A sail in unfrequented latitudes never seemed more truly a godsend to
castaways at sea than this marvellous horse to the exhausted airman. It
was but a stray animal belonging to some mounted unit which had drawn
the peg of its head-rope and escaped from the horse-lines into the
open desert, but to the incredulous eyes which suddenly perceived its
presence it might well have been the famous magic steed of the Arabian
Nights.
To catch the animal was the immediate thing to be done, and anyone who
has tried to catch a shy horse in a paddock can imagine the hideous
anxiety on the part of an exhausted man in approaching an animal which
has the illimitable desert to manoeuvre in, and has but to kick up its
heels to vanish in a trice over the horizon. Fortunately, the creature
evinced but little shyness, and suffered itself to be taken without
difficulty. It is probable, indeed, that this desert encounter was not
less welcome on the one side than on the other.
One wonders how the would-be rider ever managed to get astride his
lucky steed. His legs had little enough capacity for a spring left
in them. But necessity and hope in combination provide a wonderful
incentive and spur, and somehow or other he scrambled up. He himself
has hazy recollections only of this stage of his adventures, and beyond
the fact that he _did_ mount that horse, and manage to set it going in
a westerly direction, his recollections are vague.
The next phase of the story is contained in the narrative of the
officer commanding a patrol vessel on the Suez Canal, who relates
that while on duty his attention was directed to a strange figure
riding on horseback along the eastern bank of the Canal. At first
sight he supposed it to be some mounted Arab or other nomad of the
desert, but on closer inspection the horse did not seem to be of
native type, and the rider's garb appeared unusual. On nearer approach
the strange apparition resolved itself into a white man, of wild and
haggard demeanor, dressed in a torn shirt and very little else, who
bestrode barebacked a troop-horse in distressed condition. Hailed by
the patrol boat, the white horseman replied in English, and explained
intelligibly, if a trifle incoherently, that he had come out of the
desert, that his chum was lying some miles back in dire distress, if
not already dead, and would somebody please hurry up and do something.
The conclusion of the story can be told in a sentence. A relief party
was sent at once into the desert, the second airman was picked up
exhausted but still alive, and at the date when the present writer last
heard of them both parties of this strange adventure of the desert were
little, if any, the worse for their experiences. As to the gallant
troop-horse which played the part of a kind of _equus ex machina_, no
peg in all the lines is now more firmly and securely driven in than his!
The story just related ends happily for all concerned; let me deal now
with the reverse side of the shield!