IN THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS.
Ismailia, by the Lake of Timsah, lay steeped in sunshine, while the
regiments of the Highland Brigade, for the second time, after the
lapse of eighty years, landed upon Egyptian soil again.
Built equi-distant from Port Said and Suez, this new town protects
the outlet of the second canal, which carries the supply of fresh
water from the Nile near Cairo to the Isthmus. In 1862 the place
where it stands was a scene of sandy desolation. Seven years later
saw a brilliant little French town in existence with a broad quay,
bordering the lake, with hotels, cafés, a theatre where vaudevilles
were acted, a street of well-stocked shops, a public garden with a
fountain spouting Nile water in the Place Champollion, the telegraph
wires overhead, and the bells of a Christian church ringing, where,
but a short time before, the wandering Bedouin, the nomadic dweller
in tents, the child of the desert, with glittering spear and floating
burnous, urged his camel on its solitary way from Ramses to Serapium.
The heat was intense, and to the eyes of the Scottish mountaineers
the scenery about Ismailia seemed intensely monotonous. Cloudless
skies of the deepest and richest blue formed a contrast to the vast
expanse of yellow sand that stretched far, far away till lost in hazy
distance, but the desert is susceptible of many shades and changes of
colour.
It is said that at Ismailia the stranger can very fully realise the
purity, the balm, and beauty of the Egyptian night, especially if
seated over wine and a cigar in the Hôtel des Voyageurs, where he may
watch the Lake of Timsah, and so varied are the tints of the latter
in the light of the red sun setting in the west, amid a lurid glow of
gold and crimson, that it looks like three lakes; towards the canal
that leads to Serapium it seems a deep blue; where the ships are
grouped near Ismailia, its wavelets seem silver with gold, while the
moon comes slowly up like a silver dawn, and rosy tints yet linger
when the sun has gone abruptly down.
But no time was given to the Highlanders either to study scenery or
artistic effects, even if so disposed. Each regiment was rapidly
formed in column--every officer and man in his fighting kit, with
tropical helmet, haversack, and water bottle; the men with their
valises and greatcoats, and the march began towards the desert where
the Egyptians of Arabi awaited them at Tel-el-Kebir.
Little was talked of then but the recent cavalry fight at Kassassin,
where our Life Guards swept the ranks of Arabi's infantry, and where
a horde of wild Bedouins, who had been hovering near the field like
birds of prey, after their departure poured in to strip and rob the
dead and wounded of both armies, killing all who were able to resist.
The mess--or regiment rather, as there was no mess now--saw that
Allan Graham had come back a sorely changed man, who had hours of
evident depression alternated by furious hilarity--not the man's old
style at all; but his world, like Hamlet's, was 'out of joint.' The
conduct of Olive Raymond yet remained a profound, an unexplained and
exasperating mystery to him; but he felt, how bitterly, that love
lives even after trust and faith are dead and buried; and now that he
was so far, far away from her, dreams of a yearning and sorrowful
kind, with many stinging thoughts, that he feared would never leave
him, filled his mind as he marched at the head of his company towards
the darkening desert.
In his looks and manner, Evan Cameron, like others, read a marked yet
undefinable change; his bearing now was occasionally haughty and
reserved; at other times his eyes seemed strangely sad. What could
have happened? Cameron did not ask, and as yet Allan said nothing
about it; and, sooth to say, in his own thoughts of Eveline, the
former had cause to be sad enough too.
His memories were ever of the days at Dundargue, and the chance
parting in the belvidere at Maviswood; and again her kisses, the
touch of her little caressing hands, with her voice came vividly to
him.
In some of the last papers that had reached the transport, _viâ_ the
Continent, he could see that she was leading a life of outward
gaiety. Could he doubt that it was otherwise than outward? He
gathered a sombre satisfaction from the thought, and then strove to
set it aside as selfish.
Why should she not enjoy balls and flowers-shows, races and regattas,
the drawing-room at Buckingham Palace, and other brilliant
gatherings? Yet as he read of these things a frown of mingled anger,
sorrow, and even mockery gathered on his brow in spite of himself.
In the same papers Allan could discover no trace of any body having
been cast upon the beach either at Southsea or the shore of the Isle
of Wight, and hence he supposed that the remains of the drowned
Holcroft must have been taken out to sea.
The Highland enthusiasm, the warlike spirit that blazed up within
him, kept him from a great despair, for latterly his love for Olive
had become a part of his own existence.
