There was only the one little feathery clump of dom palms in all that
great wilderness of black rocks and orange sand. It stood high on the
bank, and below it the brown Nile swirled swiftly towards the Ambigole
Cataract, fitting a little frill of foam round each of the boulders
which studded its surface. Above, out of a naked blue sky, the sun was
beating down upon the sand, and up again from the sand under the brims
of the pith-hats of the horsemen with the scorching glare of a
blast-furnace. It had risen so high that the shadows of the horses were
no larger than themselves.
“Whew!” cried Mortimer, mopping his forehead, “you’d pay five shillings
for this at the hummums.”
“Precisely,” said Scott. “But you are not asked to ride twenty miles in
a Turkish bath with a field-glass and a revolver, and a water-bottle and
a whole Christmas-treeful of things dangling from you. The hot-house at
Kew is excellent as a conservatory, but not adapted for exhibitions upon
the horizontal bar. I vote for a camp in the palm-grove and a halt
until evening.”
Mortimer rose on his stirrups and looked hard to the southward.
Everywhere were the same black burned rocks and deep orange sand.
At one spot only an intermittent line appeared to have been cut through
the rugged spurs which ran down to the river. It was the bed of the old
railway, long destroyed by the Arabs, but now in process of
reconstruction by the advancing Egyptians. There was no other sign of
man’s handiwork in all that desolate scene.
“It’s palm trees or nothing,” said Scott.
“Well, I suppose we must; and yet I grudge every hour until we catch the
force up. What _would_ our editors say if we were late for the action?”
“My dear chap, an old bird like you doesn’t need to be told that no sane
modern general would ever attack until the Press is up.”
“You don’t mean that?” said young Anerley. “I thought we were looked
upon as an unmitigated nuisance.”
“‘Newspaper correspondents and travelling gentlemen, and all that tribe
of useless drones’--being an extract from Lord Wolseley’s ‘Soldier’s
Pocket-Book,’” cried Scott. “We know all about _that_, Anerley;” and he
winked behind his blue spectacles. “If there was going to be a battle
we should very soon have an escort of cavalry to hurry us up. I’ve been
in fifteen, and I never saw one where they had not arranged for a
reporter’s table.”
“That’s very well; but the enemy may be less considerate,” said
Mortimer.
“They are not strong enough to force a battle.”
“A skirmish, then?”
“Much more likely to be a raid upon the rear. In that case we are just
where we should be.”
“So we are! What a score over Reuter’s man up with the advance!
Well, we’ll outspan and have our tiffin under the palms.”
There were three of them, and they stood for three great London dailies.
Reuter’s was thirty miles ahead; two evening pennies upon camels were
twenty miles behind. And among them they represented the eyes and ears
of the public--the great silent millions and millions who had paid for
everything, and who waited so patiently to know the result of their
outlay.
They were remarkable men these body-servants of the Press; two of them
already veterans in camps, the other setting out upon his first
campaign, and full of deference for his famous comrades.
This first one, who had just dismounted from his bay polo-pony, was
Mortimer, of the _Intelligence_--tall, straight, and hawk-faced, with
khaki tunic and riding-breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund, and
a skin tanned to the red of a Scotch fir by sun and wind, and mottled by
the mosquito and the sand-fly. The other--small, quick, mercurial, with
blue-black, curling beard and hair, a fly-switch for ever flicking in
his left hand--was Scott, of the _Courier_, who had come through more
dangers and brought off more brilliant _coups_ than any man in the
profession, save the eminent Chandler, now no longer in a condition to
take the field. They were a singular contrast, Mortimer and Scott, and
it was in their differences that the secret of their close friendship
lay. Each dovetailed into the other. The strength of each was in the
other’s weakness. Together they formed a perfect unit. Mortimer was
Saxon--slow, conscientious, and deliberate; Scott was Celtic--quick,
happy-go-lucky, and brilliant. Mortimer was the more solid, Scott the
more attractive. Mortimer was the deeper thinker, Scott the brighter
talker. By a curious coincidence, though each had seen much of warfare,
their campaigns had never coincided. Together they covered all recent
military history. Scott had done Plevna, the Shipka, the Zulus, Egypt,
Suakim; Mortimer had seen the Boer War, the Chilian, the Bulgaria and
Servian, the Gordon relief, the Indian frontier, Brazilian rebellion,
and Madagascar. This intimate personal knowledge gave a peculiar
flavour to their talk. There was none of the second-hand surmise and
conjecture which form so much of our conversation; it was all concrete
and final. The speaker had been there, had seen it, and there was an
end of it.
In spite of their friendship there was the keenest professional rivalry
between the two men. Either would have sacrificed himself to help his
companion, but either would also have sacrificed his companion to help
his paper. Never did a jockey yearn for a winning mount as keenly as
each of them longed to have a full column in a morning edition whilst
every other daily was blank. They were perfectly frank about the
matter. Each professed himself ready to steal a march on his neighbour,
and each recognised that the other’s duty to his employer was far higher
than any personal consideration.
