Chapter Eighteen.
Against the Stream.
A swift broad river, with the water broken into foaming wavelets by rocks which were everywhere showing their vicious heads above the surface; a string of nuggars, or half-decked boats, fifteen feet broad, forty-five feet long, flat-bottomed, each with a thick rope attached to the bows, and a string of men on the bank towing it under a hot sun.
Perhaps you have yourself towed a skiff on the Thames, when the current was so strong that the progress made with the oars was unsatisfactory. Well, if you have, you don’t know one bit what this was like. In the first place, the Thames, even by Monkey Island, is still water compared to the Nile between Surras and Dal, a sixty-mile stretch. Then your skiff did not carry six tons of beef, bacon, biscuit, and other stores. It may also be safely asserted that the towing-path you walked on was not composed of sharp pointed rocks.
Those were the conditions under which certain picked British soldiers, one of whom was an old friend of ours, lost sight of for a considerable time, were dragging their nuggar up a series of cataracts. Towing always looks to me an absurd business, much as if a man were to carry a horse about, and call it going for a ride.
“Are you growling or singing, Tarrant?” asked Kavanagh of the man behind him on the string.
“Not singing, you may take your davy,” growled the man addressed.
“I fancied not, though there is a certain likeness in your way of doing both which made me ask. I suppose you are growling then—what about?”
“What about, indeed!” grunted Tarrant. “D’ye suppose I ’listed as a soldier or a barge horse?”
“Don’t know; never saw your attestation papers.”
“Why, it was as a soldier then. I should have thought twice if I had known I was to be put to this sort of work.”
“Really! Why, when we were rowing, you did not like that, and said you would sooner be doing any work on your legs.”
“But I didn’t mean this; why, I have cut two pairs of boots to pieces against these here sharp rocks since we began it.”
“Ay,” said Kavanagh, “but you had already worn-out some of your garments at the other game, so it was only considerate to give the feet a chance.”
“Well, it’s a pity them that likes it should not have the doing of it,” said the judicious Tarrant.
“Well, you know, you could not pull an oar, and you can pull a rope,” said Grady, “so you are a trifle more useful now than you were before; and begorra you had need.”
“I could pull a rope if it were over the bough of a tree, and the other end round your neck,” snarled Tarrant.
“Oh, the murdering villain!” cried Grady. “And would ye be after hanging a poor boy who never harmed ye in all his life?”
“Well, keep a civil tongue in your head.”
“Sure, and it’s myself that has kissed the Blarney stone, and can do that same. And if you had such a thing as a bottle of whisky or a pound of tobacco about you, I would make you believe you were a pleasant companion, and pretty to look at besides. But what’s the use of telling lies when there’s nothing to be got by it?”
“Suppose you were to pull a bit harder and talk a bit less,” said Corporal Adams.
“And I will, corporal dear,” replied Grady. “But sure I thought we was marching at ease.”
It may be well to explain that when troops get the word March at ease!—which is generally given directly they step off, when they are not drilling or manoeuvring, but simply on the route—they are allowed to carry their arms as they please, open the ranks, though without losing their places or straggling, smoke their pipes, and chat or sing if they like.
At the word of command—Attention! They close up, slope their arms properly, put away their pipes, and tramp on in perfect silence.
But marching at ease was such a singularly inappropriate expression for men who were dragging a heavy nuggar up a cataract under a blazing sun that there was a general laugh, and even Tarrant relaxed into a grin. A general laugh, I say, not a universal one, for Macintosh, who was plodding along behind Grady, preserved his gravity.
“I don’t say that silence is incumberous,” explained Corporal Adams, who, since he had got his stripes, had taken to using rather fine language, “but too much talking don’t go with hauling.”
“Ho, ho, ho!” chuckled Macintosh, and the corporal began to think he had said something funny. But no; Macintosh had trodden on an unusually sharp flint, and that presented Grady’s idea of what marching at ease was in a ridiculous form to his mind. So when the pang was over he was tickled.
“Eh, but Grady’s a poor daft creature to call this marching at ease; ho, ho!”