The novelty of the land in which our new campaign had opened, the
incessant watchfulness, the time and attention each duty brought with
it, all gave him a recklessness as to life and as to fear of death,
that after a time won him the involuntary admiration of the Black
Watch and the whole Highland Brigade.
Just as the sun set, the bugles sounded a 'halt' after a march of six
miles, but six terrible miles they were, for at every step the
Highlanders sank ankle-deep in the soft and sun-dried sand.
All around that halting-place a sea of the latter seemed to stretch
in every direction, bare and desolate, save where Ismailia lay, its
edifices looking inky, black, and opaque in outline against the
orange and primrose sky; and black looked the masts of the transports
as they rose like a forest amid the waters of the Lake of Timsah.
When the first bivouac was formed at El-Magfar, the bare-kneed
Highlanders, each rolled in his blanket on the soft sand, slept
comfortably enough; but with morning came the first instalment of
misery, when the heavy dew that soaks everything left them cold and
stiff, and longing even for the fierce unclouded sun again.
'A devil of a country this,' said Carslogie. 'By day it is too hot
to eat, to act, or even to think; and at night it is too cold to
sleep or think of anything but the bitter cold itself.'
And but for the hot tea made for all over-night, when the brigade
first came to its camping-place, some injury to health must have
ensued; but the men were too weary to eat even a biscuit, of which
each carried a two days' supply in the canvas haversack that formed
his only pillow.
Before the sun was up, Allan rose from the sand and looked about him.
Under the starlight the Highland bivouac--for camp it was
not--presented a curious sight, as the men lay in ranks, each rolled
in his blanket, beside the piles of arms; the sentinels of the
out-piquets on the way to Tel-el-Mahuta standing dark and motionless
against the blue of the sky, looking in kilt and helmet like the
statues of ancient Romans.
To get a little warmth ere the pipers blew the 'rouse,' he walked a
short distance from where the men of his company lay, and near a
fragment of ruined wall, beside which grew a patch of those prickly
plants (round which hillocks of sand occasionally gather), and a
solitary gum-tree grew, he found, rolled up in a burnous, and
evidently concealing himself in dread and fear, a Bedouin. There was
a small palm-grove near Magfar; why did he not seek hiding there?
'Hallo, my man,' thought Allan, 'what are you lurking here
for?--mischief, no doubt.'
He drew his claymore, supposing the lurker could be but a spy who had
crept within our chain of sentries; but the wild son of the desert
raised his hands deprecatingly, and, opening his burnous, showed that
he was perishing from a dreadful wound--a sword cut that had laid
open his right shoulder and breast.
Allan put his brandy-flask to the sufferer's lips, raising his head
as he did so, and then addressed him inquiringly. Allan had picked
up some Arabic in India, and thus could understand the Bedouin, who
informed him that he had been wounded thus, by one of those sons of
Anak, our Life-guardsmen, in the charge at Kassassin.
'An Egyptian, by jingo!' exclaimed Carslogie, who came up at that
moment. 'Are you about to become a studier of humanity?'
'Well, Cuvier was great in the study of wasps, and so forth. Why
shouldn't I study Egyptians?' replied Allan, grimly, 'and this poor
devil seems to have been wounded in the affair at Kassassin the other
day.'
'You understand him, then?'
'Perfectly. Please bring one of the staff surgeons quickly; he must
have been lying here when we took up our ground over-night.'
The Bedouin, whose astonishment that he was not butchered on the
instant was great, stared alternately at Allan and at Carslogie, who
was a young fellow of the best style, one whose fine face even the
hideous tropical helmet (which is such an appalling substitute for
the graceful feather bonnet) could not spoil. His figure was slight
and elegant, his features clearly cut and refined, and his bright
brown chestnut hair was close and curly.
The Bedouin was a perfect type of his race, and, save that he had a
good Remington rifle slung over his back, was not much changed in
habit, nature, or turn of thought from his ancestors of the tribe of
Ishmael.
Though weakened now by suffering and great loss of blood, he seemed
spare of figure and light of limb, well-formed and active, tall, but
whether thirty or forty years old it was impossible to say. He had a
long, thin, and expressive countenance, with glittering black eyes
and teeth of pearly whiteness. His colour was a dusky brown, his
hair black and wiry.
