A SKIRMISH IN THE DESERT.
Buried in the sand!
Yes--it was all true--too true; the gay, handsome, and usually
light-hearted Laird of Stratherroch, one of the most popular fellows
in the Black Watch--he who had won the V.C. in battle with his good
claymore--he whom Eveline had known in the heyday of his life, when
the world seemed so fresh and fair to both, whom she had last seen as
a despairing and broken-hearted lover, was gone--struck down by a
bullet of some nameless Egyptian savage, buried in the desert, and
she would never see him more, though the poignancy of his farewell
would haunt her for many a day.
And thus it all came to pass.
A band of Bedouins had been hovering in the vicinity of Matarieh,
plundering and looting. These Allan, after a consultation with
Cameron, resolved to make a demonstration against, and with
Farquharson, his sergeant, and thirty picked men, in light marching
order, they quitted the village, and about an hour before sunrise
took their way towards the desert.
The light of the coming day shone along the latter, a sandy waste,
overlooked by Jebel Mokattam, a chain of rocks abrupt and barren that
extends from Cairo to the cataracts. They are generally flat, with
beetling summits, while below, on the face which fronts the Nile,
they are furrowed as if water-worn by the rain of ages.
On the other flank, towards Jebel Dimeshk, rises a ridge of
sand-hills that follows in the same direction at an equal distance,
all the windings and sinuosities of that which lines the eastern bank.
Between lay the winding line of the disused railway. In front the
horizon seemed foggy or dusty, and along the desert the sun shone for
a time, as he rose, like a red ball, shorn of his rays.
In rear the party left behind the village of Matarieh, with the
clumps of palm-trees, beyond which, with the tall obelisk and the
ruins of several sphinxes, rose the great mounds of earth that mark
the site of Heliopolis, 'the City of the Sun,' the inhabitants of
which worshipped a bull called Mnevis, with the same ceremonies as
the Apis of Memphis, and where Apollo had an oracle.
Over the same ground where in 1800 a battle was fought between the
French and Turks, in which the latter were defeated with the loss of
eight thousand men and all their cannon and baggage, Allan's little
band marched merrily on towards the desert in hope to 'polish off' a
few of the Bedouins before returning to quarters.
They were well supplied with ammunition; each man had a day's rations
in his haversack, and his water-bottle filled with the red sandy
fluid of the Nile. In Exodus we are told that the Egyptians loathed
to drink the waters of that river, and, as Cameron said, 'the men of
the Black Watch were much of the same mind.'
Now, in making a reconnaissance, Allan Graham was a trained soldier
enough to know that cover from view is important, as it enables
troops, whatever their strength, to form for action; thus he hoped to
utilise the railway bank, or, if not that, some of the sandy
undulations around it.
As the first object in reconnoitring is to get observation, with his
sergeant, who was a sharp fellow, he went at some distance in front
of his men, field-glass in hand, and looked sharply about him.
He continued to move in a north-easterly direction for nearly ten
miles till mid-day, but saw nothing of Bedouins, and then, halting
amid a clump of palms, threw out some sentinels towards the front,
piled arms, and the Highlanders in their kilts and red serges threw
themselves on the grass and prepared to make a meal of what they had
brought with them, washed down by Nile water.
There he remained till noon was long past, and he began to think of
falling back on Matarieh.
Even under the shadow of the palms they were tormented by gnats and
sandflies.
'We are in the land of the "Arabian Nights"--the land of giants,
fairies, and genii, and all that sort of thing,' said Cameron, as he
lit a cigar; 'but, if a little picturesque, Allan, the discomforts
are abominably real.'
'Surely water is lying yonder, sir,' said Sergeant Farquharson, 'and
we might get our water-bottles filled.'
All looked eagerly in the direction indicated, towards the base of
the Jebel Dimeshk range. The sun was clear, bright, and powerful
now. Amid the silent waste of sand a long, narrow lake seemed at no
great distance.
'If water it is,' exclaimed Cameron, 'there are certainly men moving
through it.'
'The Bedouins, by Jove!' cried Allan. 'Down, down,' he shouted to
his sentinels, 'lie down, under cover if you can.'
They lay down flat, and Allan, adopting the same position, turned his
field-glass towards the mirage, for such it was--that beautiful
optical illusion produced by the sun's rays reflected from the heated
sand, and which raises before the eye of the thirsty wayfarer the
tantalising but perfect representation of distant lakes or pleasing
sheets of water.
