men and camels. I had my men lying down under a little wall of stones which I ordered them to build, firing at the Dervishes on one of the hills nearest us. Burnaby and Stewart, attended by a soldier carrying the Union Jack, were on a little mole about eighty yards from the hollow where I and my men were standing up. I heard the thud of a bullet. I think it was the bugler or one of the soldiers who was killed. I was going towards Stewart and Burnaby to beg them to dismount and put down the flag when a bullet killed Burnaby's horse, and sent him rolling down the hillock.

'He picked himself up, and I asked him if he was hit. All he said was: "My dear Charlie, I am not in luck to-day." I persuaded Stewart to get off his horse and not to make a mark for the Mahdi's riflemen. We then formed up and marched down towards Abu Klea.

'We got some breakfast before we started. I remember the incident well because my Maltese interpreter, who looked after me, was boiling some coffee in a tin pannikin over a little fire made of bits of stick. A bullet came into the fire and knocked the coffee to Ballyhooly, sending it all over him. He bellowed like a bull, and said: "Why these people fire at me, sir, I never do these people any harm?"

We formed up, marched to Abu Klea, when we were attacked by about 8000 people on our left flank. I caught sight of Burnaby on his horse outside the square, within about forty yards of where I was standing at the machine-gun before the charge. Everyone at the gun was killed except myself. The next I saw of poor Fred Burnaby he was lying on his back, cut to pieces, at about the place where I had last seen him alive.'

Archibald Forbes sent me in fuller detail a vivid word picture of an episode which, in the hurried march and the catastrophe looming over Khartoum, received at the time but scant record:

'Burnaby's position immediately before his sally from the square at Abu Klea was on the left face of the square near the rear corner. The men at his back were the detachment of Royal Dragoons (my own old regiment) belonging to the Heavy Camel Corps. As the skirmishers came running in, the last couple of them were hard pressed by the pursuing Arabs, and two of them were killed. Burnaby rode out a little way to the assistance of the in-running skirmishers, his only arm being his sword—he had left his double-barrelled gun with his servant inside the square. His own horse had been shot that morning, and he was riding a screw borrowed from the 19th Hussar detachment. He rode straight at a mounted Sheikh chasing a skirmisher with levelled spear. At sight of him, the Arab changed direction and made for Burnaby. Just as they were closing a young soldier named Laporte sent a bullet through the Arab, who fell with a crash. A foot spear's man promptly darted on Burnaby, pointing at his throat the broad, sharp blade of his eight-foot long spear. Burnaby parried, and wounded the Moslem. The duel between them continued for above a minute, Burnaby cutting, pointing, and parrying, the supple Arab lunging vicious thrusts at the big British officer fast in the saddle. A second Arab, darting by in pursuit of a skirmisher, with a sudden turn ran his spear into Burnaby's right shoulder from behind. A soldier darted out and bayoneted this man. Burnaby glanced over his shoulder for a second at the transaction,

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and in that second his first antagonist dashed his spear full into Burnaby's throat. He fell from the saddle, the blood spurting from the jugular; as he sank the Arab stabbed him a second time, and he lay prone.

'A rush of Arabs were upon him. He had strength enough to struggle to his feet, and with the blood pouring from his gashed throat, he whirled his sword around him till he fell dead. Young Laporte sprang to his aid, and got so near that his sleeve was wet with Burnaby's blood. But he could give no efficient assistance, and was lucky in being able to return to the square.

'During the Nile Campaign, Sir William Gordon-Cumming wrote constantly to the Prince of Wales, describing the progress of the campaign. Some of those letters I have seen. In the letter describing Abu Klea, Cumming tells of Burnaby's death, and how he ran out in hope to bring his wounded comrade in. Three of the Arabs who had been hacking at Burnaby came at Cumming. "One of these," wrote Cumming, "I bowled over with a bullet through the stomach from my revolver. Before starting on the desert march I had my sword ground as sharp as a razor. When the second man neared me, I cut his head clean off with one blow. Number three dodged, and as I was following him, he was shot dead by a bullet fired from the square."

'When Burnaby arrived at Korti, Wolseley appointed him first to the Intelligence Department, and later to a position on his own staff. After Stewart had gone forward to Takdul, Wolseley bethought himself of possible contingencies, and sent up Burnaby with about one hundred camels to join Stewart, and with Wolseley's order in his pocket to take command in case of casualty to Stewart. Meanwhile he was not to be on Stewart's staff, but as the expression is in the German army and in our diplomatic service, en disponibilité, and he devoted himself to the Intelligence Service. On the night before Abu Klea Stewart gave him command of a section of the square, which constituted him in effect Brigadier-General for the time. He was thus acting Brigadier-General when he was killed.'

He sleeps now, as he always yearned to rest, in a soldier's grave, dug by chance on the Dark Continent whose innermost recesses he hoped some day to explore.

The date of his death is January 17, 1885. His grave is nameless. Its place in the lonely desert no man knoweth.

(To be continued.)

477

A CRUISE WITH THE CHANNEL FLEET. BY THE RIGHT HON. SIR ROWLAND BLENNERHASSETT, BART.

ALL Englishmen are proud of the British Navy. Few, however, are really acquainted with its history, still fewer have any clear knowledge of the daily life on board a man-o'-war. Most persons have heard the story of Nelson putting his telescope to his blind eye when he did not wish to see the signal of an irresolute commanderin-chief, and everyone knows all about the signal he made just before the guns opened fire at Trafalgar. Some erudite persons have read about the exploits of Drake, of Raleigh, of other great Elizabethan mariners, and of deeds of self-sacrificing heroism like those of Sir Richard Grenville and his comrades of the Revenge. Others remember Lord Howe and the 'glorious first of June,' and those who are students of eighteenth-century history have in their minds a clear picture of the fierce Homeric battle in Quiberon Bay when, regardless of a November gale hissing towards the shore and the wild, high-running waves of the Bay of Biscay, Hawke attacked and defeated the French fleet among the rocks and shoals at the mouth of the Vilaine.

That victory of Lord Hawke furnishes much food for reflection. It illustrates how very little on the whole tactics vary from age to age. The orders Hawke gave to his pilot on November 20, 1759, forcibly call to mind similar instructions given by King Edward III. to the master of his ship 409 years before. On Saturday, August 29, 1350, Edward III. was with his fleet off Winchelsea. The wind was blowing fresh from the north-east. Suddenly the look-out man sighted a Spanish vessel, and soon after a Spanish squadron bore down upon the English fleet. Froissart gives the account of the action that followed, a description of which he had from an eye-witness. The Spanish ships were larger than the English and bien frétés. Edward ordered his steersman to place his comparatively small vessel against the large Spanish ship with the Spanish commander on board, for that he would joust with him.' The steersman, not daring to disobey, did as he was ordered. The Spaniards after a severe action were completely defeated, having

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