Hervey shook his head. ‘These Hindoos.’

‘Quite.’

Whatever their religion.

III

‘Progress’

Next day

Morning exercise of a Wednesday was a regimental parade. All but the quarter guard, the picket officer, the sick and the prisoners turned out in cotton-drill stable jackets – ‘drab’ rather than the white preferred by many a regiment, for Hervey could see no reason to employ any more dhobi-wallahs than strictly necessary – to walk and trot for an hour and a half on the plain west of the lines. Three squadrons – five troops (the sixth still at Madkerry, former seat of the Rajah of Coorg), a little short of four hundred sabres – and the regimental supernumeraries parading in column of route, the sun not long up and the smoke of countless fires rising to make a meagre hazree with which to face the labour of the day. It was Hervey’s favourite parade, assembled with all the formalities yet ridden at ease, the dragoons at liberty to chat with each other.

He rode at the very rear, as usual, better to observe – to admire – and with a party ‘by invitation’: the adjutant, naturally; the serjeant-major, without question; his covering serjeant, of course; and the major, though as a rule his second in command took the opportunity to ride freely and see the troop captains in the saddle. Major Garratt, a bachelor in the later part of the fifth decade of his life, had come to the Sixth on exchange from the Ninety-fifth (or the Rifle Brigade, as now they preferred). Hervey had been only too glad at last to have a man he could rely on in that post – shrewd, economical, efficient, not too active as to disconcert the captains, yet with a sure touch when tranquillity looked threatened; a bachelor content with a little soldiering, the pleasures of the table (including cards) – and sport. For to the sportsman, India was without peer: the tiger in the jungle, the great mahseer in the river, the wily snipe on the jheels (marshes), the strong-winged duck, the jinking pig … ‘Everything that is necessary, and nothing that is not’ was Major Garratt’s motto, and of the Rifles, he said; and Hervey had told him it might equally be the Sixth’s – what constituting ‘necessary’ being the opinion of the senior officer present, of course. And Garratt had laughed in a way that had reassured him. How, indeed, could it be otherwise when both had been at Waterloo – the only officers, now, saving Collins, at regimental duty. And when they’d marched into Coorg with Hervey at the head of the field force, Garratt had taken Hervey’s place at the head of the regiment, exercised command admirably and then handed it back without the slightest resentment. Yes, he liked to give the impression of being the footiest of men around horses, but Hervey thought it a ploy, for he’d never seen him dismount involuntarily – and they’d taken some monstrous wide nullahs – dry watercourses – these past months in pursuit of pig – and Garratt’s charger was not of a forgiving stamp. Indeed, it was the opinion of the Waterloo sweats in the serjeants’ and the corporals’ messes (few that they were, too) that the regiment had not been so godly and quietly governed since that day on the ridge of Mont St Jean, when Lord George Irvine had been the lieutenant-colonel, and Joseph Edmonds his major. And it pleased Hervey – these things always reached the ear of a commanding officer if the regimental staff and his body-men were of the right stuff – for he’d had his share of the opposite.