AT TEL-EL-KEBIR.
A letter from Allan Graham to Lady Aberfeldie proved, by its
introduction, a very bitter one to Olive, and the source of many
tears.
'Belbeis, September.
'My DEAREST MOTHER,
'But for Evan Cameron of Ours saving my life at the risk of his own
in action two days ago, I had not been alive to write you this
letter--the first I have had time to attempt since we landed.
'Poor Evan!
'Whatever the mysterious influence was that that scoundrel Holcroft
possessed over Olive is ended now, as I saw him fall into the sea,
where he was drowned like a dog. I could not help him or save him,
even had I been disposed to do so. Strange it is that a blackleg, a
sharper, and worse, for such he became, should have been preferred by
her at Dundargue to me, the companion and playmate of her
childhood--her cousin, her affianced husband under her father's will,
absurd in its tenor though that document be; and now, neither
verbally nor in writing, shall I ever refer to her again. My
pride--if I ever had any--has indeed been humbled in the dust, and by
her!
'After quitting our camp on the evening before last, we moved to the
sandhills above Kassassin, where we piled arms, and the men lay upon
the sand or sat in groups, all chatting gaily and hopefully of the
coming conflict at Tel-el-Kebir.
'Carslogie, who was always in wild spirits, was busy spouting
Shakespeare--
"Thus far into the bowels of the land
Have we marched on without impediment,--"
and so forth, and I overheard some of our men remarking that he "was
surely _fey_," when word was passed to stand to our arms, unpile, and
advance at one in the morning.
'Never before, perhaps, did fourteen thousand men get under arms so
quietly, so softly. The orders were now issued in whispers, and,
noiselessly as an army of phantoms, we moved off, our footfalls
muffled by the soft sand. No moon was visible, but we had a clear,
starlit Egyptian sky overhead. No man was permitted to speak or
smoke, and our brown helmets, red serges, and dark kilts seemed to
blend with the gloom.
'If the silence of that weird, solemn, and impressive time were
broken, it was by the occasional rumble of an artillery wheel or of a
commissariat waggon, the clatter of a rammer or a steel scabbard
against a stirrup-iron, as we advanced through the gloom, expecting
every moment to hear the explosion of a musket or a shrill shout from
the scattered Bedouin horsemen, who were alleged to be scouting in
the vicinity--men belonging to the band of the Sheikh Zeid-el-Ourdeb.
'Dear mother, our Highland Brigade led the advance--thank God for the
honour!--with the Indian contingent under Sir Hugh Macpherson, having
the veteran Albany Highlanders as our support.
'Ever and anon there were brief halts to enable the regiments to
maintain touch on the flanks.
'I cannot describe the order of our advance as yet, nor would you
understand it if I did so.
'A silence that seemed something awful reigned over the vast plain,
and none save the initiated could have imagined that, formed in a
species of semi-circle, fourteen thousand men were approaching the
enemy's earthworks, ready to dash at them like hounds at the deer
when the leash is slipped.
'Arabi's lines consisted of solid entrenchments, bound together with
wattles, four miles in extent from flank to flank, heavily armed with
cannon, and having ditches about nine feet deep.
'The 74th Highlanders were next the canal, opposed to the most
formidable part of these works, where many of their dead are lying on
their faces shoulder to shoulder, shot down in the act of charging;
next them were the Cameron, the Gordon Highlanders, and then
ourselves, the Black Watch, each company with its piper in the rear,
ready to strike up the onset when the time came.
'Every heart was swelling proudly and wildly then, with the grand
conviction that every heart at home in Britain--and dearer still
among our native hills--would exult in our triumph, for a triumph it
was sure to be.
'Silently, swiftly, and noiselessly we swept forward to the attack.
No word was spoken, no command given save in a whisper, and not a
shot was fired, as, with fixed bayonets, we came within three hundred
yards of the Egyptian batteries, and even then the soldiers of Arabi
seemed unaware of our presence.
'Suddenly an alarm was given, and a terrific fire--a literal garland
of flame--flashed along the bulwarks, a storm of lead went whistling
over our helmets, and the air seemed laden with the pinging and
whizzing of bullets, while cannon boomed hoarsely, and the roaring
rockets screamed high in the air.
'The pipes struck up along the Highland line, a wild cheer burst from
every man, and we advanced with a furious and headlong rush, flinging
ourselves into the ditches and climbing up the scarp; all weariness
after the toilsome night-march was gone; sore feet and thirst were
alike forgotten.
'And now for the first time the voices of the officers were heard:
"Come on, Camerons--this way, the Gordons--forward, the Black Watch!"
The marines and the Irish regiments were on the right, and bravely
they went at the trenches, too; but the _first_ within them were the
Highlanders, and the first of these was young Donald Cameron, of the
Camerons, who, as he leaped in with bayonet fixed, was shot through
the head just as we carried the first line of works.
'The dim light of the early morning enabled the enemy now to direct
their fire; for a minute or two we drew breath, poured in some heavy
file-firing, and again dashed on, while one portion of our forces
that had passed between the redoubts now opened a flank fusilade,
which proved too much for the Egyptians, who--all save their wretched
gunners, who were chained to the cannon--fled wildly across the open,
where our fire mowed them down in hundreds, while they rent the air
with cries of, "Ya Allah! ya mobarek!" (O God! O Blessed!)
'Then it was that our brigadier rode up and said to the 79th, "Well
done, the Cameron men! Will not Scotland be proud of this day's
work!"
'So much for our share of it.
