HOW A KING AND AN ARAB EVADED ORDERS
I would also recall among the less important relics of the past the small ruined Temple of Dakkeh. It was built in Ptolemaic times by an Ethiopian monarch singularly free from superstition. It was the custom of these kings to kill themselves when ordered to do so by the priests in the name of the gods, but when his spiritual advisers ventured to send such a message to King Erzamenes, he went with his soldiers and killed the priests instead.
I do not know whether the story lingered on the banks of the Nile till our times, but the instinct of this king seems to have been reincarnated in an Arab, or Egyptian, soldier who related to an English officer his first experience of an aeroplane during the late war. This man was enlisted by the Turks during their invasion of Egypt and afterwards captured by the British. Said he, “I saw a bird, oh, such a beautiful bird, flying in the sky. My officer told me to shoot it, but I did not want to kill that beautiful bird, so I killed my officer.” Certainly if one wished to disobey an unreasonable order it was the simplest method of escaping punishment.
At Wady Halfa we were delightfully entertained at tea and dinner by Colonel Hunter (now Sir Archibald). Dinner in his pretty garden was indeed a pleasant change from our jolting stern-wheeler. Previously he took us to see the 500 camels—riding and baggage—of the camel-corps. All were absolutely ready for action. Like the horses of Branksome Hall in the “Lay of the Last Minstrel,” who “ready and wight stood saddled in stable day and night,” these camels lay in rows with all their kit on or near them—nothing to be done when the order of advance should be given except to fill their water-flasks. All this with the shadow of the Sirdar pointing towards them—to fall even sooner than the officers perchance anticipated.
While our boat waited at Wady Halfa we made a short expedition, two hours by train on a local military railway, to Sarras, which was then the Egyptian frontier. Egyptian officers showed us the Fort on a hill with two Krupp and two Maxim guns. There were one or two other little forts on heights, and below was the camp with tents, huts, camels, and horses. From the hill we looked out at the country beyond, a mass of small hills rising from a sandy desert, all barren and arid. It gave a weird impression to stand thus on the uttermost outpost of civilisation wondering what of death and terror lay beyond.
THE DERVISHES
Seven years previously, in July 1889, Sir Herbert Kitchener (as he then was) had written to my husband from the Egyptian Headquarters at Assouan, and thus described the Dervishes:
“I leave for the South to-morrow and shall then have an opportunity of seeing the Dervish camp. It is most extraordinary that they have been able to invade Egypt in the way they have done without any supplies or transport. I have talked to numbers of prisoners and they say they are just as fanatical as ever; their intention is to march on Cairo, killing all who do not accept their faith, and they do not care in the least how many lives they lose in the attempt, as all that die in their belief go straight to heaven. They have brought all their women and children with them, and seem to have no feeling whatever for the sufferings they make them undergo. We have rescued almost thousands and fed and clothed them; they come in the most awful state of emaciation. I expect we shall have a fight shortly with the strong men of the party who now keep all the food for themselves, leaving the women and children to die of starvation.”
There was certainly real anxiety about them even during our expedition, and it was thought better for our stern-wheelers to anchor in the middle of the stream at night, when far from barracks, for fear of attack. I think, however, that it was at Assouan, a well-guarded centre, that the Bradley Martins came to implore Jersey to come and reassure poor Mrs. Sherman, Mrs. Bradley Martin’s kind old mother. She had heard some firing in connection with Ramadan, and told her family that she knew that their dahabyah had been captured by dervishes and that they were keeping it from her. Why she thought that the dervishes were considerate enough to keep out of her cabin I do not know, nor why she consented to believe my husband and not her own children. However, it is not uncommon for people to attach more weight to the opinion of an outsider than to that of the relatives whom they see every day.
Before returning to Cairo we tied up near Helouan and rode there along a good road with trees on either side. Helouan itself struck us as resembling the modern part of a Riviera town pitched in the desert. Neither trees nor verandahs mitigated the glare of the sun, unless a few clumps near the sulphur baths did duty as shade for the whole place. There were numerous hotels and boarding-houses, though I recorded the opinion, which I saw no reason to modify on a visit some years later, that there seemed no particular reason for people to go there unless preparatory to committing suicide. However, I suppose that the Races and the Baths constituted the attraction, and it may have become more adapted to a semi-tropical climate since we saw it.