The third man was Anerley, of the _Gazette_--young, inexperienced, and
rather simple-looking. He had a droop of the lip, which some of his
more intimate friends regarded as a libel upon his character, and his
eyes were so slow and so sleepy that they suggested an affectation.
A leaning towards soldiering had sent him twice to autumn manoeuvres,
and a touch of colour in his descriptions had induced the proprietors of
the _Gazette_ to give him a trial as a war-special. There was a
pleasing diffidence about his bearing which recommended him to his
experienced companions, and if they had a smile sometimes at his
guileless ways, it was soothing to them to have a comrade from whom
nothing was to be feared. From the day that they left the
telegraph-wire behind them at Sarras, the man who was mounted upon a
15-guinea 13-4 Syrian was delivered over into the hands of the owners of
the two fastest polo-ponies that ever shot down the Ghezireh ground.
The three had dismounted and led their beasts under the welcome shade.
In the brassy, yellow glare every branch above threw so black and solid
a shadow that the men involuntarily raised their feet to step over
them.
“The palm makes an excellent hat-rack,” said Scott, slinging his
revolver and his water-bottle over the little upward-pointing pegs which
bristle from the trunk. “As a shade tree, however, it isn’t an
unqualified success. Curious that in the universal adaptation of means
to ends something a little less flimsy could not have been devised for
the tropics.”
“Like the banyan in India.”
“Or the fine hardwood trees in Ashantee, where a whole regiment could
picnic under the shade.”
“The teak tree isn’t bad in Burmah, either. By Jove, the baccy has all
come loose in the saddle-bag! That long-cut mixture smokes rather hot
for this climate. How about the baggles, Anerley?”
“They’ll be here in five minutes.”
Down the winding path which curved among the rocks the little train of
baggage-camels was daintily picking its way. They came mincing and
undulating along, turning their heads slowly from side to side with the
air of a self-conscious woman. In front rode the three Berberee
body-servants upon donkeys, and behind walked the Arab camel-boys.
They had been travelling for nine long hours, ever since the first
rising of the moon, at the weary camel-drag of two and a half miles an
hour, but now they brightened, both beasts and men, at the sight of the
grove and the riderless horses. In a few minutes the loads were
unstrapped, the animals tethered, a fire lighted, fresh water carried up
from the river, and each camel-boy provided with his own little heap of
tibbin laid in the centre of the table-cloth, without which no well-bred
Arabian will condescend to feed. The dazzling light without, the
subdued half-tones within, the green palm-fronds outlined against the
deep blue sky, the flitting, silent-footed Arab servants, the crackling
of sticks, the reek of a lighting fire, the placid supercilious heads of
the camels, they all come back in their dreams to those who have known
them.
Scott was breaking eggs into a pan and rolling out a love-song in his
rich, deep voice. Anerley, with his head and arms buried in a deal
packing-case, was working his way through strata of tinned soups, bully
beef, potted chicken, and sardines to reach the jams which lay beneath.
The conscientious Mortimer, with his notebook upon his knee, was jotting
down what the railway engineer had told him at the line-end the day
before. Suddenly he raised his eyes and saw the man himself on his
chestnut pony, dipping and rising over the broken ground.
“Hullo! Here’s Merryweather!”
“A pretty lather his pony is in! He’s had her at that hand-gallop for
hours, by the look of her. Hullo, Merryweather, hullo!”
The engineer, a small, compact man with a pointed red beard, had made as
though he would ride past their camp without word or halt. Now he
swerved, and easing his pony down to a canter, he headed her towards
them.
“For God’s sake, a drink!” he croaked. “My tongue is stuck to the roof
of my mouth.”
Mortimer ran with the water-bottle, Scott with the whisky-flask, and
Anerley with the tin pannikin. The engineer drank until his breath
failed him.
“Well, I must be off,” said he, striking the drops from his red
moustache.
“Any news?”
“A hitch in the railway construction. I must see the general.
It’s the devil not having a telegraph.”
“Anything we can report?” Out came three notebooks.
“I’ll tell you after I’ve seen the general.”
“Any dervishes?”
“The usual shaves. Hud-up, Jinny! Good-bye!”
With a soft thudding upon the sand, and a clatter among the stones the
weary pony was off upon her journey once more.
“Nothing serious, I suppose?” said Mortimer, staring after him.
“Deuced serious,” cried Scott. “The ham and eggs are burned! No--it’s
all right--saved, and done to a turn! Pull the box up, Anerley.
Come on, Mortimer, stow that notebook! The fork is mightier than the
pen just at present. What’s the matter with you, Anerley?”
“I was wondering whether what we have just seen was worth a telegram.”
“Well, it’s for the proprietors to say if it’s worth it. Sordid money
considerations are not for us. We must wire about something just to
justify our khaki coats and our putties.”
“But what is there to say?”
Mortimer’s long, austere face broke into a smile over the youngster’s
innocence. “It’s not quite usual in our profession to give each other
tips,” said he. “However, as my telegram is written, I’ve no objection
to your reading it. You may be sure that I would not show it to you if
it were of the slightest importance.”