'On the other flank of the works, the Horse Artillery were pouring in
shell, till the Royal Irish carried them at the bayonet's point,
after a regular hand-to-hand fight, in which Major Hart shot an
Egyptian leader, who endeavoured to wrest away his revolver.
'Our troops swept over the batteries on every hand, and the enemy
fled as rapidly and hopelessly as those on the other side of the
Canal had fled before the Highlanders, whose costume and fury alike
terrified them. Arabi, we are told, informed his people that "the
Scottish soldiers were only old women;" but now they dub us demons.
'To hear our pipes send up their pæan of victory over the battered
and corpse-strewn trenches of Tel-el-Kebir, was to feel for a time
that exultation of the soul which is said to be worth a long life of
dull and sluggish quiet.
'The Egyptians did not present the least appearance of order, but
fled, a demoralised rabble, at the top of their speed, flinging away
everything that might impede their flight, and pursued by our cavalry
and Horse Artillery, who mowed them down like sheep.
'As one battery swept past the flank of the Black Watch, the gunners
brandished their swords and shouted 'Scotland for ever!' and then we
knew them to belong to the new division of Scottish Artillery.
'To hear that cry in such a time of supreme triumph was to make one
feel what those must have felt, who heard it raised by the Greys at
Waterloo and by the Albany Highlanders at Kotah.
'The total casualties of the Highland Brigade are two hundred and
twenty of all ranks.
'One of the first we lost was poor Carslogie, the life of the mess.
He was shot by a wounded Egyptian, to whom he had just given a
mouthful from his water-bottle, and I blew out the miscreant's brains.
'We have also to sorrow for our noble Serjeant-Major, John M'Neill,
whose tall and soldier-like figure was long a feature at the head of
the column. He cut down several Egyptians with his claymore, but
fell at last, pierced by three wounds. He was, we know, the sole
support of a widowed mother, to whom he was tenderly attached.
'The fight was fought and won in the good old British fashion, with
the cold steel; the breech-loader has not yet rendered the bayonet
obsolete.
'The Guards and Highlanders made themselves at home among the tents
and spoils of the Egyptians; but our soldiers, flushed with glory and
fresh from conquest, no more spoke of the Gordons, the Ross-shire
Buffs, or the Black Watch, but of Donald Cameron of the Camerons--the
young hero from the Braes of Angus, who was the first in Tel-el-Kebir!
'Who could say what heroic blood was in his veins, for his name was
old as the hills, when the Camerons were known as the children of the
Follower of Ovi.
'I had some narrow escapes. A ball carried away the pommel of my
dirk. I had a bayonet thrust through my kilt, and two shells
exploded near me, covering me with sand; but I had a closer shave
than that. In the rush as I led on my company, two powerful
Egyptians in white uniforms, with scarlet tarbooshes, seemed to
devote their energies to killing me, as an officer or prominent
leader. Both attacked me with their fixed bayonets. By a circular
parry of my claymore, I turned one of them aside, and ran the man
through--or near--the heart. He screamed and grappled me by the
throat, dragged me down amid the blood-soaked sand. So savage and
powerful was his death-grip that had he failed to strangle me, I must
have perished under the bayonet of the other, whom Cameron cut down,
through tarboosh and bone to the chin, and then released me. A third
who came up he pistolled, and I hope Evan will get a clasp to his
V.C. for this.
'The papers will, of course, tell you all the rest--how we captured
the standing camp and immense stores of provisions and plunder; how
the victorious troops advanced with tremendous cheers across it to
the railway station, where soon after Sir Garnet came up; and how
Drury Lowe with his cavalry cut across the enemy's line of flight,
killing and capturing on every hand.
'I know how my father, with his great love of the old Black Watch,
will appreciate the story of our glory at Tel-el-Kebir; but the
aspect of the place was awful after the firing ceased and the sun
came up in his morning splendour--a sight never to forget, though I
have seen some terrible work in India.
'The dead lay about in scores and hundreds, many disembowelled by
shot or shell; some with brains oozing out; others with their heads
literally blown off; and some were scorched to death by their
clothing becoming ignited by the flame of an exploded shell. There
were wounds of every kind--by the bayonet, the rifle-butt, and sword;
and many of the maimed were seen to cast aside their tarboosh and
bury their head in the sand for coolness, while the cries for water
were simply agonising.
'I found the third Egyptian from whom Cameron's pistol had saved me.
He was dying. "Turn my head towards Mecca," I heard him say faintly
to a comrade who lay near him. The fellah did so, and the poor
wretch passed away in peace. I saw some who died making signs of the
cross, but these, of course, were Coptic Christians.
'Two ill omens, it is said, occurred before the conflict to chill the
ardour of the Egyptians. In the fight of Kassassin a man was shot
through the heart by a rifle ball, which pierced a copy of the Koran
that he carried there as a charm, and took a part of it into his
body. The other was the crescent of the new moon, which encircled a
star and sank with it below the horizon just before the attack, and
this, being emblematic of the crescent and star, was deemed ominous
of defeat and destruction.
'Arabi has fled towards Belbeis, pursued by Drury Lowe.
'The canal is filled with dead and dying men and horses, yet our men
are fain to fill their water-bottles from it.'
This letter concluded with kindest regards and wishes to everyone he
knew and loved, by name--Olive Raymond alone excepted; and keenly and
with tears she resented the omission.
In hot haste Lady Aberfeldie wrote to Allan, explaining the story of
Hawke Holcroft's surreptitious visits, his fancied power over Olive,
and the abstraction of the unlucky diamonds; but owing to various
circumstances--the fortune of war included--the letter was a
considerable time of reaching him to whom it was addressed, and some
stirring events occurred in the meantime, before he could reply to it.