DAYS IN THE DESERT
Mac felt absolutely dejected, and looked it. His mare, too, appeared
neither happy nor spirited. Except for some nebulous figures,
indistinct in the yellow murk, little else was visible. Mac crouched
scowling in the lee of the mare, who stood with drooping head and
closed eyes, swaying occasionally to the violent buffetings of the
desert storm, and patiently waiting for some move on the part of her
master. The three squadrons and the transport had left camp
independently just after dawn with instructions to bivouac together, at
midday, at a certain spot known to the High Command by the enigmatical
formula "No. 3. Tower, 105°--Virgin's Breasts 45°."
Mac, who carried the compass, had taken various bearings before the
breaking of the storm, and had now halted where the Major and he
considered angles, bearings, and letters indicated. There was no sign
of the other units. Either they had sagaciously abandoned the
expedition earlier or else they had other opinions regarding the
trysting place. Anyhow, whether they were still wandering about the
infernal desert or not, Mac was firmly convinced that camp was the
place for him. Picking up his rein, he made in the direction of a blur
he knew to be the Major, and told him so. The Major had visions of
pleasant refuge in a Cairene hotel, a good dinner, and a cool bath,
instead of a night trek in the desert as originally intended. So he
agreed, and shrill whistling stirred to life more or less comatose
troopers and horses.
Steering, nor'-nor'-west, each following close upon the next ahead,
they rode in deep silence. They crossed wave after wave of sand-hills,
monotonous and bewildering. The khamsin blew in hot, sandy spurts, and
lulled; then came again in hotter, more shrivelling bursts "From Hell!"
thought the troopers, one and all. Sand trickled down their necks, and
filtered down to that place where it neither increased the comfort of
their riding nor diminished the ardour of their revilings against the
weather. With fiercer gusts, gravel rose and stung horse and rider,
while the former stumbled frequently over unseen boulders.
In the latter half of the afternoon they struck the old railway
embankment to Suez, lost it again, but soon found the edge of the
irrigated land and followed it to the camp. Parched, red-eyed,
headachy, and yellow with dust, they made for their lines, watered
their horses, and set about making themselves as comfortable as
circumstances allowed. The happiness of the trooper was not enhanced
when he failed to find a misty blur representing his tent. It had
chosen to give up the unequal contest and had departed down-wind. He
followed, and joined the rest of the tent's company in recovering the
tattered remnants, and towels, and personal property which had strayed
into the domain of the next regiment.
Camp was not a healthy spot in the khamsin days, Mac decided. Coins to
a piastreless cobber smoothed over a horse-picket difficulty, and he
passed out of the camp by back ways. So, in the village of Helmieh, he
spent the night. Gusts bellowed through the swaying date-palms
overhead, and roared round the courtyard, but his bed was comfortable,
and the house of his good French friends proof against the sand-laden
blasts of the spring storm. He was awakened sufficiently early to
allow of his appearance at roll-call next morning. It was not
according to his nature to rise early from so pleasant a bed, but it
was a matter of discretion.
Many days were passed in the desert, none worse and many better. Troop
days were all right; squadron days were not bad; regimental days were
tolerable at times; but brigade and divisional manoeuvres were
inventions of the devil. On these latter occasions elusive white
flags, the skeleton enemy, appeared and disappeared. Scouts reported
them here, then there. The mounted men advanced in open order, all
except the front line smothered in a fog of dust. Infantry toiled and
sweated after them. The maligned staff viewed from afar the battle
royal. Thankful men received wounds from galloping umpires, and lay
down peacefully to await rescue by the attentive ambulance.
Chastisements descended from great to lesser dignitaries. Why had not
Colonel Macpherson managed to move his flank-guard three miles in two
minutes? So a field day would pass, each rank being roundly condemned
to everlasting perdition by the rank immediately below it, until the
G.O.C., Egypt, and the British Empire, bore the brunt of the awful
damnings. Bad-tempered and dishevelled, the troops would set off on
their homeward march, the final straw being added to the annoyances of
the infantry by the passage to windward of the mounted rifles.
Shrouded in the dust, they levelled their final, terrible threats
against those who would be home two hours before them.
Times there were, too, good times, when the troopers would trek across
the Delta to the Barrage du Nil, a pleasant spot where the Nile divides
into its delta streams and canals. Here they would bivouac for the
night beneath shady plantations of lebbak trees in beautiful gardens.
In the daytime they swam their horses in the river. A jolly form of
amusement there was the blanket-tossing of intruding natives, who were
rather prone to contract those things which did not belong to them; and
no method of discouragement was so efficacious. The "Gyppies" were
fleet of foot, but so were the troopers, and to see a lanky southerner
pursuing a victim was good entertainment. Captured at length and
shrieking in abject terror, they would go flying skyward from the
tautened blanket. But, alas, the blankets were of Government
manufacture, and occasionally, upon the victim's meteoric return, would
split in two. Thus many blankets were rent in twain, and thus did many
dusky ones learn that the belongings of the troopers were sacred
property.
And so Egyptian days passed light-heartedly enough. That was before
the serious times, before they had been involved in the real fierce
thing. And now few of them ride together any longer. Many will ride
no more, and others are scattered over the earth.