Tired men cannot go on talking all night, even about the events of an
exciting day, and one by one our friends rolled themselves up in their
coats and went off to sleep. And how the unfortunates on sentry-go
envied them! That was an infliction which Tantalus escaped, but it
might well compare with those which have caused his name to be embodied
in our language.
To feel that the lives of a number of other people as well as your own
depend on your keeping extremely wide awake, when you are dead beat and
have to fight against the strongest possible inclination to doze even as
you walk about, is really no light trial of fortitude, though it is not
reckoned amongst the hardships of campaigning. But if you are within
sight of your sleeping comrades, and within hearing of their snores, it
becomes doubly exasperating, and might really sour the temper if it were
not for the consolatory reflection that another time _you_ will be the
happy sleeper, and one of the present performers on the nose will be
listening to your efforts to play upon that organ.
It has been whispered that evil men when on sentry have been known to
feel a grim delight in an alarm which has dissipated the slumber of
their comfortable comrades, but we may surely hope that this is
slanderous. However that may be, the slumbers of those who were not
kept awake by the pain of wounds or by duty the night after El Teb were
not disturbed, and next day the main body, after a guard had been left
at the wells, went on to Tokar.
"Do you think they will fight?" asked Green of one of his seniors during
a short halt.
"Sure to," replied the other. "You saw for yourself what determined
demons they are, and it is not likely that they will give up a place
they have only just taken without striking a blow for it."
"Do you think they will fight?" asked Tom Strachan of another, not in
the hearing of the first oracle, who had moved away.
"Not they!" responded the second. "After such a licking as they got
yesterday all the fight will be taken out of them."
"Which shall we believe, Green?" said Tom presently.
"It is very puzzling," replied the inquiring mind. "Suppose we wait and
see before we make up our minds."
"A Daniel come to judgment!" exclaimed Strachan. "A second Daniel! We
_will_ wait."
"Hulloa! There's Charley Halton!" as a smart young cavalry officer
cantered past with a message, having delivered which he came to exchange
greetings with his friends.
One of the most enviable of mortals was Halton, a lad who might be the
model for either painter or poet in search of an ideal hero. Handsome,
strong, active, acquiring proficiency in all games and athletic
exercises almost instinctively, a horseman with the hands of a Chaloner,
and the seat of a Land, endowed with a bright intelligence which seized
the common sense of things, and comprehended the meaning of an order as
well as its literal injunctions, and a happy disposition which made a
trouble of nothing, he was a general favourite wherever he went. He was
attached as a galloper--or bearer of orders--to the General's staff,
but, being employed to take a message the day before to his own
regiment, he charged with them, and the officers of the Blankshire who
knew him, and witnessed the charge from a distance, were anxious to know
for certain what had occurred, the reports which had reached them being
too contradictory for reliance.
"Well, Charley, did you eat them all yesterday?"
"Not quite; we have left a few for you. Eat them, by Jove! They were
near eating us."
"Why, you seemed to go through them grandly."
"Yes, but it was like going through water, which closes on you as you
go. The beggars lay flat, or crouched in holes, and cut at the horses
as they passed, to hamstring or maim them; and good-bye to the poor
fellow whose horse fell! We ought to have had lances, and it would have
been a very different tale. But the troopers' swords could not reach
the beggars, who are as lithe as monkeys. If they had run it would have
been easy to get a cut at them; so it would if they had stood up. But
they were as cool as cucumbers, and dodged just at the right moment. Of
course some were not quite so spry as others, and got cut down; it was a
case of the survival of the fittest. What acrobats they would be in
time if this game lasted long enough!
"But it was like a nightmare. You know when you have a dream that you
are trying to kill something which won't die; some beast of the eel
persuasion. We went through them, cutting all we knew; re-formed; came
back, doing ditto; through them a third time; and _then_ there was no
satisfaction worth calling such. The fellows were broken up indeed, and
a good lot were sabred, but not so many as there ought to have been
after undergoing one cutting up, let alone three. And the scattered
individuals still showed fight. And we lost awfully; no wonder, for I
will tell you what I saw.
