On the outward voyage his Royal Highness visited the King of Greece. When the King and Queen were leaving the _Serapis_ after dining on board, we showed them compliment and honour by setting them alight. The blue lights burning at the main-yard being exactly above the boat in which their Majesties were going ashore, dropped flakes of fire upon them. The Prince also visited the Khedive. On the return voyage, the Prince met at Suez Lord Lytton, who was on his way to India to succeed Lord Northbrook as Viceroy; was again entertained by the Khedive; visited Malta; called at Gibraltar; and visited the King of Spain and the King of Portugal. The _Serapis_ was accompanied by the royal yacht _Osborne_, Commander Durrant, and H.M.S. _Raleigh_, Captain Tryon. The Prince landed in England on 11th May, 1876.
It is worth noting that Lord Lytton went out in the _Orontes_, one of the Imperial Service troopships, as they were called. The troopship service was then at times conducted by the Royal Navy, a practice since discontinued. The _Orontes_ was commanded by Captain E. H. Seymour (afterwards Admiral of the Fleet the Right Hon. Sir Edward { 160} Seymour, G.C.B., O.M., G.C.V.O., LL.D.) In his very interesting book, _My Naval Career and Travels_, Sir Edward Seymour writes: "At Suez, by arrangement, we met H.R.H. the Prince of Wales (our late King) on his way home in the _Serapis_. At Aden Lord Lytton landed in state, it being the first point reached of his new dominions." The point illustrates the working in detail of the great scheme of Imperial organisation which was conceived by the master-mind of Disraeli, and which he continued to carry into execution so long as he was in power.
Upon landing at Bombay, I rode up to Government House with my brother, Lord William, precisely as I had ridden up with another brother, Lord Marcus, exactly six years previously, on the same day of the year. Lord William was then extra A.D.C. to the Viceroy, Lord Northbrook, having been appointed to that post as a subaltern in the 9th Lancers. He was subsequently appointed A.D.C. to Lord Lytton, in which capacity he attended the Viceroy at the Durbar at which Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. He was afterwards military secretary to three successive viceroys, Lords Ripon, Dufferin and Lansdowne; altogether he served on the personal staff of five viceroys. From 1877 to 1879, while nominally in attendance upon the Viceroy, Lord William fought in the Jowaki expedition of 1877-78, the Afghan war, during which he was present at the capture of Ali Musjid, and the Zulu war of 1879. "In the latter," wrote a military correspondent of _The Times_ (31st December, 1900), "he served as a staff officer during the reconnaissance across the White Umvolusi River and at the battle of Ulundi. It was in Zululand, in July, 1879, that Beresford won the V.C. for halting, when closely pursued by the enemy, to take a wounded non-commissioned officer on his horse. When the soldier at first declined to risk the officer's life by giving the latter's horse a double burden, Beresford is understood to have hotly declared that unless the man immediately got up on the saddle he would himself dismount and 'punch his head.'"