A particularly stiff bit came just now. The rope strained as if it would snap; the bows of the nuggar were buried in foam, and the men hauling were forced to take the corporal’s hint, and keep their breath for other purposes than conversation.
When they had got over the worst, however, the boat got jammed on a rock, and the work of getting her off devolved on the crew on board of her, unless she were so fast as to require the aid of the others, who for the present got a much-required rest.
“A set of duffers, those chaps,” said the sergeant in charge of the party, a young fellow named Barton, of good parentage, and Kavanagh’s particular friend off duty. “A regular Nile reis, with his crew of four natives, would never have stuck the nuggar there.”
“I wish we had them Canadian vogajaws, sergeant,” said Corporal Adams.
“Ay, they are first-rate,” replied the sergeant.
“A good many boats have them, haven’t they?”
“Oh, yes! Most I suppose, or we should not get on at all. But we have not had the luck to get them for our craft. There are only a few of these who know how to work a boat up rapids at all, and I fancy they are only apprentices at it. As for the others, one of them owned to me that he had never been on any river before the Nile but the Thames at Putney, and his idea of a rapid was the tide rushing under the bridge.”
“But sure, sergeant, he can sing ‘Row, brothers, row,’ iligantly, he can,” said Grady.
“Ay, but he can’t do it,” replied the sergeant. “He ought to be in the water now. There’s Captain Reece overboard and shoving; I must try and get to him. Stand by the rope, men, and haul away like blazes when she shifts.”
What with poling, and shoving, and pulling at the rope, the nuggar was floated once more at last, and on they went again, and by-and-by the river widened, and the current was not so strong, and so long as they kept the rope pretty taut the boat came along without any very great exertion.
“Have a pipe out of my baccy-box, just to show there’s no malice?” said Grady to Tarrant.
“Thankee, I will,” replied Tarrant, “for mine is so wet it won’t burn. I went up to my neck in shoving off the first time we stuck, before we took to towing.”
“Eh, but that was a chance for the crocodiles!” cried Macintosh. “I saw ye go souse under, Tarrant, and thought one of them had got ye by the leg. Ye might have grumbled a bit then, and folks would have said you had reason.”
“It is all very fine,” said Tarrant, “and if you chaps are pleased, you are welcome; but I don’t call this riding on a camel. I had as soon have stopped with my own regiment, amongst sensible and pleasant lads, and taken my chance, as have volunteered to join this corps, if I had known I was to march all the same, and lug a beast of a boat after me too. I expected to have a camel to ride on.”
“Thank you for putting me in mind that I’m mounted,” said Grady; “I had almost forgotten it.”
“Make your minds easy,” said Sergeant Barton. “You will have plenty of camel riding in a day or two, quite as much as you like perhaps.”
“And I hope it will be before I have worn-out my third pair of boots,” said Macintosh. “Eh, but this is a grievous waste of shoe-leather.”
“I had sooner wear that out than my own skin,” said Kavanagh.
“I’m not that sure,” replied Macintosh. “The skin grows again, and the shoe-leather doesn’t.”
The sergeant laughed.
“Well, I think I may promise you that you will have no more of this work after to-morrow,” he said. “You will get your camels at Wady Haifa.” Barton had been specially instructed in camel drill, and selected for his proficiency to assist in training the corps to which Kavanagh belonged.
His story was a very simple one; he was not one of the plucked, who, failing to get their commissions, join the ranks rather than not serve at all, for it was most likely that he would have succeeded in any competitive examination, being a clever and industrious youth, who was doing well at Oxford when his father lost all his money, having shares in a bank which suddenly failed, and left him responsible to the extent of every penny he possessed. The undergraduate had been accustomed to a handsome allowance, and owed bills which he was now unable to pay. This he could not help, but being an honourable man he would not incur a farthing more, but took his name off the boards at once, divided his caution money, and what was obtained by the sale of his horse, the furniture of his rooms, and whatever else he possessed, amongst his creditors, and enlisted. Having once chosen his profession, he went at it with prodigious zeal, and lost no opportunity of attending any school of instruction which was open to him. When he had once acquired his drill, he was soon made corporal, then sergeant. He distinguished himself at Hythe; he learnt signalling both with flags and flashes. And when useful men were wanted for the formation of Camel Corps, and the battalions in Egypt searched for them, he was one of the first pitched upon to learn and then to instruct. For, when people talk of the super-human intelligence of German officers and soldiers, and speak of ours as a set of dunder-headed idiots, you need not quite take all they say for absolute fact. I think if you took the adjutants, sergeant-majors, and musketry instructors of the British army, you would find it hard to pick out an equal number of men in any country, even Germany itself, to beat them for intelligence, common sense, and promptitude.