He was evidently a Bedouin of the desert, as the two ends of the
scarlet shawl which formed his turban hung down upon the shoulder, to
distinguish him from the Arabs of other tribes. He was clad in a
thick dark brown baracan of wool, which served as a dress by day and
a bed by night, over which was a robe with wide sleeves.
When the doctor was dressing his wound, which was certainly a
terrible sword-cut, his richly embroidered girdle was seen, and this
announced him to be a sheikh, and such he was proved to be, as Allan
gathered from him that his name was Zeid el Ourdeh, the sheikh of a
tribe near Jebel Dimeshk, between the desert and the disused railway
to Heliopolis, 'the City of the Sun;' and as he lay there in his
picturesque costume, with a group of wondering Highlanders, in their
dark kilts and white helmets, gathered round him, and the blood-red
sun in the distance, coming swiftly up out of the dry sand of the
yellow desert, as it seemed, Allan thought what a subject was the
whole for the pencil of an artist.
The Bedouin was on the point of fainting, so great was the agony
occasioned by the dressing of his wound; but a mouthful from Allan's
flask revived him more than it would have done one usually accustomed
to such stimulants.
'Some sick men are going back to the rear at Ismailia,' said Allan.
'Carslogie, please to order the ambulance people to come this way.
I'll send this unfortunate creature to the Third Field Hospital.'
Carslogie paused to scrape a vesta and light a cigar, which he
proceeded to puff with a sigh of satisfaction.
'Quick, Carslogie,' cried Allan. 'We have no time to lose. The
bugles will sound immediately.'
And Carslogie went on his way with the air of a man who thought the
world would be none the worse for having a Bedouin the less in it.
In his own language, and in terms peculiarly his own, Allan could
make out that the sheikh was thanking him in a low and earnest voice,
and adding that while life lasted he 'would always deem him as a
brother. You infidels are powerful as the genii of old; you can
flash a light at night brilliant as that of the sun at noon; you have
another light that springs from the unseen air. I have seen it in
the streets of Cairo' (no doubt referring to gas); 'and you can send
your thoughts from land to land under the sea more swiftly than even
the Afrite did in the days of Solomon; and I fear that from your
hands the Egyptians will suffer such chastisement as fell on the
people of Noah, of Ad, and of Thamud,' he added, wearily and sadly,
as his head fell on one side.
A party of the ambulance had now come, and Allan informed him that he
was to be sent to Ismailia. He did more; he placed some money in his
hand wherewith to procure necessaries, and, while the eyes of the
Bedouin gleamed with gratitude, his brown mahogany and attenuated
fingers closed avariciously and tightly on such an unusual gift as
coins.
''Pon my soul, Allan Graham,' said Carslogie, 'considering how these
rascals treated our wounded at Kassassin, your humanity, to say the
least of it, seems to me to be a little misplaced.'
'Perhaps; but I cannot help it. I feel a little tender-hearted just
now,' said Allan, with a smile, as the wounded Bedouin--of whom he
had not seen the last--was borne away.
The pipes struck up, and once more the columns began a ten-miles'
march to Mahsameh. The Gordon Highlanders were in advance, the
Camerons next, then came the Highland Light Infantry, and then the
Black Watch, all toiling through the soft, deep sand. These splendid
regiments were all marching in massed columns, at one pace interval,
the cavalry moving with them collaterally on one flank, and the
artillery on the other, clattering along, with spunges, buckets,
spare wheels, and forge waggons--all forming a grand, impressive
spectacle in the midst of the wide Egyptian desert.
To Scottish soldiers, who are usually so well-grounded in their Bible
history, the soil they were treading, if the toil made it disgusting
on one hand, memory made it full of deep interest on the other. They
knew that they were already in, or were approaching, the Land of
Goshen, where, by the tasks they had conned at school and those which
their ministers superintended, they were aware that they were nigh
unto the place where Jacob dwelt of old, that he might be near to
Joseph, who lived at Pharaoh's court; near to the place where father
and son met, and where we still find Rameses, which was built by the
Israelites in the days of their bondage; and, as our soldiers marched
on, some there were who recalled these things to each other, as their
minds went back to the village kirk, whose bells awoke the echoes of
green and lonely glens, and to the firesides of their fathers, when
expounding on these things on Saturday night, when the 'big ha'
Bible' was produced; and, though they might yawn wearily over such
matters at home, these scriptural names and localities had a very
different effect upon them now.