Once definitely located, our rescue was only the matter of assembling
the requisite strength in armoured cars and finding a competent guide.
This done, our deliverance was but a question of hours. But of how they
would have found things had anything delayed them for even a few days
I do not care to think.
It was about three in the afternoon of St. Patrick's Day--we had
celebrated it in the morning by making a feeble attempt to kill off a
few of the snakes that had recently begun to infest the camp--that the
first car was sighted, and before we had finished pinching ourselves
to prove we were not dreaming the whole force of forty-one were
thundering down upon us. The ambulances pulled up, and the attendants,
as soon as they could free themselves from the embraces of the men,
began to shower food about. Meanwhile, the armoured cars, spreading out
like a "fan," swept by in pursuit of our fleeing guards.
Except for the Senussi priest, whom the sailors had dubbed "The Old
Black Devil," and who had departed a couple of days previously, we had
no special grounds for complaint against the men upon whom the care of
our party had fallen. They had, for the most part, done the best they
could for us, and we had no reason to believe that they had fared much
better than their prisoners. We would gladly have interceded for them
if there had been any chance. Taking it for granted, apparently, that
they would receive no quarter, they had taken to their heels the moment
the first cars came into sight, and a panicky sort of resistance on a
part of a few of them when they were overtaken sealed the fate of the
lot. Save for a few women and children, all the Arabs about the place
succumbed to the fire of the machine-guns, and a score or so of graves
were added to the four of the _Tara_ men we had already buried at
Bir-Hakkim.
We lost one more man in a hospital at Alexandria, but the rest of us,
thanks to good food and careful nursing, were soon quite our old selves
again. Practically every man of us is back, or about to go back, on
duty. Word of my own new command comes only this morning.
Lieutenant Tanner, R.N.R., captain of the _Tara_ in her merchant marine
days, I found in his home at Holyhead. Through the window of his cosy
library, where he spun his yarn, I could look out across the rocky
coast of Anglesea to where the slate-coloured patrol-boats kept guard
in St. George's Channel.
"Lieutenant Tanner," I asked him, "what did the men of the _Tara_ talk
about and think about, once the excitement of the sinking, and the
landing, and the march was over and you were all settled down to the
routine of 'prison life'?"
"First and always--food," he replied, promptly. "We were famishing
for the whole four months and more. For a while we thought and talked
a good deal of the possibility of rescue; but as the weeks went by
that hope gradually died out, and our speculations--perhaps more in
thought than in word--were of how the end would come. It was only
during the last couple of months that the men came to speak often on
this subject, and they were, not unnaturally, most prone to discuss
it in the intervals of deeper depression following the death of one
of their mates. We seemed to divide into two sharply differentiated
parties on this issue, the optimists holding that our heritage of
civilization and our discipline would enable us to meet the worst
bravely and resignedly, while the pessimists maintained that we would
gradually slough off our civilized restraint--just as our clothes and
our conventions had gone already--and end by fighting for life like a
pack of wolves. The rate at which the bickerings and petty quarrels
over trivialities increased as the days went by inclined more and more
of the men to the latter theory, but a few of us never wavered in our
belief, but it would be the man in us, and not the beast, that would be
supreme at the last.
"We--the officers--made a point of imposing no discipline whatever upon
the men, this extending even to non-interference in their increasingly
frequent disputes. We held--and rightly, I am convinced--that anything
calculated to give an outlet to their feelings would make them less
likely to become a prey to gloomy thought. Sullen, silent brooding
was what we feared more than anything else. Consequently, therefore,
we rather welcomed the occasional bouts of fisticuffs that marked
the later stages of our imprisonment. They unquestionably acted as
safety-valves to prevent more dangerous explosions.
"I also made what effort I could to keep the minds of the men occupied.
Every Sunday evening we met and sang hymns, and on these occasions I
usually read from my Prayer Book and invited discussion on some text I
had given out the previous Sunday. Here"--turning to his diary--"are
some of the things we debated in our weekly desert 'forums' by the old
Roman wells:--
"'More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.'--From
'The Passing of Arthur.'
"'Love took up the glass of time.'--From 'Locksley Hall.'
"'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for
his friend.'
"'Does the end justify the means?'
"As you may well imagine, strange theses were developed, and I am
afraid that many a sore head resulted from the preliminary discussions.
It didn't take much to start them going in that last fortnight after
the snails failed us; but the diversion was good for them, and,
besides, poor chaps, they were far too weak to be able to hurt one
another in the least. Their fights were like the tussles of a couple of
puppies. When you see some of the boys on the steamer to-night, by the
way, I can suggest no more promising line of inquiry for you to pursue
than to ask them to tell you some of the things they used to fight
about in the desert."
Wireless Operator Birkby and Stewards Barton and Fenton, who were among
the _Tara_ survivors, had, on their return to England, been put to work
on the _Tara's_ sister-ship, the _Greenore_, and it was behind the
darkened windows of the smoking-room of this smart little packet, as
she bore into the snoring sou'wester which swept St. George's Channel,
that I contrived to gather the three of them together to talk of their
adventures.
"All I want to know," I said, "is a few of the things you fellows used
to punch each other's heads about in the desert. I've got all the rest
of the story."
They rose to that cast with a rush. All three commenced talking at
once, but the two stewards quickly fell silent out of deference to the
superior rank of the wireless operator.