“There will be a new drill to learn!” growled Tarrant.
“Oh, that won’t be much,” said Kavanagh. “Lots of old words of command would do over again, I should say. For instance, ‘Shouldare—oop!’ only it would be the camel’s shoulder which has to be mounted.”
“Now, that’s mighty clever,” said Grady. “Will you tell me something, Kavanagh, you that’s a real scholar now—can a man be two things at the same time?”
“Of course he can; he can be an Irishman and a barge horse, you see.”
“Ah, then a Mounted Infantry man can be a trooper and a foot soldier all at once. And a camel rider, would you call him a horse soldier, now?”
“No, Pat, I could not afford it. I’m an Irishman as well as yourself, and dull people would think it was a blunder.”
“That’s a true word,” said Grady. “And have you not noticed now, when folks laugh at an Irishman, he is mostly quite right if they had the understanding? Now you have observed, and heard, what a bad country Egypt is for the eyes. Sure they give us green goggles, or we should get the—what do you call it, Mr Corporal, sir, if you plaze?”
“The hop-fallimy,” replied Corporal Adams, proud of being appealed to.
“Thank you; the hop-family, what with the sun, and the sand, and the flies. And if you get the hop-family you are likely to go blind, and that is a bad thing. Is it not curious that the great river of a country that is so bad for the eyes should have cataracts itself in it? Now that would sound foolish to many people, but you, who are an Irishman, see the bearings of it, don’t you now?”
“But,” observed Macintosh, “a cataract in the eye is a skin, or something growing over it, and a cataract in the river is a kind of waterfall. They are not the same sort of thing at all.”
“And is that so? To be sure, now, what a stupid mistake then I made. And did you ever undergo the operation, now, Macintosh?”
“Well, beyond vaccination and the lugging out of a broken tooth, I don’t call to mind that I have been in the surgeon’s hands; and if ye want to know the truth, I don’t care if I never am. Eh, but that tooth now, it took a tug!”
“I thought you had never had it done,” said Grady. “It’s a pity, sure. And what do you say makes a cataract in the Nile?”
“Surely you have seen enough of them for yersel’. It’s a rapid where the water comes down a steep part with great vehemence. But what operation are ye talking of? I expect ye mean some sauce or other.”
“Sure, no; it’s only that which they say a Scotchman must have done before a joke can be got into his head. But I don’t belave it at all; folks are such liars!” said Grady.
“I would have ye to know,” said Macintosh, when the others had stopped laughing, “that a Scotchman is not deficient in wut, but he can’t see it in mere nonsense.”
All this talk was not spoken right off the reel, as it reads, but at intervals, during pauses in the harder part of the work, and rests. And it was lucky they could keep their spirits up; there is health and vigour in that:
“The merry heart goes all the day;
The heavy tires in a mile—a!”
Shakespeare is always right.
But the sergeant was better than his word, and that was their last afternoon of rowing or towing, for they reached the place where the camels were collected that evening before sun-down. On the very next day the new drill commenced, for there was not an hour to be lost.
