They’d been riding for an hour when they reached the furthest point of the exercise, beyond the narrow isthmus between the Nungambakkam Tank and the Cooum River. Here they would debouch onto the plain of Chinglepoot, turning south to skirt the Long Tank and thence back to the lines. And here they’d have a bit of a canter, though that would depend on the dust – it could be the very devil, even at this time of year – and jump a ditch or two. But this morning Hervey would forgo the pleasure, judging it time to turn for the horse ferry across the Cooum and to make for the Fort. The general-officer-commanding had leave of absence, and as a brevet colonel Hervey stood in his place (until, he supposed, in an emergency one or other of the outlying major-generals was summoned). It was largely the work of administration, and principally of military justice, but three times a week the governor (or, strictly, in the interregnum, the pro-governor) held what he was amused to call his ‘chambers’. Hervey enjoyed the occasion, for St Alban and the rest of the regimental staff were so efficient as to leave little to detain him at office and orderly room, and the major’s eye was ever reassuring too.

He’d been in command now for three years; he could exercise that command with a longer rein.

‘View Halloo!’

It echoed down the column like a regular order.

Hervey stood in the stirrups to see. ‘A fine hog! A sanglier, I think … No, there goes another.’

A second boar burst from a tamarisk thicket thirty yards to the left of the leading troop. Off at once went C Troop’s cornets, and then two from the following troop.

‘May I go too, sir?’

Hervey smiled to himself – Diana venatrix. And Georgiana had the sensibility too not to call him ‘Papa’ in front of his officers, nor yet to presume the dragoons’ prerogative of ‘Colonel’.

‘Very well,’ he nodded, turning to St Alban. ‘Make sure she—’

‘Of course, Colonel.’

He was off before Hervey had needed to say.

He’d turned away as the ‘hunt’ began, with just Acton, Corporal Johnson and Fairbrother. Somervile had asked that he bring his friend, as he wanted to speak with him a little more about his passage out. He’d had word from Fort William that the governor-general had a mind to speed further the steam route via a system of fast posting across the desert from Suez to Cairo, where a paddler on the Nile already plied back and forth to Mahmoudia, and barges on the sweetwater canal thence to Alexandria. The Admiralty had for some years maintained a weekly packet service from Alexandria to London, and a relay across the desert would undoubtedly better expedite the whole enterprise of government as His Majesty’s ministers envisaged by the new India Act. For Somervile, too, old India-hand that he was, embraced progress.

They reached Fort St George just before nine. ‘Time, I think, for some of Ram Kumar’s coffee and ’ki,’ said Hervey. ‘The best in Madras.’