"A man rode at an Arab who fired and missed him, and then seized his
spear, with the apparent intention of meeting him as an infantry soldier
should, according to Cocker. But when the horse was two yards from him
he fell flat as a harlequin. The trooper leant over on the off side as
low as he could and cut at the beggar, but could not reach him, and the
moment he was past, the Arab jumped up and thrust his spear through him
from behind. I never saw anything done so quickly in all my life; it
was like magic.
"There was a clever old soldier who was not to be done that way; when he
saw he could not get at his Arab, he slipped off his horse before you
could say `knife,' parried his spear-thrust, ran him through the body,
and was up again like a shot. But it was heart-breaking business
altogether; you should have seen the horses afterwards, cut about
awfully, poor things; and we lost heavily in men too. The Colonel has
had the dead Arabs' spears collected, and armed his regiment with them;
and if they get another chance, you will see much more satisfactory
business, I expect. But I must be off."
And off accordingly he went, his horse seeming pleased and proud to
carry and obey him. And on went the brigade also towards Tokar.
Oracle number two proved the correct one; the enemy made no stand at the
place, but streamed away at their approach, while the inhabitants came
out to greet them with every demonstration of joy and gratitude.
Interpreters were few, and apt to be absorbed by senior officers, but it
was gathered afterwards that the Tokarites were denouncing the Mahdi as
a false prophet and heretic, whose soldiers had despoiled them of their
goods, and only spared their lives on condition of their believing in
him, and this condition they had thought it best to pretend to comply
with, though their consciences rebuked them sorely for the pretended
apostacy.
But though our friends of the First Blankshire could not understand all
this, whatever officers of other corps may have done, the pantomime of
the men, women, and children was unmistakable, and was only intended to
express the most enthusiastic delight.
"I shall never make it out," said Green. "Have we relieved the place
after all, then?"
"Cannot say; we shall find out, perhaps in general orders."
"Catch a newspaper correspondent; he will tell you all about it."
"At any rate, the gratitude of the poor people is quite touching."
"Not quite, thank goodness!" cried Fitzgerald; "at any rate so far as I
am concerned; though a horrid old woman who cannot have washed for
years, and who tainted the air with the rancid fat in her hair for yards
round, tried to kiss me. But I dodged round the major's horse, and left
her to him. In my humble opinion, we want the square formation quite as
much to meet our native friends as our enemies."
Major Elmfoot got away from his demonstrative female, and rode up to the
group.
"They seem very fond of us, sir," said Stacy.
"Yes," responded the major. "I wonder whether they went through the
same performance when the Mahdi's army arrived."
"But they showed fight, and he took the place by storm, did he not,
sir?"
"I really do not know; a spy said so. But the place does not look
knocked about at all, and the people seem very jolly. I should not be
surprised if the whole thing were a farce, and Tokar had not been
besieged or taken at all."
"Then you do not think they are genuine in their welcome, sir?"
"I do not say that; these people have shops of a sort, I believe, and a
customer is a customer all the world over."
The troops bivouacked outside Tokar, where nothing further occurred of
any interest, and shortly afterwards they tramped back to the wells at
El Teb, and so to Trinkitat, where they were re-embarked as quickly as
might be, and steamed round to Suakim, which now became the base of
operations.
And soon Trinkitat was entirely abandoned, and since no natives lived
there (how could they when they had no fresh water?) the place ceased to
be a place at all in any rational sense of the word.
You may have heard the old explanation of how a cannon is made: "you
take a hole, and pour a lot of melted iron round it." Well, Trinkitat
was a hole, and the English store-houses tents, soldiers, horses, camels
were poured round it, and when they were withdrawn, nothing but the hole
remained. But Suakim was a considerable place, built of coral too, and
very interesting in its way to some people. And what was of more
consequence, there were many good wells close by, from which water could
be obtained all the year round.
Suakim itself, as has been explained before, is built on an island, but
the British camp was on the mainland, within the circuit of earthworks
which protected the town and harbour. It was on the eighth of March
that the First Blankshire were landed at this camp. The look of the
houses in the town disappointed some of them now they were closer.