The last days of 1884 had arrived, and Khartoum still held out. The chances of reaching that place and rescuing Gordon were always present to every mind; that was the one goal to which all efforts were tending. But there was no good in for ever talking about it; on the contrary, it was more healthy to divert the thoughts, if possible, in other directions. A fall from a horse is unpleasant, and risky to the bones, but a tumble off a camel is worse, because it is more dangerous to fall ten feet than five. The first step was a difficulty—to mount the creature at all, that is. It looks easy enough, for it lies down for you. Apparently all you have to do is to throw one leg over and settle yourself in the saddle. But the camel has a habit of springing up like a Jack-in-the-box just as your ankle is on a level with his back, and away you go flying. Experienced travellers, who have camel drivers and attendants, make one of them stand on the creature’s fore legs to keep them down while they settle themselves; but troopers had no such luxuries provided for them, and had to look after their animals themselves, and it took several trials and severe rolls on the sand before some of them managed to mount at all. There the camel lay, quiet and tame and lazy, to all appearance as a cat dozing before the fire. But the moment the foot was over his back he resembled the same cat when she sees a mouse, and away you went. Taught by experience, you spring into the saddle with a vault. Up goes the camel on the first two joints of his forelegs with a jerk which sends the small of your back against the hinder pommel so violently that you think the spine broken. Before you have time to decide this important question in your mind, the hind legs go up with an equally spasmodic movement, and you hit the front pommel hard with your stomach.
Surely now you are settled; not a bit of it. The beast jumps from his knees to his feet with a third spring, and your back gets another severe blow from the hind pommel. After these three pommellings you are mounted. But when you want to get off, and your camel lies down for you, you get it all over again; only your stomach gets the hits one and three, and your back the middle one. Opinions differ as to which is the most pleasant, but after several repetitions of it you feel as if you had been down in the middle of a scrimmage at football, and both sides had taken you for the object to be kicked at. The ordinary traveller, when once on his camel, would stop there some hours; and again, when he got off, would remain off till it was time to renew his journey, and so he would not get so much of it. But a soldier learning camel drill must go on till he is perfect.
After mounting, dismounting, and re-mounting a certain number of times, the troopers learned to anticipate the camel jerks, and avoid the high pommels which rose in front and rear of the saddles, or rather to use them as aids instead of encumbrances. But it took a good deal of practice, and some were longer about falling into it than others. But they were not always at drill, though they had so much of it.
Some went in for fishing, and hooks and lines had been provided by the authorities for that purpose. But the sport was very poor, little being caught, and after trying it once or twice Kavanagh preferred to sit under the tree or in an arbour and smoke his pipe either alone or with a companion—Sergeant Barton for choice, but he was not always available. When that was the case the honest Grady would sometimes join him, and though he would rather have been left to his own thoughts, it was not in his nature to show a want of cordiality towards a good fellow who made advances to him. From the day of his enlistment Reginald Kavanagh had frankly accepted the situation, and had been careful above all things to avoid giving himself any airs of superiority.
“This is a mighty pretty spot you have fixed on, any way,” said Grady, stretching himself under the grateful shade of a palm-tree, “and reminds me of Oireland entirely!”
“It is rather like Merrion Square,” said Kavanagh, gravely; “or that perhaps combined with the Phoenix Park, with a touch of the Lakes of Killarney.”
“Sure, now, you are making fun of a poor boy! Look at that bird now! Isn’t he an illigant bird that? There’s a many of them about, and they are the best looking I have seen at all in Egypt.”
“Do they remind you of Ireland, too?” asked Kavanagh.
“Well, now, you are too hard on me.”
“Not a bit of it, it is only natural that they should, for they are called Paddy birds.”
“And is that a fact now?”
“Certainly it is. Sergeant Barton told me, and he has been some time in Egypt, and knows most of the birds and animals,” replied Kavanagh.
“Well, now, it is only natural that the loveliest bird in the country should be called Paddy. Are not the finest men and the prettiest girls at all Irishmen? They call us every bad name there is, but they can’t do without us. Why, the general is an Irishman, and the Goughs and Napiers are Irishmen, and the Duke of Wellington was an Irishman.”
“And Grady and Kavanagh, the best men that ever rode on camels—or who will be when they can sit them—are Irishmen,” cried Kavanagh, laughing, and Grady chuckled too.
