Camp was not a healthy spot in the khamsin days, Mac decided. Coins to a piastreless cobber smoothed over a horse-picket difficulty, and he passed out of the camp by back ways. So, in the village of Helmieh, he spent the night. Gusts bellowed through the swaying date-palms overhead, and roared round the courtyard, but his bed was comfortable, and the house of his good French friends proof against the sand-laden blasts of the spring storm. He was awakened sufficiently early to allow of his appearance at roll-call next morning. It was not according to his nature to rise early from so pleasant a bed, but it was a matter of discretion.
Many days were passed in the desert, none worse and many better. Troop days were all right; squadron days were not bad; regimental days were tolerable at times; but brigade and divisional manoeuvres were inventions of the devil. On these latter occasions elusive white flags, the skeleton enemy, appeared and disappeared. Scouts reported them here, then there. The mounted men advanced in open order, all except the front line smothered in a fog of dust. Infantry toiled and sweated after them. The maligned staff viewed from afar the battle royal. Thankful men received wounds from galloping umpires, and lay down peacefully to await rescue by the attentive ambulance. Chastisements descended from great to lesser dignitaries. Why had not Colonel Macpherson managed to move his flank-guard three miles in two minutes? So a field day would pass, each rank being roundly condemned to everlasting perdition by the rank immediately below it, until the G.O.C., Egypt, and the British Empire, bore the brunt of the awful damnings. Bad-tempered and dishevelled, the troops would set off on their homeward march, the final straw being added to the annoyances of the infantry by the passage to windward of the mounted rifles. Shrouded in the dust, they levelled their final, terrible threats against those who would be home two hours before them.
Times there were, too, good times, when the troopers would trek across the Delta to the Barrage du Nil, a pleasant spot where the Nile divides into its delta streams and canals. Here they would bivouac for the night beneath shady plantations of lebbak trees in beautiful gardens. In the daytime they swam their horses in the river. A jolly form of amusement there was the blanket-tossing of intruding natives, who were rather prone to contract those things which did not belong to them; and no method of discouragement was so efficacious. The "Gyppies" were fleet of foot, but so were the troopers, and to see a lanky southerner pursuing a victim was good entertainment. Captured at length and shrieking in abject terror, they would go flying skyward from the tautened blanket. But, alas, the blankets were of Government manufacture, and occasionally, upon the victim's meteoric return, would split in two. Thus many blankets were rent in twain, and thus did many dusky ones learn that the belongings of the troopers were sacred property.
And so Egyptian days passed light-heartedly enough. That was before the serious times, before they had been involved in the real fierce thing. And now few of them ride together any longer. Many will ride no more, and others are scattered over the earth.
CHAPTER VII
MAC GOES TO CAIRO
The camp lay listless in the glaring heat of high noon. Long rows of tents gleamed dazzlingly in the sun. Saddlery, horse-rugs, nose-bags and gear were untidily scattered about. Except for the sleepy figure of the horse-picket, attempting vainly to keep his lanky person within the shadow of the feed-trough, there was no one in sight. The horses needed little attention. With heads low and legs crooked, they dozed in every attitude of siesta. Within the open tents lay the human element, more or less replete after the seldom varying meal of sandy stew and bread. Most of the men slept, stretched full length upon rush matting on the shady sides of the tents. Some wore trousers, some shirts and some neither.
Stretched full length upon his back, his head supported upon his neighbour's chest, and his eyes idly following the ceaseless procession of flies round the tent pole, Mac smoked and pondered deeply: was it worth the fag to go to Cairo? Knowing full well that his last three weeks' shirts and socks awaited washing, he decidedly dutifully to remain at home, though possibly he might take the air, and probably the beer, of Heliopolis in the evening. However, his good intentions were ruthlessly upset, for at that moment the interior of his desert domicile was swiftly converted into a swirling tornado of dust and dirt. Blankets, towels and hay departed upwards, and all was turmoil. In five seconds the air was calm again, but not so the eight inhabitants of the canvas home.
Emerging from repose and a fog of grimy dust, they condemned Egypt and things Egyptian in no uncertain tones. They had washed and eaten, and had settled down comfortably for the afternoon, and why had this confounded blanky cyclone selected their blanky tent to blanky well empty itself upon! Often during the midday heat, "weary Willies," swirling spiral columns of sand 1,000 feet high, wandered in slow procession along the edge of the desert from the north-east, usually missing the camp, but sometimes crossing it, leaving a narrow trail of chaos and ill temper. Mac met the situation with admirable dignity and philosophy. This disturbance decided the Cairo question—he would go. Still muttering wrathfully, the tent's complement sought their individual towels and gravitated independently and sorrowfully towards the shower-baths.
Three-quarters of an hour later found Mac, suitably adorned, sitting on a bench at Helmeih Station having his boots and bandolier polished by four jabbering, disreputable "Gyppie" youngsters, who swore glibly the while the most lurid English oaths. Incidentally, they often terminated an exceptionally fluent flow with "Eh, Mistah Mickkenzie?" the usual mode of native address to New Zealanders after the High Commissioner's visit, which sometimes ruffled Mac's dignity, but more often amused him. His toilet was cut short by the arrival of the train, so, seizing bandolier and spurs and dropping a few coins, he jumped into a second-class compartment with but one boot clean of desert sand. Rattling through Palais de Koubbeh and Demerdache, he considered what he might do with himself now he had quitted camp. Money was not so plentiful as in those palmy days when they had set foot in this Orient land with two months' pay behind them. "Special prices," too, were quoted for these men from the south. However, it was a lot of trouble to think on such an afternoon; he would decide it later. At any rate a shave was felt to be the most overpowering necessity, though, really, the desert did make one thirsty! A shave would be the second item.