.

BITTER WATER.
Major Swan may or may not have been a gifted soldier.

History is silent on the point.

But the surviving records of the court-martial with which we are concerned go to show that he was certainly not a gifted speaker.
His vocabulary was limited, his rhetoric clumsy, and Major Carruthers denounces his delivery as halting, his very voice dull and monotonous; also his manner, reflecting his mind on this occasion, appears to have been perfectly unimpassioned.

He had been saddled with a duty and he must perform it.