“But, now, there’s a thing I want to ask you, since you are larned about animals. You may not have thought it, for I am no scholar, but when I was a gossoon I went to school,” said Grady presently, “and they had pictures of bastes hung about the walls, and the queerest baste of all to my fancy, barring the elephant, was the camel. I remember purty well what they told me from the mouth, though I was bad at the reading and the sums and that; and the master he said that a camel with one hump was meant for carrying things, water and potatoes and other necessities, and that was why he had only one, to make more room, and have something to tie them on by. And he said there was another camel with two humps, and he was created for riding, and was called a dromedary, and when ye rode him, ye sat at your ease between the two humps, which made a soft saddle, just like an arm-chair ye straddled on, only without arms. And ye could go fast and easy for a week, with provisions all round ye, and the dromedary he only wanted to eat and drink once a week. Now, have the dromedaries died out, do ye think? Or are they more expensive, and is the War Office that mane it won’t afford them, but trates Christians like baggage?”
“They were out of it altogether at your school, Grady,” said Kavanagh. “A dromedary is only a better bred camel; it is like a hack or hunter, and a cart-horse, you know; the dromedary answering to the former. But both are camels, just the same as both the others are horses, and one hump unluckily is all either of them possess.”
“But I saw the pictures of them,” said Grady, with a puzzled look.
“I wish that the pictures had been painted from real animals, and not from the artist’s fancy,” repeated Kavanagh. “It was a general idea, I know—I had it myself—that there were two-humped camels, mighty pleasant to ride. But I believe it is all a mistake.”
“The one-humped beggar is not easy to ride, any how!” said Grady.
“No, that I vow he isn’t!” cried Kavanagh. “Some of the camels trained to trot, and called hygeens, are a bit easier, I believe. The Arabs say that they can drink a cup of coffee on their backs without spilling it while they are going at speed.”
“We have not got any of them in our troop,” said Grady. “Well, we will get a bit of a holiday, plaze the pigs, the day after to-morrow, and not before I want it, for one. For what with them saddle peaks, and the rolls on the sand I have got, I don’t know whether my inwards or my outwards are the sorest. But the show is beginning; and, faith, it’s worth coming all the way to Egypt to see the sun set.”
This was one of the things which made Kavanagh like Grady’s company; he had a real innate love of the beauties of Nature, which you would rarely find in an Englishman of the same class. Together they watched the glories of the transformation scene shifting before them. Low on the horizon the deepest crimson changing and blending as it rose into violet; higher up the blue of the sapphire and the green of the emerald; and when these colours were the most intense, the two rose, and turned back to camp slowly and reluctantly, still gazing in silence. For now the after-glow succeeded; first the sky was a most brilliant orange, such a tint as would cause the painter who could at all approach it to be accused of the most absurd exaggeration by those who had not seen the real colour, while those who had would esteem it far too faint. This changed to an equally brilliant rose colour; and then, in a few seconds, suddenly, as if “Lights out” had been sounded in the zenith, darkness!
“It is like going to church,” said Grady.
“Yes,” replied Kavanagh; “that makes one feel God great and man little, doesn’t it?”
“Aye!”
They were barely a quarter of an hour from camp, and the fires guided them; for hot as it was in the daytime the nights were chilly, and a bonfire in the open acceptable. They found their mates gathered round the largest in great excitement.
“Here, you chaps,” was the cry which assailed them when they made their appearance, “can either of you make a plum-pudding?”
“Of course,” replied Kavanagh. “There’s nothing easier if you only have the materials.”
“Well, the materials have just come; how do you work them up?”
“Why, make them into a pudding and boil it, of course.”
“Any idiot knows that; but how do you make them into a pudding? If we spoil one, you know, we shan’t have any opportunity of trying a second time, so none of your experiments.”
“That’s serious!”
“I should think it was!”
“Well, you take the flour and put it in a basin, and moisten it with water; and you put in your plums and raisins and citron, and beat up half a dozen eggs and put them in too, and three glasses of brandy, and anything else that’s good you have got, and you knead it all up for a good bit, and put it in a cloth, and tie it up tight with a piece of string, and boil it as long as you can; all to-night and to-morrow and to-morrow night, and so right up to dinnertime.”
