AT GRAND CAIRO.
The Black Watch had barely buried their dead at Tel-el-Kebir before
they were sent by railway to Zag-a-zig; a breakdown occurred on the
line, and the regiment slept for the night on the slope of the
railway embankment. On reaching Zag-a-zig, more fighting was
expected; but the Egyptians did not show face, so the Highlanders
were marched to Belbeis, from whence Allan despatched the preceding
letter.
Belbeis is now a little town, about forty miles from Grand Cairo,
situated on the borders of the desert, famous in the Crusade of the
twelfth century as the first place captured by the Saracens, and held
by them as a fortified magazine for supplies, and to this day it has
a trade in corn. In the same century it made a vigorous resistance
to Amurath of Jerusalem, and in more modern times it was occupied by
the French army to keep open the communication between Cairo and the
coast. Here a junction takes place of the canals derived from
different parts of the Nile.
It had been reached by our cavalry on the evening of the day
Tel-el-Kebir was captured, and after a slight skirmish was taken
possession of by Drury Lowe.
The Black Watch was eight days at Belbeis, during which they had
scarcely any other food than hard biscuits and a small supply of
tinned meat, with muddy water from the canal to wash them down with;
and as the knapsacks did not come in from Tel-el-Kebir for five days,
neither officer nor private could have any change, but slept in the
kilt without blanket or other covering, while nearly driven mad by
mosquitoes, sand-flies, and other plagues of Egypt.
Arabi and Toulba Pasha had been taken prisoners, and nothing was
spoken of now but the advance on Grand Cairo.
Meantime the surrender of the Egyptian position at Kafr Dowar took
place. On its frowning batteries white flags in token of peace were
everywhere displayed, and our troops entered without resistance. The
terrible lesson taught the enemy at Tel-el-Kebir was not likely to be
soon forgotten. Moreover, the firing of the Egyptian infantry was
always rather defective, their Remington rifles being sighted much
too high for short distances; thus, at the long range, their firing
was always better than at close quarters.
From Belbeis General Lowe pushed on towards the capital, keeping on
the borders of the desert. At every village he passed through, the
swarthy population came pouring forth waving white flags and
declaring themselves faithful to the Khedive, while masses of flying
fugitives, on seeing our cavalry overtaking them, threw down their
rifles and made signs of submission.
Galloping on without drawing rein, our cavalry entered Grand Cairo,
after a forced march of fifty miles in thirty hours in heavy marching
order, and by that act practically ended the war, and our troops had
no adversaries now but the savage and plunder-loving Bedouins, who
hovered and hung upon their skirts intent upon rapine and murder, as
Allan Graham and some others ere long found to their cost.
The advance to Cairo was headed by the Bengal Horse, led in person by
Sir Hugh Macpherson, though General Lowe was in command of the whole.
On the 22nd of the month the Black Watch left Belbeis for Grand
Cairo, where the corps arrived in the evening, when the last rays of
the setting sun tinted with the hue of blood and saffron the water of
the Nile as it wound past the islets near El Ghizeh--flushed and red,
as on the evening when, in long ages past, according to Mohammedan
legends, Joseph sank Jacob's marble coffin in the stream; and it was
with no ordinary emotion of admiration and interest that Allan and
his comrades beheld the capital of Egypt basking in the sun ere he
went down beyond the hills.
'Skirted by groves and gardens,' says a writer, 'its light airy
structures seem to be based upon a mass of verdure; long lines of
buildings, white, glittering, and infinitely varied in form, rise
beyond each other, and the palace and citadel, cresting a steep
projection of the Mokattam ridge, conduct the eye to the vast rocky
barrier which protects "the victorious city" from the blasts of the
desert.'
Streets of lofty and latticed houses abounding in carved balconies
and florid arcades; the mosques, with delicate domes and airy
minarets, covered with tracery and arabesques; the houses of beys and
grandees; the fortified abodes of the stern old Mamelukes, now those
of Egyptian nobles, recalling in their architecture the Moorish
glories of the Alhambra and the Alcazar of Cordova--a perpetual dream
of the Arabian Nights.
Even with night the bustle in its streets did not cease; the
coffee-houses and hotels were filled with light, and, in the warm
atmosphere, teemed with outdoor life, for there all who are afoot
have lanterns, and there were the tellers of Arabian tales, the
Nubian singer with his mandolin, and the Egyptian magician performing
such tricks as one might think the devil alone could do; and now once
again, as in the days of General Hutchison, the walls and towers of
'the Queen of Cities'--El Kahira of the fatalistic caliphs--re-echoed
to the British drum and the Scottish warpipe, as the Highlanders
defiled round it to their camp, where the tents were pitched outside
the walls.
