Lewis Hough

“ One dead camel’s skeleton is uncommonly like another, and they lay about in various directions, showing that caravans converged to or diverged from El Obeid by different routes. When the sun burst forth with all that inconceivable grandeur which drives artists who visit the country to despair, and causes untravelled gazers on their pictures to accuse them of exaggeration, when their efforts have as a fact fallen far short of the reality, Harry’s eyes scanned the horizon in every direction for an enemy, but he was alone on the sandy expanse. ”

“ Surely such an incongruous question was never put in an Arab town in the heart of Africa by a sheikh dressed in bernouse and turban, with a jewel-hilted yataghan at his side, sitting cross-legged on a cushion. No wonder Daireh was flabbergasted; such a thunderbolt out of a clear sky has seldom fallen upon any man.
“Your Mightiness is mistaken,” he stammered. “I have lived, earning an honest livelihood as a poor merchant, at Khartoum and Berber, Alexandria and Cairo. But what is Dublin? I know it not.”
“Is that your photograph?” asked Harry Forsyth, suddenly, in English. ”

“ A knot of Arabs retreating to their last position had evidently been overtaken by a shell bursting in their midst, and their fearfully mangled bodies showed what modern science can effect when applied in earnest to the work of war. On the next ridge the Soudanese dead lay thicker; lying dotted about singly where the Martini-Henry bullets had stopped them, or strewed in rows like the corn sheaves where the reaping machine has passed, as the Gatling guns, sweeping slowly from right to left, and pouring missiles with the regularity and continuous stream of a fire-engine, had mowed their ranks. ”

“ Also, when bloaters, sprats, or sausages were in question, it was well not to feed in the room in which the smell of preparation was most powerful.
Though the half was drawing to its close, the evening board was bountifully spread; for Forsyth’s birthday had come off two days before, and brought with it a token from home—a wicker token which the Lord Mayor himself would not have despised. There was a ham, succulent and tender; a tongue, fresh, not tinned, boiled, not stewed, of most eloquent silence; a packet of sausages, a jar of marmalade, and, most delicious of all, some potted shrimps. ”

“ The red ants, had he known it, were the Black Watch, going into action in their red coats and kilts; the grey were the men of the South Staffordshire Regiment; the large black ants in rear were the guns. He did not know these details, but he recognised English troops, not seen now for a long time by him, and his heart beat high with excitement and hope. Now was his chance of escape. Unless he were killed during the assault, or taken prisoner and shot before he had time to explain himself, he would surely be able to get away in the confusion of fight. ”

“ The cavalry marched in rear of the square, with the exception of the scouts, who with the Mounted Infantry explored the ground in front, preventing the possibility of a surprise. Tramp, tramp, mile after mile, hour after hour, plodded the two brigades, with many a halt to enable the man-drawn guns to keep with them. But tedium and fatigue were thought nothing of. The man who would consider a five-mile walk without an object a frightful infliction would think nothing of ten with a gun in his hand, and the chance of game getting up every minute. It is the same with all sports. ”

“ One of the most enviable of mortals was Halton, a lad who might be the model for either painter or poet in search of an ideal hero. Handsome, strong, active, acquiring proficiency in all games and athletic exercises almost instinctively, a horseman with the hands of a Chaloner, and the seat of a Land, endowed with a bright intelligence which seized the common sense of things, and comprehended the meaning of an order as well as its literal injunctions, and a happy disposition which made a trouble of nothing, he was a general favourite wherever he went. ”

“ A fair breeze, and sailing; a foul one or a calm, and rowing; running on banks, and pushing off; getting nearly wrecked half a dozen times in the rapids, and escaping. And so they progressed until at length the mighty river divided into two streams, that to the left the Blue Nile, that to the right the White, and the real Nile, and they found at the junction the city of Khartoum, dazzling in the glare of the sunshine, with the governor’s house and the mosque rising above the flat roofs. ”

“ I will give you a horse fleet as the wind, and a sword that would split a hair or sever an iron bar, boy!”
“I have thought I should like the army, too, sir,” said bewildered Harry, trying vainly to understand, and catching at the sword and horse as something tangible.
“The army! To be a European soldier! A living machine—the slave of slaves! To fight without a cause, even without an object! To waste your blood in the conquest of a country and the ruin and slaughter of its inhabitants, and then to leave it! Madmen! Ye kill and are killed for nothing ”

