He now
lifted the soldier's head up, and shouted to him that aid was at hand.
In another minute they were dragged into the boat. This was soon
alongside the ship, and three minutes later the Dover Castle was
pursuing her course, in the track of the Lizzie Anderson, having
signalled that the pair had been rescued.
Charlie found that the soldier was an Irish lad, of some nineteen
years old. His name, he said, was Tim Kelly, and as soon as he had
recovered himself sufficiently to speak, he was profuse in his
professions of gratitude to his preserver. Tim, like the majority of
the recruits in the Company's service, had been enlisted while in a
state of drunkenness; had been hurried on board a guard ship, where,
when he recovered, he found a number of other unfortunates like
himself. He had not been permitted to communicate with his friends on
shore, but had been kept in close confinement, until he had been put
in uniform and conveyed on board the Lizzie Anderson, half an hour
before she sailed.
The Company's service was not a popular one. There was no fighting in
India, and neither honor, glory, nor promotion to be won. The climate
was unsuited to Europeans, and few, indeed, of those who sailed from
England as soldiers in the Company's service ever returned.
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