Lord Wolseley was so good as warmly to commend the work done on the Second Cataract; and Sir Redvers Buller, who at first declared the portage scheme to be impossible of execution, generously expressed his appreciation of its success.
Having shot a little alligator, I skinned it myself. The Arab camel-man in my service, who spoke French, argued with me in that language for a long time that an alligator had no tongue, but fed by suction, like a snipe. As I had cut out the tongue of my little alligator, I knew it had one; but my Arabian naturalist refused to be persuaded.
At this time and afterwards while I was in Egypt, my servant, interpreter and cook was the excellent José Salvatro, a Maltese. If he happened to be absent, I conveyed my instructions to the natives through my French-speaking camel-man, in French. Between my French and his French and his Arabic, I used to wonder how the meaning filtered through; but I have a note in my diary that "it comes all right, the natives are cheery fellows and work capitally with me, and a good smack upon the 'sit-upon' of a lazy one keeps the whole lot going."
Towards the end of November I was living alone in my hut on the Bab-el-Kebir, attended only by a bluejacket and the faithful José, who ceased not from scrubbing and washing, so that I was never a day without clean things, an inestimable comfort in that climate. Here I was haunted by an Arab maniac who dwelt in some indiscoverable antre of the rocks. At night I heard him howling to himself. In the daytime, he ran here and there, his only garment being the dust he cast upon his shaven head, crying upon Allah. He ate sand and offal, a diet which left him hungry, for he would come to my tent for food, which I gave him. He seemed to know me in a vague way. I gave him some calico to cover his nakedness withal, but he tore the stuff into fragments and ate them. One day he rushed into my tent, clawed some mutton-broth out of the cooking-pot with his horrible hands and crammed it boiling hot into his mouth. I was obliged forcibly to eject him lest he should take the whole; but I had no stomach for the rest. My fear was lest he should burst in at night and I should be obliged in self-defence to shoot him. Eventually, José lost patience, seized a huge wood-axe, and chased the maniac for a mile. The poor wretch ran like a hare and vanished into his hole in the rocks.
I made a match with Colonel Brocklehurst, head of the Remount Department, to ride my camel, the bold Bimbashi, against any one of Brocklehurst's camels, for £25. The course was six miles long across the desert, from Peel's Camp at the beginning of the Cataract to Sir Evelyn Wood's flagstaff at Wady Halfa. Brocklehurst's rider was his interpreter, a lean rat of an Arab Sheikh, who was absolutely certain he would win. His camel was the favourite of Wood's mess and was reputed to be the best in Egypt. The betting was fifty to one against me. But I had been riding Bimbashi 30 miles or so a day, and we were both in fine hard condition.
The Sheikh started at a gallop. First his turban, then his goatskin saddle-rug, carried away. Both rider and camel were blowing and perspiring ere they had run three miles. For the first two and a half miles I waited on the Sheikh, then came away and won in a canter half a mile ahead. At the finish the troops lined up and made a course for us. Thus I won my first camel race, owner up. No one was better pleased than my old friend Colonel Brocklehurst.
Bimbashi (according to my journal) covered the six miles in a little over eighteen minutes. That gallant steed had already been ridden the nine miles from my camp to the starting-point; and when I rode him back in the evening, he was so fresh that he ran away with me, grumbling loudly, because he was offended at the sight of a dead donkey lying wrong side up beside the railway.
I invented a saddle for camels, and I believe the pattern is still in use. The saddle-tree is a triangular wooden framework, like the gable of a roof. I covered the wood with oakum and canvas; abolished all buckles, made the girths and stirrups of raw hide thongs, and put the stirrups forward, instead of behind. Count Gleichen, in his interesting book, With the Camel Corps up the Nile, relates how the saddles and equipment served out to the Camel Corps gave the men infinite trouble and discomfort. The unseasoned wood came to pieces, the straps broke, the water-skins and water-bottles leaked; but one instance of the departmental mismanagement which caused our men so much unnecessary suffering.
By the end of November, the river was falling so swiftly that what was smooth water yesterday was to-day a frivolous series of waterfalls with a twist in them. Every alteration in the river involved a new device for haulage, and it would alter at three or four places in a mile, and there were 11 miles of rapids. I was generally able to judge by the look of the water when and where it would change its course during the next few hours. In order to avoid the least delay, new arrangements must be devised beforehand; and my mind was so absorbed in these schemes, that I dreamed of them nightly. By that time I had 1400 men working under me, whose work must be organised, and stations allocated. The Bab-el-Kebir, that formidable rapid, was now a grazing ground for goats.
I shifted my quarters from the Bab to Wady Halfa, as the difficulties were now all at that end of the Cataract. Peel and Colbourne, in command respectively of the next two reaches, found no day too long and no work too hard.