“ There was nothing, but still the intense look remained, and it made Harry feel as if cold water was running down his back. His uncle spoke at length, low and slowly at first, more energetically as he went on.
“I see it; the crescent rises; the sordid hordes of the West fall in ruin around. The squalid denizens of cities find the fiendish devices of destruction to which they trust for putting the weak over the strong fail them. Man to man they have to stand, and they fall like corn before the scythe.” ”

“ But in the bivouac at Gakdul, Dobbs awoke with a start under the impression that a snake was gliding over his face, and sitting up found that it was Hump licking him, the empty water-bottle still round his neck.
It now seemed hopeless to get rid of him, so they let him take his chance; to live if he could manage to supply himself, and to be shot should his sufferings from thirst prove too great. Poor Hump! The most thoughtful feared that he had a poor chance of reaching a good old age. ”

“ But what do brave men feel in the delirium of battle? When close to the foe a volley rang out, and then from every parched throat “Hurrah!” “Hurrah!” “Hurrah!” burst forth, as with levelled bayonets they rushed upon the broken ranks before them, and the ridge was carried.
There was a second beyond it, where the Arabs still lingered, and for that again they went. But the enemy, the fight at last taken out of them, made but a feeble stand, and it was carried at the first onset. But what was that firing in their rear? Had a body of Soudanese lain concealed somewhere? ”

“ Covered by the dense smoke, the Arabs swarmed out of the nullah upon the face of the square on the edge of it. The foremost flung themselves on the bayonets; those behind pressing them on to them, the soldiers could not draw their weapons out, and found themselves hampered with dying foes, whose breast-bones were jammed against the muzzles of their rifles. If they drew back to release their weapons, the enemy took instantaneous advantage of the space yielded. ”

“ Ay, ay; to aid the march of civilisation, as the cant phrase goes; to bring nations closer together, that they may cut one another’s throats when they meet. To make machines do the work by which men earn their living, and so first drive them into cities, and then starve them. Or, perhaps, you will be a lawyer, and learn how to darken language into obscure terms, by which a simple, honest man may be made to sell his birthright without knowing what he is doing. ”

“ But with his curved blade of temper, which will not shiver and which takes a razor’s edge, the warrior of the East neither strikes nor gives point, but presents the half-moon-shaped sword at his opponent, holding it still if galloping, pushing it forward if motionless, and will so slice off limb or head, or cut deep into the body, without useless expenditure of strength, or the chance of losing even the momentary control of his weapon. I have seen an Arab meet an enemy in full career, and slice his head clean off in this way, with hardly a perceptible movement of the arm. ”

“ If you have dealings with Daireh, I know your business,”—and here the barber looked inexpressibly cunning—“Gordon Pasha spoilt that trade; but since he has gone there is good profit to be made. And what are the pagans fit for but slaves, sons of pigs that they are? But they tell me there will be fine times when the Mahdi rules. Not that I know, but while I shave heads the tongues wag and I listen. It is nothing to me. Mahdi or Khedive, what do I care! All want to be shaved.”
“To be sure,” said Harry; “the wise man has the same opinion as his customer. ”

“ Opposite the city, and on the west side of the Nile, there were a number of tents visible, and Harry asked the reis what place that was.
“That is Um Durma, where the camp is,” he replied.
“And what is the camp for? It seems a very large one.”
“Yes, O traveller, it is large! Seven thousand foot soldiers, a thousand of them that fight on horseback; many cannon, many camels to carry powder, shot, provisions, water; thousands of those who fight not themselves, but load and lead the baggage camels, sell things to the soldiers, and live upon the camp. ”

“ For, when people talk of the super-human intelligence of German officers and soldiers, and speak of ours as a set of dunder-headed idiots, you need not quite take all they say for absolute fact. I think if you took the adjutants, sergeant-majors, and musketry instructors of the British army, you would find it hard to pick out an equal number of men in any country, even Germany itself, to beat them for intelligence, common sense, and promptitude. ”

