A Study in Scarlet — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

6 A STUDY IN SCARLET, The campaign brought honors and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster. I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. ‘There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devo- tion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse and succeeded in bring- ing me safely to the British lines. Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hard- ships which I had undergone, I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawur. Here I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to walk about the wards, and even to bask a little upon the veranda, when I was struck down by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian posses- sions. For months my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to myself and became convalescent, I was so weak and emaciated that a medical board deter- mined that not a day should be:lost in sending me back to England. Iwas dispatched, accordingly, in the troop- ship “ Orontes,”’ and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with per- mission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it. I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was there- fore as free as air—or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to GOmIicnooo <s) (E(0)