"They don't look like coral at all," said Tom Strachan. "If I had not
been told I should have thought they were the ordinary sun-dried brick
affairs whitewashed."
"I vote we have a regular inspection of them on the first opportunity,"
said Edwards, "and settle the matter once for all."
"It would be kind to posterity," replied Tom.
"If you have so much time to spare, which I very much doubt," said
MacBean, "you will employ it better in visiting a very pretty place and
a curious. There is just a gap in the earthworks which protects Suakim,
a regular breach as one may say, which has to be defended by two strong
works, which the sailors have given the names of ships to--Euryalus and
Carysfoot they call them. And why is the gap left? And why are the two
forts made to defend it instead of filling it up? Just because the
rains, which some don't believe in, make a torrent in the proper season,
and this is the watercourse, and everything which barred its passage
would be swept into the sea."
"I recant and apologise," said Green. "The rain quite convinced me of
its existence at Baker's Fort, I promise you. But you know you sold me
so often that I hardly knew what to believe."
"I never practise upon anybody's credulity in matters of that sort,"
said the doctor. "If a young man likes to believe that the moon is made
of green cheese, I may let him; but atmospheric and scientific facts are
above being trifled with. Well, if you go through this gap, which is
barely a mile off, you will find a very pretty place--the wells, and
sycamore trees, and dates. Just the place to spend a happy day. And if
you take a bottle or two of champagne, and a _pate de foie gras_, I
shall not mind if I make one of the party, and show you the objects of
interest."
But such a pic-nic was not destined to come off, nor was there even any
opportunity given for testing the coral theory, for there was plenty of
work to be done at the moment, and on the eleventh the intending
pleasure-seekers started for Baker's zereba at six o'clock in the
evening.
Baker Pasha's Egyptians, though they had not proved much good at
fighting, and had paid the penalty of their cowardice by undergoing a
massacre which made the world thrill with horror, were very useful to
the avenging force which followed so quickly on their traces. The fort
they had constructed near Trinkitat had done much to help the rapid and
successful advance upon Tokar; and now the zereba they had made eight
miles out from Suakim, and in the direction in which Osman Digna lay
with his whole army, made a good first halting-place for the English
troops. A zereba, it should be mentioned, is an enclosed space
surrounded by thorn-covered bushes cut down and packed round it, with
old packing-cases, or anything else which will afford cover to those
inside. This one was particularly strong, being further protected by a
mound of earth all round it.
When the force, which was the same as before, with the addition of two
hundred Marines, and a mule battery of four nine-pounders, had gone some
little way, night fell, but not darkness, for a bright moon lent them
her rays. Not such a moon as we are accustomed to in these latitudes,
but a large brilliant orb, by whose light small print might be easily
read.
"You have got the best of it," said MacBean, who rode up first to one
friend amongst the officers and then to another, detailing information
which he managed to pick up, he himself best knew how; but it was, as a
rule, exceptionally correct. "The Highlanders, who marched out to the
zereba yesterday in the heat, suffered awfully. There were five cases
of sunstroke, and lots of other men had a narrow squeak of being bowled
over too."
"I can easily imagine it," replied Major Elmfoot, "for it was hot enough
in camp."
"It is not exactly what you would call bracing to-night, even," said
Fitzgerald.
And, indeed, the air was very close, and the march over the loose sand
fatiguing. But the men stepped out merrily, and joke and song lightened
the way. There was an improvisatore in the Blankshire, whose comrades
considered him a wonderful genius, though, as a matter of fact, his
extempore effusions only consisted of taking some well-known song, and
altering certain words or lines to suit a particular occasion.
But this was far more successful than original composition would have
been, because it was so readily understood and caught up; and the man
was really shrewd, and often hit on something appropriate.
He now trolled out in a clear, ringing voice, with every word distinct,
a new version of "The Poacher":--
"When I was bound apprentice in a village of Blanksheer,
I served my master truly for close upon a year;
But now I serves her Majesty, as you shall quickly hear,
For 'tis my delight of a shiny night, in the season of the year."