*CHAPTER I*
It was perhaps the first act of open hostility, and there was really
nothing in the scene or circumstance to provoke an unfriendly
demonstration.
On the broad racing ground of the Khedivial Club a number of the
officers and men of the British Army quartered in Cairo, assisted by a
detachment of the soldiers of the Army of Egypt, had been giving a sham
fight in imitation of the battle of Omdurman, which is understood to
have been the death-struggle and the end of Mahdism.
The Khedive himself had not been there--he was away at
Constantinople--and his box had stood empty the whole afternoon; but a
kinsman of the Khedive with a company of friends had occupied the box
adjoining, and Lord Nuneham, the British Consul-General, had sat in the
centre of the grand pavilion, surrounded by all the great ones of the
earth in a sea of muslin, flowers, and feathers. There had been
European ladies in bright spring costumes; Sheikhs in flowing robes of
flowered silk; Egyptian Ministers of State in Western dress, and British
Advisers and Under-Secretaries in Eastern tarbooshes; officers in
gold-braided uniforms, Foreign Ambassadors, and an infinite number of
Pashas, Beys, and Effendis.
Besides these, too, there had been a great crowd of what are called the
common people, chiefly Cairenes, the volatile, pleasure-loving people of
Cairo, who care for nothing so little as the atmosphere of political
trouble. They had stood in a thick line around the arena, all capped in
crimson, thus giving to the vast ellipse the effect of an immense
picture framed in red.
There had been nothing in the day, either, to stimulate the spirit of
insurrection. It had been a lazy day, growing hot in the afternoon, so
that the white city of domes and minarets, as far up as the Mokattam
Hills and the self-conscious Citadel, had seemed to palpitate in a
glistening haze, while the steely ribbon of the Nile that ran between
was reddening in the rays of the sunset.
General Graves, an elderly man with martial bearing, commanding the army
in Egypt, had taken his place as Umpire in the Judge's box in front of
the pavilion; four squadrons of British and Egyptian cavalry, a force of
infantry, and a grunting and ruckling camel corps had marched and
pranced and bumped out of a paddock to the left, and then young Colonel
Gordon Lord, Assistant Adjutant-General, who was to play the part of
Commandant in the sham fight, had come trotting into the field.
Down to that moment there had been nothing but gaiety and the spirit of
fun among the spectators, who with ripples of merry laughter had
whispered "Littleton's," "Wauchope's," "Macdonald's," and "Maxwell's,"
as the white-faced and yellow-faced squadrons had taken their places.
Then the General had rung the big bell that was to be the signal for the
beginning of the battle, a bugle had been sounded, and the people had
pretended to shiver as they smiled.
But all at once the atmosphere had changed. From somewhere on the right
had come the _tum, tum, tum_ of the war drums of the enemy, followed by
the _boom, boom, boom_ of their war-horns, a melancholy note, half
bellow and half wail. Then everybody in the pavilion had stood up,
everybody's glass had been out, and a moment afterwards a line of
strange white things had been seen fluttering in the far distance.
Were they banners? No! They were men, they were the dervishes, and
they were coming down in a deep white line, like sheeted ghosts in
battle array.
"They're here!" said the spectators in a hushed whisper, and from that
moment onward to the end there had been no more laughter either in the
pavilion or in the dense line around the field.
The dervishes had come galloping on, a huge disorderly horde in flying
white garments, some of them black as ink, some brown as bronze,
brandishing their glistening spears, their swords, and their flintlocks,
beating their war-drams, blowing their war-horns, and shouting in
high-pitched, rasping, raucous voices their war-cry and their prayer,
"Allah! Allah! Allah!"
On and on they had come, like champing surf rolling in on a reef-bound
coast; on and on, faster and faster, louder and louder; on and on until
they had all but hurled themselves into the British lines, and
then--_crash!_ a sheet of blinding flashes, a roll of stifling smoke,
and, when the air cleared, a long empty space in the front line of the
dervishes, and the ground strewn as with the drapery of two hundred dead
men.
In an instant the gap had been filled and the mighty horde had come on
again, but again and again and yet again they had been swept down before
the solid rock of the British forces like the spent waves of an angry
sea.
At one moment a flag, silver-white and glistening in the sun, had been
seen coming up behind. It had seemed to float here, there, and
everywhere, like a disembodied spirit, through the churning breakers of
the enemy, and while the swarthy Arab who carried it had cried out over
the thunder of battle that it was the Angel of Death leading them to
victory or Paradise, the dervishes had screamed "Allah! Allah!" and
poured themselves afresh on to the British lines.
But _crash, crash, crash!_ the British rifles had spoken, and the
dervishes had fallen in long swathes, like grass before the scythe,
until the broad field had been white with its harvest of the dead.
The sham fight had lasted a full hour, and until it was over the vast
multitude of spectators had been as one immense creature that trembled
without drawing breath. But then the Umpire's big bell had been rung
again, the dead men had leapt briskly to their feet and scampered back
to paddock, and a rustling breeze of laughter, half merriment and half
surprise, had swept over the pavilion and the field.
This was another moment at which the atmosphere had seemed to change.
Some one at the foot of the pavilion had said--
"Whew: What a battle it must have been!"