I must confess I was disappointed at being left so completely to myself, especially by the senior military officers, many of whom were personally known to my father, who had, I was aware, written to some of them on my behalf.  Under these circumstances, I think it is hardly to be wondered at that I became terribly home-sick, and convinced that I could never be happy in India.  Worst of all, the prospects of promotion seemed absolutely hopeless; I was a supernumerary Second Lieutenant, and nearly every officer in the list of the Bengal Artillery had served over fifteen years as a subaltern.  This stagnation extended to every branch of the Indian Army.

There were singularly few incidents to enliven this unpromising stage of my career.  I do, however, remember one rather notable experience which came to me at that time, in the form of a bad cyclone.  I was dining out on the night in question.  Gradually the wind grew higher and higher, and it became evident that we were in for a storm of no ordinary kind.  Consequently, I left my friend’s house early.  A Native servant, carrying a lantern, accompanied me to light me on my way.  At an angle of the road a sudden gust of wind extinguished the light.  The servant, who, like most Natives, was quite at home in the dark, walked on, believing that I was following in his wake.  I shouted to him as loudly as I could, but the uproar was so terrific that he could not hear a word, and there was nothing for it but to try and make my own way home.  The darkness was profound.  As I was walking carefully along, I suddenly came in contact with an object, which a timely flash of lightning showed me was a column, standing in exactly the opposite direction from my own house.  I could now locate myself correctly, and the lightning becoming every moment more vivid, I was enabled to grope my way by slow degrees to the mess, where I expected to find someone to show me my way home, but the servants, who knew from experience the probable effects of a cyclone, had already closed the outside Venetian shutters and barred all the doors.  I could just see them through the cracks engaged in making everything fast.  In vain I banged at the door and called at the top of my voice—­they heard nothing.  Reluctantly I became convinced that there was no alternative but to leave my shelter and face the rapidly increasing storm once more.  My bungalow was not more than half a mile away, but it took me an age to accomplish this short distance, as I was only able to move a few steps at a time whenever the lightning showed me the way.  It was necessary to be careful, as the road was raised, with a deep ditch on either side; several trees had already been blown down, and lay across it, and huge branches were being driven through the air like thistle-down.  I found extreme difficulty in keeping my feet, especially at the cross-roads, where I was more than once all but blown over.  At last I reached my house, but even then my struggles were not quite at an end.