Of two of the cooks with whom I talked, one had been twenty-three
years in the service of the Orient Company and the other twenty-six
years: and nearly all the ship's company had been in this ship four
years, though their engagement only lasts for one voyage. So it looks
as though the Orient were a satisfactory line to serve with.
One of the cooks had been a soldier in the Wiltshire Regiment, and had
served in the Zulu War of 1879. He had been in the siege and defence
of Etshowe.
This place was surrounded by the Zulus, and another British force
tried to get into signalling communication with it by means of the
heliograph, which at that time was quite a new invention.
I reminded my cook friend of this, and he told me this little yarn
about it. He said:
"I was walking out on the ridge there close to the camp with a
corporal in my company when we noticed a light flickering on a hill in
the distance. He had been through a course of signalling, and said it
looked as if somebody were trying to flash a signal to us, so we got a
bit of looking-glass and flashed it in their direction.
"Suddenly he said to me:
"'Write down what I tell you.'
"I got out a piece of paper and a pencil, and he spelt out a message
which was meant for Colonel Pearson, our commanding officer. It was to
say that if we sent a signaller on to the church steeple in Etshowe
they could signal direct to him.
"I took the message to the colonel, and soon after a sailor managed to
get up somehow or other, and we very quickly had messages going and
coming."