TELEGRAPHS ON THE TRACK 303 



The fight lasted about twenty minutes, and im- 

 mediately on the Arabs being driven off, a new 

 instrument was set up, and several messages, in- 

 cluding one for the Times and one for the Daily 

 News, W'ere sent forthwith.' 



Telegraphy brought me into communication with 

 a good many people of note in the course of years. I 

 remember that, about 1854, during the progress of 

 the Crimean War, I delivered into the hands of Lord 

 John Kussell, then Prime Minister, a telegraphic 

 despatch relative to an attack on the Kedan, a 

 fortified work outside Sebastopol, when a famous 

 young officer, afterwards known as ' Eedan Massey,' 

 distinguished himself — as, indeed, did all the soldiery 

 more or less — by brilliant acts of heroism. As Lord 

 John, a small man of grave aspect, read the despatch, 

 Lady Eussell exercised a wife's privilege of looking 

 over her husband's shoulder. His lordship was 

 making a sort of official progress, and I intercepted 

 him on the platform of a railway-station, anticipating 

 H. M. Stanley's salutation to Livingstone in the 

 African desert by a raising of the hat and a ' Lord 

 John Eussell, I presume.' I wish I had preserved the 

 acknowledgment of delivery he gave me as a fragment 

 of the historical past. 



The late Earl of Carnarvon w^as somewhat of the 

 build of Lord John, but he w^as as eager and ready 

 of speech as the other was sententious and grave. 

 About twenty years after my rencontre with Earl 