About eighty Bedouin horse were moving slowly from the direction of
the Jebel Dimeskh range towards the line of the railway. Whatever
their object was, from a description given to Allan, he was certain
they were those of whom he was in search, and that their object was
to turn up in the vicinity of Matarieh after sunset, intent on
plunder, as everywhere these lawless sons of the desert were taking
advantage of the confusion of affairs in Egypt.
Some were armed with long muskets of antique form, but by far the
greater number had Remington rifles--flung away by Arabi's fugitive
soldiers--slung over their backs, or at their saddles, weapons that
had superseded the javelin, the bow, and in many instances the spear.
They were clad in barracans of dark brown wool, with floating
burnouses, many of them spotlessly white; and as they seemed to be
making slowly, for shelter doubtless, towards the clump of palms
occupied by Allan's party, which was yet beyond their range of
vision, he drew the whole off and took post behind the bank of the
abandoned railway, a movement which was fortunately quite unseen by
the foe.
Formation against cavalry would be useless, as these wild horsemen
have no idea of tactics; and, to deceive them as to his force, Allan
formed his men in extended order, three paces apart, each man lying
on his face, close under the line of the embankment.
Allan knew from experience how fire from a steep slope becomes
plunging; thus he congratulated himself that the slope for his
musketry was one that was parallel to the trajectory of the rifles.
By a single word he could, if necessary, form his men in a rallying
square on the crest of the line. As the Bedouins came riding
forward, in a disorderly group, at an easy, ambling pace, Allan, by
means of his field-glass, was certain that in their leader he
recognised the Arab, Zeid-el-Ourdeh, whom he had succoured after his
wounds at Kassassin, and sent to the hospital at Ismailia.
He was wearing the same robes with wide sleeves, and the richly
embroidered girdle he wore when found near the camp.
'Steady and still, men,' cried Allan, 'and we'll play old gooseberry
with these beggars, as we have done everywhere else.'
They were about five hundred paces distant, a range for which the
rifles were sighted, when suddenly a Bedouin uttered a shrill cry of
alarm, and all began to unsling their firearms. His eye had detected
a clay-coloured helmet with its red hackle on the left side.
Ere they could fire a shot, the Highlanders from their cover poured
in a deadly fire, and more than twenty men and horses went down in
confused heaps; the latter, in the agony of their wounds and terror,
kicking and lashing wildly out with their hoofs, raising clouds of
sand, while braining the skulls and breaking the limbs of the fallen
riders, whether dead or wounded; then shrieks and groans, cries and
curses loaded the air, as all who were untouched or able to keep
their saddles, after firing, half at random, a ragged volley, wheeled
round their light chargers and went off with the speed of the wind.
'Cease firing!' cried Allan Graham; 'we have taught these fellows a
lesson severe enough for the day, and I don't think they will venture
near Matarieh again.'
In that, however, he was mistaken, as he afterwards found to his cost.
'And now,' he added, as he crossed the line of railway, sword in
hand, 'to give water to the wounded, succour any we can, smash all
their weapons, and leave them to fate or their returning friends.'
He, with most of his party, approached the place where the victims of
the fusilade lay, and, so far as blood, wounds, and agony went, they
presented a very dreadful scene, and yet a trifling one when compared
with that witnessed so lately in the trenches of Tel-el-Kebir.
Many were shot outright; others, severely wounded, lay wallowing and
choking in their blood, and they regarded the victors with a firm,
scowling, and defiant expression in their long, thin, tawny faces,
and black, bright, glittering eyes, that made them look, as Allan
said, like dying eagles.
But, before anything could be done for the survivors, the fatal
episode of the day took place.
A little way apart from the group of death and agony, lay a Bedouin,
who, though untouched, was partly under his horse, from which he
freed himself, and then Cameron advanced to take him prisoner. He
was an athletic and gigantic fellow, all bone and sinew, lithe as a
serpent, and active as the antelope of his native deserts.
Drawing a long pistol from his girdle, he levelled it at Cameron, but
it snapped, on which he flung it furiously at the head of the latter,
who ducked, and escaped it.
Several Highlanders now rushed forward, as he had drawn a large and
heavy Damascus sabre, but they paused with their hands on their locks
when Cameron cried,
'Stand back, my lads, and leave him to me!' And in a moment both
their blades were flashing in the setting sun, for Cameron fell upon
him claymore in hand.
'May your head be covered by a whirlwind of fire!' hissed the Bedouin
in Arabic, through his clenched teeth, while he hewed away without
the least intention of surrendering. The hood of his red and white
striped burnous had fallen back, and his whole head and face, with
flashing eyes and gleaming teeth, were displayed to view.
