"Yus," he said, with the confidence of a host to whom deference should be paid, "Yus. Hi 'eard as 'ow them Noo Zealanders wus comin', an' I says ter meself as 'ow it 'ud be another o' these 'ere lingos we'd 'av ter try an' parley. An' I think's as 'ow that don't suit us chaps zactly. But the fust of you fellers I sees this mornin' I says ter 'im like, 'Goo' mornin,' maate!' An' 'e says ter me 'Goo' mornin,' maate,' jest the same as meself! We thought as 'ow you'd talk some funny lingo, I tell yer I did. But yuse jest speak same's us, an' I wus glad."
Daylight revealed a scene as inspiring to an untravelled New Zealander as America to Columbus. Close at hand stood an oriental city of splendid architecture, the early light touching with romance its minarets and pillared galleries. Spread before him, and stretching away into the distance until lost in a soft blue mistiness, lay Cairo, its forest of minarets, its domes and its square-topped houses. Beyond, unmistakable in the blue distance, were the old familiar outlines of the great pyramids. Behind him, the great yellow desert spread away to the horizon and the rising sun, and was bordered on the other hand by a forest of palm trees, almost hiding many fine houses with shady courts and playing fountains.
The sun soon brought warmth into the troopers' frozen limbs, and they went to work watering and feeding the horses. Later in the morning they moved to the site of the camp to be, about a mile away. It was a wind-smoothed stretch of untouched desert, but speedily horse-lines and white tents broke its vastness. That night Mac, doing his turn of horse-picket while the tired camp slept, walked out a little way into the silver moonlit desert. In the utter stillness, with the cold pure air, the sands unmarked by any footstep, and the impression of unlimited space, the desert seemed a new world—a world far away from the old one.
But busy days followed, and the desert soon lost its first charm in the solid practical work of leading the horses across it on foot till they should be strong enough to be ridden again. It was hot dusty work in the midday sun, and Mac was thankful when the day came for him to hoist his lazy bones into the saddle. The camp grew, and became a place of importance with its great piles of stores, its roads and its rows of mean speedily-erected shops of Greek, Armenian and Egyptian cheapjacks. The troops quickly fell in with the life, and set out to make the most of Egypt and its pleasures. They were there until the end of April, and in those five months Mac saw most of the country one way or another, though all his journeyings are not chronicled in the pages to come. In the course of time he hated the place, and longed with the rest of the mounted men to pass to new fields and fresh adventures. But he looks back now on those Egyptian days as the jolliest days there ever were, and breathes a sigh of sorrow that they can never come again.
CHAPTER VI
DAYS IN THE DESERT
Mac felt absolutely dejected, and looked it. His mare, too, appeared neither happy nor spirited. Except for some nebulous figures, indistinct in the yellow murk, little else was visible. Mac crouched scowling in the lee of the mare, who stood with drooping head and closed eyes, swaying occasionally to the violent buffetings of the desert storm, and patiently waiting for some move on the part of her master. The three squadrons and the transport had left camp independently just after dawn with instructions to bivouac together, at midday, at a certain spot known to the High Command by the enigmatical formula "No. 3. Tower, 105°—Virgin's Breasts 45°."
Mac, who carried the compass, had taken various bearings before the breaking of the storm, and had now halted where the Major and he considered angles, bearings, and letters indicated. There was no sign of the other units. Either they had sagaciously abandoned the expedition earlier or else they had other opinions regarding the trysting place. Anyhow, whether they were still wandering about the infernal desert or not, Mac was firmly convinced that camp was the place for him. Picking up his rein, he made in the direction of a blur he knew to be the Major, and told him so. The Major had visions of pleasant refuge in a Cairene hotel, a good dinner, and a cool bath, instead of a night trek in the desert as originally intended. So he agreed, and shrill whistling stirred to life more or less comatose troopers and horses.
Steering, nor'-nor'-west, each following close upon the next ahead, they rode in deep silence. They crossed wave after wave of sand-hills, monotonous and bewildering. The khamsin blew in hot, sandy spurts, and lulled; then came again in hotter, more shrivelling bursts "From Hell!" thought the troopers, one and all. Sand trickled down their necks, and filtered down to that place where it neither increased the comfort of their riding nor diminished the ardour of their revilings against the weather. With fiercer gusts, gravel rose and stung horse and rider, while the former stumbled frequently over unseen boulders.
In the latter half of the afternoon they struck the old railway embankment to Suez, lost it again, but soon found the edge of the irrigated land and followed it to the camp. Parched, red-eyed, headachy, and yellow with dust, they made for their lines, watered their horses, and set about making themselves as comfortable as circumstances allowed. The happiness of the trooper was not enhanced when he failed to find a misty blur representing his tent. It had chosen to give up the unequal contest and had departed down-wind. He followed, and joined the rest of the tent's company in recovering the tattered remnants, and towels, and personal property which had strayed into the domain of the next regiment.