The Natal Field Artillery, too, were on our visiting list, and we found
them to be excellent fellows. We swapped lies with them; we pronounced
their guns to be the loot of some museum--they were not, certainly, of
the newest type--and we greedily borrowed all the newspapers that they
had brought with them.
It was in the N.F.A. lines, by the way, one white-hot noon, that I
almost tripped over the super-philosopher. He was Irish, which perhaps
makes his philosophy the less remarkable, and he sat upon an upturned
soap-box and toyed with a dish of something that sounded like camp stew.
There was a sudden noise, the sort of noise that makes a grown-up say
to a child: "You should put your hand before your mouth when you do
that!" and I heard, rather than saw, the super-philosopher clear his
mouth of some objectionable morsel. I looked round, and his pale eye
closed with mine. "Praise th' saints!" he said, "thim ants have no
bones into thim!"
Our interest in the arrivals did not last long. A new sandstorm blew
up and swallowed them, and when, weeks later, it spat them out again,
they had all but lost their identity as far as we were concerned. The
infantry became known to us simply as "foot-sloggers;" the Carbineers,
from a weakness for polishing their riding-boots, became "the Cherry
Blossom Brigade;" and we, the I.L.H., were known to all and sundry as
the "Illicit Liquor Hunters." I do not think, however, that we should
have minded so much if there had been any liquor left to hunt.
We were kept hard at work, too, and we soon learned that the
"in-betweens" were more profitably to be spent in what we called
"blanket-drill," and what our N.C.O.'s, when they were not indulging
in it themselves, called "darned laziness," than in afternoon calls
upon strangers who had so thoroughly taken upon themselves the color
of their surroundings as to have become as supremely uninteresting as
ourselves.
The deep groaning noise that a trumpet makes at dawn, and which
field-officers and poets call "réveillé," and turn over again and snore
at, when by some rare chance, they hear it, was to us the first note
in a symphony of labor that was to last all day. Who has heard the
howls of execration that uprise from a sleeping camp at its first note
will appreciate the truth of what I say. The utter hopelessness of any
resistance to its summons is, perhaps, what galls most. Turn you never
so deaf an ear, you will still have the chilling conviction that some
N.C.O., with more liver than bowels of compassion, is waiting "outside"
to mark you down as an absentee from roll-call.
Réveillé, roll-call, arms inspection, morning stables, alleged
breakfast, stable fatigue, mounted squadron drill, watering and feeding
horses, and musketry instruction took us by gentle stages as far as
lunch-time. After lunch (save the mark! but is sand, disguised as Irish
stew, lunch?), Swedish drill, sectional skirmishing on foot, and an odd
quarter-master's fatigue or so thrown in, would lead us on to evening
stables. That accomplished, we were at liberty--those, at least, of
us who were not on guard for the night--to prepare our evening meal
and to retire to our blankets, where, masters of ourselves at last, we
could--the writer certainly did on one occasion--dream that one-eyed
camels of malevolent aspect chased us through interminable leagues
of sandstorm, and finally drove us into seas of greasy Irish stew,
wherefrom emerged horrid shapes that lectured us on the care of rifles
and the virtues of discipline.
How we longed for war, if only for its comparative peace!
Not all our days were gray days, however. There came a period when each
morning saw us, clad mainly in pipes and towels, taking our horses down
to a landlocked arm of the sea, where the hills stood up in their glory
around us, and where flamingoes, in their stately phalanxes, waded
the still shallows or flung in broad-pinioned ease to some further
sand-bank; where black seals bobbed greeting to us from the dipping
waters, and where we could forget the sandstorms of yesterday and
to-morrow.
Horses, we found, made excellent diving boards, and lent themselves,
besides, to a type of chariot-racing that I have not met elsewhere. For
this form of sport it is essential to have two horses, and it usually
became one's painful duty, therefore, to borrow the mount of some other
man, preferably a non-swimmer, when he was not looking, and then to
make for deep water--where he could not follow--with as little delay as
possible. Remained then only to so contrive oneself as to stand with a
foot on the back of each animal, and to keep them swimming sufficiently
near together to allow one to retain some sort of balance. Sometimes
one would succeed, but usually, and in spite of extreme efforts, the
contrary beasts would swim more and more widely apart, until overtaxed
powers of doing the splits would end in a ducking as ignominious as
inevitable.
I remember an occasion when, after a long and tiring patrol, we had
ridden our horses into the shallows to cool their legs, a school of
ground-sharks suddenly appeared, almost literally, under their very
noses. The White Knight in "Alice in Wonderland," who made his horse
wear spiked anklets against the danger of shark-bite, must have
foreseen some such contingency; but then, had he been with us, he
would have fallen off, I feel sure, in the smother of spray and panic
which the experience cost us.