The Sabre's Edge by Allan Mallinson

Campbell.
    Hervey sighed again as he drank the sweet tea in satisfying gulps. Perseverance - that was the soldier's virtue. It was both duty and consolation. 'Corporal Wainwright, I give you leave to remain here and keep things dry.'
    'And I decline it, sir, if you please. Thanking you for the consideration, that is, sir.'
    Hervey smiled. 'It was not entirely for your welfare, Corporal Wainwright. I had a thought to my own comfort on return!'
    'I'll engage one of the sepoys, sir.'
    Hervey smiled again as he rose to his toilet. 'It's not what I said it would be, Corporal Wainwright, is it? Hardly the dashing campaign, with gold to fill the pockets.'
    Corporal Wainwright pulled the thatch from Hervey's boots and began to rub up the blacking while Hervey began lathering his shaving brush. ‘ I don't hold with stealing, sir, and it seems to me, from what I've heard, that that's all it amounts to half the time. Prize money's a different thing. But plundering a place is no better than thieving.'
    'Your sensibility does you credit, Corporal Wainwright. The duke himself would applaud it.' Hervey spoke his words carefully, but only because he had regard to the razor's edge.
    'Pistols sir? I'm taking mine.'
    'I suppose so. It is conceivable the rain will cease.'
    'What I should like to know, sir, is how rain stays up in the sky before it begins to fall.'
    Hervey held the razor still. 'You know, I have never given it a thought. Nor, indeed, do I recall anyone else doing so. I suppose there is an answer.' He resumed his shaving.
    'I'll bind the oilskin extra-tight, sir. Wherever this rain's coming from, there doesn't look to be any shortage.'
    In a few minutes more, Hervey was finished. He dressed quickly, thinking the while of the rain question. 'The rain is in the clouds. That much is obvious.'
    Yet that was only a very partial answer (consistent with his knowledge of natural history). The rain outside descended as a solid sheet of water -the noise on the roof was, if anything, louder than when he woke - yet how did it rise to the height of the clouds in the first place, and then stay aloft?
    'Steam. Steam rises ’ he said, pulling on his boots. 'That Diana works that way, I think.'
    Corporal Wainwright said nothing, content instead to listen to the emerging theory.
    'A great deal of this rain must have begun as steam.'
    But then why should it now fall as rain? And where did all the steam come from in the first instance?
    'For the rest I must ask Commodore Peto. The weather is his business. For us it is just weather, I fear.' He fastened closed his tunic. It had become a poor affair with a daily soaking this past month.
    Wainwright took away the bowl of water.
    Hervey looked out, observed the downpour and put off his visit to the latrines until after breakfast.
    He sat down at his desk-cum-table still turning over the rain question in his mind. Peto would surely know a great deal more - all there was to know, probably. But what opportunity he would have to pose his query in the coming weeks, he couldn't tell. The commodore had declared he would be taking Liffey and two of the brigs out to blow good sea air through her decks and give the hands practice with canvas again.
    Wainwright was soon back with Hervey's breakfast - excellent coffee (he had been careful to lay in a store of that before leaving Calcutta) and a very indifferent gruel. Hervey thanked his luck for the supper of bekti the night before, and for the lump of salt pork that Peto had pressed on him to bring ashore. It would be their ration today, for the salt beef had now gone, and it was biscuit only again.
    In half an hour the bugle summoned him -'general parade'. He put on his shako, fastened his swordbelt and drew on his gloves. He looked at the pistols, wondering. He picked up both and pushed them into his belt: if the rain did stop, he'd feel undressed without them. He wished he'd brought his carbine, but it had seemed the last thing he would need when he joined the