About four o'clock the hottest part was over, but the danger of sunstroke was, if anything, greater, because the oblique rays of the sun fell upon one's neck, unless, indeed, as was the case with the rank and file, a "curtain" was attached to the helmet. Nearly everybody drank tea about this time. There is a kind of notion abroad that this beverage serves to cool one, but the general effect produced in the Sudan seemed quite the reverse. Any perspiration left in one's sebaceous follicles after the genial warmth of the Sudan had kept us in a sort of natural Turkish bath for six hours, was elicited by the warm tea, and one realised how easy under such conditions it would be to lose every particle of one's existing body in even less than the seven years indicated by medical statistics, and thus, on good Bishop Butler's showing, secure, together with revaccination, a frequently recurring proof of one's immortality.
After tea we were amply compensated for the discomforts of the day by the delights of a tropical evening. The air was deliciously cool, and the soft tints of sunset coloured all the landscape. Everyone recovered his temper, and such pleasures and duties of social life as survived in the desert occupied our attention from this hour till bedtime. Men dropped in to see each other all over the camp, and there was a general atmosphere of "Have a drink, old chap." The amount of fluid one can consume in these tropical regions is amazing. Nobody, of course, who has any common sense thinks of drinking much alcohol in the heat of the day. Lime juice and soda is often taken at lunch, while some claret or sauterne, or a whisky and Rosbach, are common beverages in the evening. It is often very difficult indeed—especially when one is on the march—to keep such luxuries cool, but the ingenious "sparklets," which were brought out to the Sudan in thousands, will always, if fairly good water can be got, provide one with a decent drink, as the sudden liberation of the compressed gas cools the water as well as aërates it.
It is worth while being really thirsty and hungry to understand the pleasures of drink and food. Our English meals follow each other with such regularity and diversity that one seldom realises what it means to crave for food and drink as a primary instinct. But oh! the joy of a deep draught of cool water after long hours of abstention in the desert, or, what is almost as bad, a long course of brackish water—saline water, which quenches one's thirst for the moment only to increase it by the after-taste. Once when I was travelling with Mr. Bent, I remember how I was walking in a stony ravine after six days of nothing but brackish water; suddenly, to my delighted vision, a little brook of limpid water appeared running down to the sea. One threw oneself flat upon the bank and drank, and drank, and drank! Hunger is much more easily endured than thirst, and Æschylus did well to class amongst the most joyful of human experiences the sight of running water to a thirsty traveller—
ὁδοιπόρῳ διψῶντι πηγαῖον ῥέος.
At the same time, indiscriminate drinking is a tiresome habit, which can be shaken off with a little practice and determination. The inexperienced traveller in the East always carries a huge water-bottle, from which he is continually drinking copious draughts; but after a few months he learns to drink at meal times, and not to encumber himself with his water-bottle on every occasion when he is away from the tent. Education and self-control go largely hand in hand. Officers stand hunger and thirst much better than the rank and file, who, in the Sudan, exercised very little self-control in the matter of drink. Whenever they could get it, the soldiers were perpetually dipping their tin mugs in the large "zias" or "fantasias" provided for their use.
Just before the evening shadows cooled the air too much and made a chill possible, we spread our india-rubber baths on the ground and enjoyed the refreshment of a good "tub." The Nile water was so saturated with mud that when one stood in one's bath upon a thick precipitate of sand the sensation recalled the seaside paddling of one's childhood.
The tropical twilight was all too brief, and darkness fell suddenly like a pall upon the landscape. Then out came candlesticks and lanterns, and the one substantial meal of the day made its appearance. The quality of our cuisine varied considerably. At a stationary camp like Wad Hamed we sometimes purchased fresh meat from an enterprising Greek called Loisa, but this was always very lean and tough, and these fleshpots of Egypt had few charms for us. The Arabs devour any sort of meat, whatever be the condition of the beast which supplies it. Two days after the battle of Omdurman, Ali appeared before the tent with a wretched kid in the last stage of a rapid decline. He knew I disapproved of loot, and declared that he had purchased the animal, and intended to fry the liver for me for to-morrow's breakfast. As the poor kid was far too ill and weak even to stand on its legs, I declined the suggested dainty. There were quite enough bacilli prowling around in Omdurman without incurring the risk of trichinosis. In less than an hour I saw our quaternion of servants with several guests enjoying a ghoulish banquet off the remains of the invalid animal.
Sometimes we had splendid dinners of tinned curry, preserved pine-apple, and other delicacies; and except on the evening of the battle, nobody, as far as I know, ever went without his dinner if he was well enough to eat it. Occasionally, if there was a downpour of rain or other cause which rendered cooking difficult, we sank to this sort of level—
Potage à la Khalifa.
(Ingredients—a morsel of emaciated goat with some onions; simmer as long as possible. Sufficient for two. Seasonable, when one is very hungry.)