“ A thoughtful expression came over the Sheikh Burrachee’s face, quite different from the wild faraway look which now ordinarily characterised it.
“And so Richard is dead,” he murmured to himself; “and Mary has known poverty in a land where there is no kindness for the poor; where all is hard and cold, and people can no longer love or even hate. And this fellow has robbed her. By my beard he shall smart for it!”
When the sheikh swore by his beard the matter was serious, and if Daireh had heard him he would not have walked along between the guards who arrested him with so impudent an air. ”

“ Every man had his rifle in his hand, ready to sell his life as dearly as he could; but the Arabs did not issue from their cover, and they sped on at a sharp trot unmolested, Strachan keeping a correct course by a compass he had, with an ingenious phosphorescent contrivance, by which he could distinguish the north point. When an hour had elapsed they all began to breathe more freely, for it is uncanny work expecting to be attacked every minute in the dark. ”

“ Harry knew, but did not tell, that every one of those shrimps had been stripped of its shell by the hands of Trix, who plumed herself, with unquestionable justice, upon her shrimp-potting. Unfathomable is the depth of female devotion; fancy any one being able to skin a shrimp, prawn, or walnut, and not eat it! The shrimps, the sausages, were gone, the tongue was silent for ever, but the ham and the marmalade remained. ”

“ The Army of Hicks Pasha.
It may have seemed to you that Harry Forsyth took the death of the Egyptian soldier rather callously, seeing that he was not used to such scenes, and that he ought to have been a little more impressed. But you see he had resided in Egypt, and been some way up the Nile before; and in hot countries people not only live a good deal, but die a good deal, in the open air, so that he had seen human bodies; and more than once, in the course of his journeys, he had come upon one such lying much as you will see that of a dog on the mud of a tidal river at home at low water. ”

“ While daylight lasted the men inside watched Osman Digna’s seemingly innumerable soldiers dodging about, and when night fell the knowledge that they were there unseen, and might attack on all sides at any moment, was really calculated to try the nerves. For there is nothing more unpleasant than the idea of any one pouncing upon you suddenly in the dark. But the nerves of our friends were getting pretty well seasoned by this time. Only Green, who was very frank, observed to Strachan that it seemed very lonely now the cavalry had gone. ”

“ Whatever the actual number of days and hours which elapse between the dates of an Arab’s birth and death, his life seems a short one reckoned by sensations and incidents, for he spends so very large a proportion of it in sitting on the hump of a camel as it toils across a country of maddening sameness. ”

“ To show, however, what absurd things men will do in a panic, an Egyptian camel driver jumped, in his fright, over the prickly hedge, and ran along it outside, exposed to the enemy’s bullets. These failed to strike him, but an English sentry inside naturally took him for an Arab trying to force an entrance, and shot him dead. The firing was still kept up by the enemy, and as some of the shots came lower, being sent through the hedges, the bivouac fires had to be put out, as their light evidently guided the Soudanese in their aim. ”

“ You see, one man does a thing with a flourish, which attracts notice, and is popular, and gets watched; and another is quiet and retiring, and afraid that if he pushes himself he may not prove as valuable an article as he has led people to expect; and a smart or plucky thing which gives promotion, or the Victoria Cross, to the first, merely elicits a ‘well done, old fellow!’ from his mates for the second.”
“And that’s worth risking a good bit for!” cried Green, with his eyes sparkling, and a heightened colour.
“Hark to Green! Good lad! By Jove, he’s right!” Green blushed. ”

“ And when they lit their pipes and lay round the bivouac fire, talking over the events of the day, what a time that was! The First Blankshire had not come off scathless as regarded men or officers. There was a captain lying yonder with his cloak over his face who would never hear the cheery bugle call again; a lieutenant was in the ambulance tent with a bullet in his leg, forcing himself to bear the pain without moaning. ”

“ But though the Arab fusillade was almost innocuous, it harassed the troops, keeping them on the alert all night. And when, with the first streaks of dawn, the dreary march began, all traces of the foe had disappeared. All the morning dragged along, till fatigue and the heat of the sun compelled the mid-day halt. Then forward again till dark; and no wells reached! Hardly a drop of water left for each man! Several had dropped and died in the course of that day’s march, and several horses. The bugle bands, which had been so cheery in the start, were silent now ”