“It sounds pretty right,” said the first speaker, doubtfully; “but how do you know? Did you ever make one?”
“Why, I cannot say that exactly, but I have seen many made, and helped to stir them.”
“Lately?”
“Not so very, when I was a boy.”
“It would be a sinful waste to put sperrits into a pudding,” observed Macintosh. “It would all boil away, and no one be a bit the better.”
“No fear! Good liquor’s too scarce for that,” cried another.
“Brandy is a great improvement, when you have it, for all that,” maintained Kavanagh.
But though this part of his recipe sounded to all like the dissolving of Cleopatra’s pearls in her drink for wilful waste, the other items of it confirmed the previous opinion of the chief cook of the troop, and the precious ingredients were entrusted to his care. When they were well mixed, an unforeseen difficulty arose about a bag to boil it in; but that was met by the sacrifice of a haversack, and at last it was consigned to the gipsy kettle which was to bring it to perfection. If it were literally true that a watched pot never boils, this would have had a poor chance, for when off drill or duty next day every man ran to have a look at it; but the proverb happily fell through, and it bubbled away famously. Christmas-day dawned, and would have been hot in England for July.
It is a curious experience the first Christmas spent away from home in a warm climate, such a contrast to all early associations. There were decorations of palm-branches, and instead of holly cactus, which represented it well for prickliness. And there was church parade; and afterwards came dinner of tinned roast beef, fish which some of the persevering had caught in the Nile, and an ostrich egg, which a friendly native had brought in, and which proved fresh. And the pudding!
It was an anxious moment when the string was cut, and the remains of the ancient haversack were opened, and every one was relieved when the object of interest did not fall to crumbs as some feared, but remained firm and intact till cut. Was it good? Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and there was not a crumb or a plum left when the party rose. Then a delightful afternoon of idleness and complete rest, which took the ache out of many a poor fellow’s bones, and talk of friends in England, and reminiscences of home. And some lucky ones got letters which succeeded in reaching them the right day, and got away alone to read them; while others kept the link by writing. Rather melancholy, but pleasant all the same, for the element of hope kept all sweet. And at night a huge bonfire was lit; it was cold of nights, and officers and men gathered round it for a sing-song. And there was a platform of barrels and planks on which various performances, fiddling, a hornpipe, recitations, nigger melodies, took place, the highest in command enjoying themselves as heartily as the humblest. And there was a tot of rum, not enough to hurt the weakest head indeed, but still a taste, for every one to drink to absent friends, and a rousing chorus or two, and sound sleep closing a day of thorough enjoyment. For to taste a holiday you must have a long spell of real hard work.
By this time the men were more at home with their queer steeds, and mounting and dismounting was no longer a painful and even perilous performance. The camels also had become accustomed to the drill, and learned to know what was expected of them. All animals work better and pick up ideas quicker in company. Sometimes, indeed, one would drop suddenly on his knees without rhyme or reason that any one could guess at, and send his rider flying over his head if he were not looking out sharply; but such instances of eccentric conduct were rare, and grew still less frequent as the bipeds and quadrupeds got to know one another better.
A move was now made to Korti, higher up the Nile, a good deal nearer the fourth cataract than the third in fact. But this journey was made on camel back instead of by boat. Now, travelling by boat is not unpleasant when the boat takes you, but when you have to take the boat it is quite a different matter, and riding, even on a camel, is far preferable. And those long days on camel back, near the Nile all the way, and consequently with no stint of water, were about the most pleasant experiences Kavanagh and his companions had.
“Well, Tarrant, I hope you are happy now,” said a trooper one day, as the column was on the march.
“Happy! With tinned meat and no beer, and more flies in the open in the middle of winter than you get over a stable at home in August! I know I wish I was back in Windsor barracks.”
“Never mind, old boy; if you were there you would wish you were here.”
“And a jolly idiot I should be.”
“Don’t fret about that same,” interposed Grady, who was riding near. “It’s your misfortune, not your fault. Faith, we wud all be clever if we could; but sure, I thought ye would be aisy in your mind now that you had got your camel.”