The soldiers were not allowed to enter the city, except on duty or
with a pass, and, as a general rule, the latter was chiefly given to
sergeants. This plan did not, of course, apply to officers, thus
Allan, Evan Cameron, and some others lost no time in making their way
to an European hotel, where something better than the repasts they
had partaken of at Belbeis and elsewhere could be procured, and
where, amid a somewhat polyglot society, consisting of Greeks and
Egyptians, Hungarians and Cypriotes, they supped at an open window on
a balcony overlooking a street abounding with bazaars, and lanterns
swinging to and fro, crowded by people and innumerable vendors of
street goods--turbaned or tarbooshed--the water-seller tinkling his
dishes and quoting the Koran; the sellers of melons, of cresses and
lily roots, of flowers of henna, wherewith to dye the nails of
copper-coloured damsels; little donkeys ambling everywhere, and now
and then a huge camel swaying along; and more than once the
procession of a harem returning from the evening bath--the women
enveloped in black garments and veils, with masks of white linen.
Amid the scenes of warfare the organ of wonder becomes blunted
considerably, and thus after a time Allan, soothed by the fumes of a
fragrant havannah, and weary, perhaps, with the events of a long
day--the entraining and detraining of the regiment, its baggage and
stores, and so forth--fell sound asleep in his chair, oblivious of
the clatter of voices in the large room of the hotel, and the many
sounds in the street below; while Cameron, re-entering the room,
idled over an album of views of Grand Cairo and its vicinity.
Allan's short sleep was a restless one, for there came before him a
vivid recollection or vision of Hawke Holcroft, and his pale face,
with its last expression of horror and despair, as the waves closed
over it and sucked him down.
A little cry that escaped him made Cameron look his way, and he saw a
man, in the dim light without, regarding Allan with a fixed and
hostile expression. He was clad somewhat like a European, but wore a
tarboosh, with a blue tassel, and had a voluminous beard; and his
eyes seemed savage and sinister in expression.
It is said that there is some mysterious and magnetic force in a long
and fixed stare or gaze; and there is, it is also said, 'within us
some vigilant quality that is only exercised when every other faculty
is at rest, that permits all ordinary sounds to pass unheeded while
we sleep, but that instinctively sounds the alarm when anything
unusual or fraught with danger is at hand.'
Be all that as it may, Allan suddenly awoke, and started up, and the
watcher as suddenly vanished, but not before his pale and sinister
face had been seen by the wakener.
Cameron sprang out on the balcony. There was no one there, save his
comrade, and it was evident that the lurker must have passed into the
hotel by some other window.
'A dream,' muttered Allan, looking rather confused, 'a dream of that
wretch Holcroft. Why should his face haunt me? I did not kill
him--he drowned himself; and I need have no more remorse for that
affair than for pistoling the fellow who shot poor Carslogie.'
'Whether the cause of your dream or not,' said Cameron, who was too
genuine a Highlander to be without a considerable spice of
superstition in his nature, 'a fellow lurked beside you whose look I
little liked.'
'What was his appearance?'
'Difficult to describe in the dim light, but the gleam of his eyes
was sinister. Some disbanded Egyptian turned thief, most likely.
But he bolted the moment I approached, and you awoke.'
'All this is a strange coincidence,' said Allan, as he lit another
cigar; and they turned their steps towards the camp without the
walls. 'But I am not much given to dreaming, and our work has been
too hard for some time past for indulgence in long naps, yet I had a
strange and creeping sense of some evil presence near me, with a pain
that was strange and intolerable.'
But Allan had not seen the last of the man with the tarboosh.
Before returning from history to our narrative and the adventures of
our friends, it is impossible to omit reference to the impression
made on the population of Alexandria by the warlike aspect and
stately bearing of the Black Watch and other Highland regiments at
the review, in the great square before the Abdin Palace, the official
residence of the Khedive, whom our forces had now restored to place
and power.
To see our eighteen thousand troops go past, the palace was crowded,
not only at every window, but on its flat roof, and the Viceroy's
wife, who had shared all his perils, was there with her children, and
the closely-veiled ladies of the harem. The streets were lined by
multitudes of curious but stolid Egyptians, not more inclined to hiss
than cheer, feeling no sense of shame for their recent defeats and
humiliation, but only one of quiet amusement and desire to behold a
spectacle that did not cost them a piastre.
After the blue jackets, the Guards, and others had passed, the brass
bands stopped, and then were heard the pipes and drums, as, led by
its one-armed general, the Highland Brigade, every company steady and
straight as a wall, the ranks well 'locked-up,' every officer and man
looking stately and graceful in his waving tartan, came on at a
swinging pace, amid mutterings of _Scozzezi diaboli nudi_.
