In this instance the sacrifice, of course, was Major Berkeley.

He was broken and sent home to cut his pigtail (the adornment still clung to by the 29th) and retire into private life, whereby the British army was deprived of an officer of singularly brilliant promise.

Thus, you see, the score against poor Richard Butler--that foolish victim of wine and circumstance--went on increasing.
But in my haste to usher Major Berkeley out of a narrative which he touches merely at a tangent, I am guilty of violating the chronological order of the events.

The ship in which Major Berkeley went home to England and the rural life was the frigate Telemachus, and the Telemachus had but dropped anchor in the Tagus at the date with which I am immediately concerned.

She came with certain stores and a heavy load of mails for the troops, and it would be a full fortnight before she would sail again for home.