Cameron was a skilful swordsman, but so was the Bedouin, who was his
superior in height and muscular power. Their blades struck red
sparks from each other. Cameron forgot to draw his long dirk: but he
had 'Sir Garnet's' ugly jack-knife in his left hand, for parrying
purposes. How the combat would have terminated, it is difficult to
say, but a vile Bedouin, who lay wounded close by, armed with a long,
straight sword, with the last effort of expiring nature, writhed
himself up from the sand, ran poor Cameron through the body from
behind, and fell back dead.
With a hollow groan, Cameron fell backward across him, and was about
to receive a finishing stroke from his antagonist, when the latter
was shot through the head by Sergeant Farquharson.
This catastrophe rather cooled Allan's humane ideas of succouring the
wounded. Very few of the Highlanders had been touched, and these but
slightly. However, it seemed as if Cameron was dying. He was
speechless, and his mouth at times was filled with blood. It was
impossible then to ascertain the exact nature of his wounds, or what
part of the body was injured. Allan, full of tenderness, anxiety,
and the deepest commiseration, formed a pad of his handkerchief, and,
using his sash as a bandage, endeavoured, so far as in him lay, to
stop the bleeding, while a litter was improvised by a couple of
rifles, with a blanket stretched over them; and the party began to
fall back on Matarieh, but often had to halt, for the agony of
Cameron was great, and Allan began to despair of getting him conveyed
in life to Matarieh, which, as we have said, was nearly ten miles
distant, while, to enhance their difficulties, a troop of nearly a
hundred Bedouins were visible, pouring down a rocky gorge of the
Jebel Mokattam range; so nothing was left to Allan but to continue
his retreat, which they seemed slow or disinclined to follow up.
Yet their presence was fraught with danger, especially after the sun,
with its usual rapidity in these regions, went down like a red, fiery
ball, and the lurid haze exhaled from the flat desert on which the
darkness fell.
The stars were coming out in the blue zenith; the dew was already
beginning to fall; long and dark shadows lay across the plain, but
the line of the railway was a sure guide back to Matarieh and the
vicinity of Heliopolis.
Every step of his bearers elicited a moan of pain from Cameron, and
these went to the heart of his friend as if they had been the
utterances of a brother, while now and then the sufferer muttered his
thanks to the soldiers for their care and kindness, and his regret
for the trouble he gave them after a day of toil, and his fears that
he was retarding their retreat and thereby involving them in danger.
Of his own pain or peril he never uttered a word.
Constellations new to him and his comrades were in the sky now--a
vast blue dome that stretched far, far away, all bright with glorious
stars.
At last it was absolutely necessary to halt for a time, for all
thought the sufferer was dying, and the Highlanders said that if the
Bedouins came on again they would form square round him; and soon it
became too evident that Evan Cameron was lying 'on the bleak neutral
ground between life and death.'
Accustomed though they were to suffering and slaughter, the
Highlanders stood around him leaning on their muskets, full of
commiseration, and looking attentively at the pale face of the dying
officer and back to the desert where they had last seen the enemy
hovering; and more than one wished that the Bedouins would only come
on again.
'Has no man among us here any water?' asked Allan, for by this time
the tin bottles of the detachment were empty.
A man who was in the act of taking the stopper out of his, paused
instantly.
'Captain Graham, here is mine,' said he; 'there are only a drop or
two left, but if it was my blood I'd give it for Evan Cameron,' he
added, emphatically, with that familiarity which is peculiar to the
Highlander, and has no rudeness in it.
'Donald, thank you,' said Allan.
'My mother bides nigh the braes of Stratherroch, and I am not likely
to forget that to-night,' said the soldier, with a break in his voice.
Raising Cameron's head gently, Allan put Donald's water-bottle to his
lips, and he drank thirstily of the fetid and odious water it
contained, 'the Nile soup,' as our men called it.
Refreshed even by it for a few minutes, Evan Cameron spoke to Allan,
but in whispers, and, as they seemed to be meant for the ear of the
latter alone, the soldiers with one accord drew back a little way.
'I knew from the first that I should never pull through--nor do I
wish to do so, Allan,' said he, speaking at long intervals and with a
husky effort.
'We have faced death together in many ways, but I wish your case had
been mine, Evan, even if it is to be a fatal one.'