Their general, Sir Archibald Alison, in honour of the occasion, wore
a sprig of his native heather in his helmet. The idea had got
abroad, said the _Times_, 'that the Highlanders, who bore the brunt
of the fighting, who were the first in the trenches, and who suffered
most severely, had been rather ungenerously ignored in official
despatches. At all events, the crowd seemed disposed to grant
unofficial honours, for the second cheer of the day was accorded to
the Black Watch, easily distinguished by their red plumes, and led by
Colonel Macpherson, also sporting the heather,' and exciting more
interest even than our brown-clad Punjabees or the Belooches, in
their black and red uniforms, tall and strapping fellows though they
were; and with them came the heroes of Candahar, the Seaforth
Highlanders, wearing Mackenzie tartan, covered with medals, and
marching past as old Scottish soldiers can.
Then it was that the _Times_ reporter heard an Italian say, '_Poveri
Egiziani_! If you had only seen them before, instead of _after_!'
The Black Watch were halted for a minute or two, prior to marching
back to camp, when suddenly Cameron said to Allan, in a loud whisper,
'Look--there is the fellow I saw on the hotel balcony.'
Allan turned, and amid a crowd of Egyptians, Italians, and jabbering
and gesticulating _bheesties_ and _syces_ (water-carriers and
grass-cutters), belonging to our Indian contingent, he saw a man with
a fair beard and a pallid face regarding him steadily with keen eyes
and knitted brow; but, the moment he turned towards him, the stranger
shrank back amid the crowd, and disappeared.
'Hawke Holcroft, by heaven,' exclaimed Cameron.
'Impossible! He is dead,' replied Allan, feeling curiously
uncomfortable nevertheless.
'I would I were as sure of a thousand guineas,' said Cameron.
'One reads of such things only in romances--yet the eyes and beard
were the colour of those of Holcroft.'
'Truth is always strange--"stranger than fiction," as Byron tells us.'
'Stranger, indeed, should this prove the case. But, if alive, how
comes he here, and why does he seem to dog me?'
'I regarded him at first vacantly, then with indistinct recognition,
and anon with certainty, though the beard and red tarboosh disguise
him so much!'
Allan Graham knew not what to think. If the man referred to was
actually Holcroft, by what miracle was he then in Grand Cairo, and
how was he rescued from the sea? Strange it was, indeed, that if the
lurker at the hotel was he, Allan should dream of him at the moment
of his appearance in the balcony.
'There is always a skeleton in every fellow's cupboard, and Hawke
Holcroft was the skeleton in mine, poor devil!' said Allan.
'You are still disposed to think and speak of him in the past tense?'
observed Cameron, whose mind was made up as to his identity.
'I cannot do otherwise, but the moment the parade is dismissed we
shall make inquiries at the hotel.'
They did so, but in vain. No person of that name or appearance was
known there.
Instead of being put into the comfortable barracks of Kasr-el-Nil in
the city, the Highland Brigade was kept in camp while October and
November crept on, and this time was not entirely a peaceable one;
for in the former month the Bedouins, who were greatly puzzled with
their garb, and conceived them to be the English soldiers' wives all
camped in one quarter, thought to make a dash there, and secure a few
'moon faces' to embellish their tents in the desert.
A body of them belonging to the band or tribe of Zeid-el-Ourdeh, the
sheikh of Jebel Dimeshk, a mountain range that lies north-eastward of
Grand Cairo, came swooping down upon the Highland lines with this
view, and a result which very much bewildered them, for the Scottish
forces turned out with rifles and fixed bayonets, and in a very few
minutes more than forty amorous Bedouins bit their native dust.
On several other occasions the spiteful natives amused themselves by
firing at a distance among the tents at random, and one evening a
bullet whistled through Allan's tent within an inch of his head, thus
necessitating some severe patrol duty.
It was while encamped here that he received Lady Aberfeldie's letter
explaining the apparently false position in which the villainy of
Holcroft--combined with his spite, avarice, and
desperation--contrived to place Olive Raymond.
'Look here, Evan,' said Allan, to his _fidus_ Achates, in a grumbling
tone, 'read this letter from the mater. I don't know what to think
of this strange story; but, without some other proofs, if she thinks
we are going to kiss again with tears as the poet has it, she is very
much mistaken. The mater says that Olive's own unruly heart has
perhaps made a shipwreck of her life, whatever that may mean. Poor
girl, what a fool she was not to confide more completely in me!'
In his tone tenderness was blended with bitterness and regret.
From this little speech Cameron was hopeful that all would come right
in the end; but a short time was given them to think or talk over the
matter, as both were hurriedly sent with a detachment consisting of
about half-a-company--Allan, of course, in command--to a place called
Matarieh, near Heliopolis, to take part there in a demonstration
against the prowling Bedouins among the mountain ranges that overlook
the desert traversed by the disused railway that ran from Cairo
towards the plain of Muggreh.
And for this place, which lies some miles north-east of Cairo, they
marched accordingly, taking with them provisions, ammunition, and
tents, for the modern village was a small one, situated among the
ruins of the ancient town, which was deserted far back as the days of
Strabo, and is now to be traced only in extensive mounds of earth and
a noble obelisk nearly seventy feet in height; and there disasters
occurred which Allan Graham was fated never to forget.