Of the Remington cartridges perhaps 240,000 may have been captured by enemy, so that we fired 3,000,000 away; and I expect the Arabs lost perhaps 1000 in all. Each Arab killed needed 3,000 cartridges. We have left here—
| 2,242,000 | Remington | } | cartridges. |
| 660 | Krupp gun | ||
| 8,490 | Mountain gun |
and we turn out 50,000 Remington cartridges a week.
Fifty Arab horsemen came down on our foraging party who were outside Bourré, but the steamer drove them back.
No escaped soldiers came in to-day. I expect they are all close prisoners.
There are fifty nuggars at Berber with the Arabs.
I am sure I should like that fellow Egerton. There is a light-hearted jocularity about his communications, and I should think the cares of life sat easily on him. Notice the slip in margin. He wishes to know exactly “day, hour, and minute” that he (Gordon) expects to be in “difficulties as to provisions and ammunition.”[71]
Now I really think if Egerton was to turn over the “archives” (a delicious word) of his office, he would see we had been in difficulties for provisions for some months. It is as if a man on the bank, having seen his friend in river already bobbed down two or three times, hails, “I say, old fellow, let us know when we are to throw you the life buoy, I know you have bobbed down two or three times, but it is a pity to throw you the life buoy until you really are in extremis, and I want to know exactly, for I am a man brought up in a school of exactitude, though I did forget(?) to date my June telegram about that Bedouin escort contract.”
Turn to page 59, “Send for Wolseley,” &c. I see that they did send for him just a month before; “nasty moving cities, and very nasty Soudan.”