It was an express from Lord Elphinstone at
Bombay, red-bordered, in that it told of the tremendous affair now calmly
fixed in history as the Indian Mutiny. Here was an earnest cry, 'Come
over and help us,' addressed to the potent British satrap nearest in the
Seven Seas.
'Yes,' Sir George mentioned, 'the despatch was in no wise positive as to
the outlook in India. Trouble there had been and would be; that was
certain. But was India merely face to face with a disturbance which she
could manage herself, or was it a widespread mutiny? I was really left to
form my own view upon the situation, and I decided that things were very
serious. Apparently, religious motives were at the bottom of the affair,
and I could fancy how fanaticism, bred thereon, might sweep India. My
responsibilities in South Africa were great, for the mad Kaffir movement
had hardly been stayed; nay, my whole surroundings were as a thicket of
thorns, in their possible complications. But India, which might be lost
to us, outweighed everything else, and I felt it my duty to contribute
assistance to the utmost limit of my resources.'
He would ship troops, guns, munitions, specie, everything South Africa
could give, off to India. While he was doing it, a more splendid thing
happened--his masterful laying hands upon the troop-ships passing the
Cape for China, and his sending of them to India instead.
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