"I don't care whether I am a heavy or a light, so that I can go up the river."
"Have you been out here long?"
"About a year; we were through the fighting at Suakim, you know. It was pretty hot down there, I can tell you."
"It is hot enough here for me—a good deal too hot, in fact; and as for the dust, it is awful!"
"Yes, it is pretty dusty out here," Edgar agreed; "and of course, with these little tents, the wind and dust sweep right through them. Over there in Cairo we have comfortable barracks, and as we keep close during the day we don't feel the heat. Besides, it is getting cooler now. In August it was really hot for a bit even there."
"Where are we going to get these camels, do you know?"
"Up the river at Assouan, I believe; but I don't know very much about it. It was only yesterday afternoon I got orders that I was to go with you, to take the place of one of your men who had fallen sick, so I have not paid much attention as to what was going on. It has been rather a sore subject with us, you see. It did seem very hard that the regiments here that have stood the heat and dust of this climate all along should be left behind now that there is something exciting to do, and that fresh troops from England should go up."
"Well, I should not like it myself, lad. Still I am precious glad I got the chance. I am one of the 5th Dragoon Guards, and you know we don't take a turn of foreign service—though why we shouldn't I am sure I don't know—and we are precious glad to get a change from Aldershot and Birmingham and Brighton, and all those home stations. You are a lot younger than any of us here. The orders were that no one under twenty-two was to come."
"So I heard; but of course as we are out here, and we have got accustomed to it, age makes no difference."
"What do they send us out here for?"