talent.

Almost every night, drifting down from their

camp, you might hear the familiar chorale

The Rifles were keeping their spirits up, and they were as smart and keen as you could wish. But they were not acclimatised, nor were the Guards, so that they sent nearly a hundred cases-mostly mild sunfever-into hospital in a week.

The first squadron of the 21st Lancers-they were travelling as three squadrons to be re-formed into four in the field-arrived on the 11th. The second half of the 5th Fusiliers came in on the 13th. Everything seemed strolling on satisfactorily and sleepily. Then suddenly the Sirdar aroused us with one of his lightning movements. You will have formed an idea of the sort of man he is-all patience for a month, all swiftness when the day comes. The day came on August 13. At eleven I saw him, grave as always, gracious and courteous, volunteering facilities. noon he was gone up the river to the front.

At

The waiting, the sudden start, the caution that breathed no word of his intention, yet dictated an official explanation of his departure before he left—it was the Sirdar all over. And with his departure

THE SIRDAR'S IDIOSYNCRASY.

215

Fort Atbara took on yet another metempsychosis. It became all at once the deserted base-camp, a caravanserai for reinforcements, a forwarding depot for stores. True, most of the staff remained-nobody pretending to know what had taken the Sirdar away so astonishingly, unless it was merely his idiosyncrasy of sudden and rapid movement. If anybody had been told any other reason, it was just the man or two that would not tell again.

But curiosity is a tactless futility when you have to do with generals. It was enough that the advance had come with a rush. The detachments of the 17th and 18th Egyptian, sitting about on the bank till steamers arrived to let them complete the brigade, disappeared magically in the Sirdar's wake. With them went their Brigadier, Collinson Bey. On that same evening the leading steamers passed up with parts of the First British Brigade from Darmali. Four days' voyage to below Shabluka and then they would come down in one day for the Second. Then we should be complete and ready for Omdurman.

Meanwhile there was hardly a fighting man in Fort Atbara. The three battalions of the Second Brigade were in camp just south of it, on the Atbara. The first third of the Lancers were across the river; the second came in on the afternoon of the 14th. It wanted only the third squadron and the Lancashire Fusiliers to complete the force. The cavalry was to start on the 16th with every kind of riding

and baggage animal to march up, and the more able-bodied of the correspondents were going with them.

So on the torrid Sunday morning of the 14th we filled the empty fort with a dress rehearsal of camels. In the Atbara campaign I had been part of a mess of three with nine camels: now it was a mess of four with twenty. We marched them all up solemnly after breakfast and computed how much of our multitudinous baggage would go on to them. Fourteen of them were hired camels: a hired camel is cheaper than a bought one, but it generally has smallpox, carries much less weight, and is a deal lengthier to load.

The twenty gurgling monstrosities sat themselves down on the sand and threw up their chins with the camel's ineffable affectation of elegance. The men cast a deliberate look round and remarked, "The baggage is much and the camels are few." Next they brought out rotten nets of rope and slung it round the boxes. and sacks. That is to say, one man slung it round one box and the others stood statuesque about him and suggested difficulties. That done, the second man took up the wondrous tale, then the third, then the fourth. This took about two hours. Then they suggested that a camel could not without danger to its health carry more than two dozen of whisky, whereas anything worthy the name of a camel can carry four hundredweight. Altogether they made some fifty

PREPARING FOR TARDY VENGEANCE.

217

And when we said we

camel- loads of the stuff. wouldn't have it, all the men stood round and gabbled, and half the camels girned and gnashed their teeth, and the neighbouring donkeys lifted up their voices and brayed like souls in torment, and when you moved to repulse an importunate Arab you kicked a comparatively innocent camel. Allah was their witness that the camels-which, when we hired them two days before, were very strong-were very weak.

But little we cared. We were going up to Omdurman and Khartum. Camel - loads adjust themselves, but war and the Sirdar wait for nobody. We were marching into lands where few Englishmen had ever set heel, no Englishman for fifteen years. We were to be present at the tardy vengeance for a great humiliation.

218

XXVIII.

THE DESERT MARCH TO OMDURMAN.

THE column was to move out of camp at five in the morning. But at half-past, when our tardy caravan filed up to join it, dim bulks still heaved themselves up in the yellow smoke, half-sunrise, half-dust-cloud -masses of laden camels, strings of led horses proclaiming that the clumsy tail of our convoy was still unwinding itself. Threading the patchy mimosa scrub, we came out into a stretch of open sand; beyond it, straight, regular, ominous of civilisation, appeared the telegraph wire which crosses the Nile at Fort Atbara, and now ran on to beyond Metemmeh.

In two black bars across the sand, as straight as the wire itself, the flat rays of sunrise shadowed the 21st Lancers. Two travelling or nearly three campaigning squadrons, they were the first British cavalry in the Sudan since 1885. On their side it was their first appearance in war. They were relatively a young regiment, and the only one in the British army which