'Don't say that, Allan, dear fellow,' replied Evan, with that
strange, far-off expression of eye which belongs alone to a
fast-ebbing life--an expression which Allan could see even in the
starlight as he stooped close over the sufferer, 'my sight is failing
me, yet I can in fancy see Eveline--oh! so distinctly, Allan--and I
seem to hear her voice--you don't mind me saying this now, lying, as
I am here, face to face with God--the voice that seemed to whisper to
my heart.'
Allan could only press the clammy hand that never again would grasp
the broad claymore. Evan spoke again, but still more brokenly,
'I am not jealous now of my married rival; I only sorrow for the lost
future of Eveline; married to an old man whom she may respect but
never love, and with whom she cannot have a sympathy in common.'
'You are talking too much, Evan.'
'And thinking of her rather than my prayers. When I am lying here in
my long and peaceful sleep, far from my father's grave in bonnie
Stratherroch, she will live all the years of a young life, and, in
the time to come, will--of course, forget me.'
His voice was almost gone now, yet his eyes dilated when Allan said,
with sorrowful emphasis,
'Evan, she will never forget you.'
'Nearer me--come nearer, Allan; I--I want you to tell her--tell
her----'
What he was to tell Allan never heard, as the voice of Cameron
ceased; a change, perceptible in the clear starlight, was passing
over his face; a dew was gathering on his forehead, and dark shadows
under his eyes.
'He's gone, sir,' said Sergeant Farquharson, lifting his helmet for a
moment in mute reverence. 'Well, Captain Graham, the golden gates
have never closed upon a better officer or a braver man! Poor Evan
Cameron,' he added, stooping over the body and looking at it
earnestly.
Allan cast a long and sad glance at it too; then he laid a hand on
the heart; it might be only syncope--no, it did not seem to be that.
The profile of his face in its stillness looked like a classic cameo
cut in high relief. His fair, almost golden, hair, clipped close
with military precision, retained still its crispy ripple. The brown
moustache shading the short upper lip had been somewhat untrimmed of
late; but he looked so life-like that Allan almost shuddered as he
spread the blanket over him and covered him up--for he felt that in
that wretched substitute for a shroud lay one whom he knew his
sister--married albeit as she was to another--loved better than life!
It was hard to think of so young and gallant a life being cut short
thus by the inexorable scissors of Fate; but he was gone to the 'Land
of the leal,' where there can be no sorrow nor thought of sordid
things.
'We cannot leave him lying here thus; neither can we carry him off;
while there is a chance of these Bedouin devils coming on again.
Besides, there are always jackals about,' said Allan, as he took
possession of Evan's claymore, dirk, and ring. 'Scoop a hole--a
temporary grave in the sand--and cover him up, till we can return by
daylight, and bring him into quarters for proper interment.'
The soldiers, with their hands, bayonets, and rifle-butts, hollowed a
trench some three feet deep, and therein, rolled in a blanket, they
reverently deposited the yet warm form of Cameron, and covered it up
with sand.
Allan maintained a grim silence, and, though his heart was full of
genuine grief, the remarks of his soldiers pleased him.
'Those who have lived with us and died as he has done will never be
forgotten in the regiment, sir,' said Sergeant Farquharson.
'Mourn for the mourner, I have heard my mother say in Gaelic, and not
for the dead, as they are at rest and we in tears,' said Donald, as
he hooked-on his water-bottle.
'He has none to mourn for him now but one, and she is far away,'
remarked Allan, with a swelling in his throat. 'And now fall in,
lads.'
The Highlanders marched on their way back to Matarieh in silence,
impressed by the recent episode; for, if gallant and reckless fellows
in battle, they were thoughtful and full of sorrow for the brave
young officer they had lost.
A shot or two, fired apparently at random in the distance, sparkling
out redly amid the obscurity, showed that the Bedouins were following
them up, and must have passed over the very place where Cameron lay.
The silence of the starry night was upon the world then--upon the
ridgy summits of Jebel Mokattam, and darkness now enfolded the desert
where Evan Cameron lay in such awful loneliness, without even the
grim companionship of the dead--the last Cameron of the old fighting
line of Stratherroch.
Two days after, with an ambulance waggon, Sergeant Farquharson, and
some of his men, Allan went along the line of the old railway from
Matarieh to the place where they had left the body--a place marked in
their memory by the presence of two large stones and some shrubs near
the embankment--but of these they could find no trace, though they
searched for hours, believing they might have passed them or
miscalculated the distance.
Nothing was to be seen about the real or supposed spot but sand,
smooth and drifted sand everywhere. Thus Allan could but come to the
sorrowful conclusion that some species of sand-storm must have swept
from the desert south-eastward between the mountain ranges, and
buried every trace of the hastily-made grave.