George Alfred Henty: The Story of an Active Life

by George Manville Fenn

The native boats could not get nearer than two or three hundred yards from the shore, for the water was not more than three or four feet deep, and into these shallows the poor brutes were dragged and thrust, when, dazed by the novel position, they for the most part lay down, their long necks raising their curious heads just above the surface, while they made no attempt to make for the land. Some never did make any effort, and later their bodies would be seen drifting here and there, growing more buoyant under the hot sun as decomposition set in. Others, however, struggled to within fifty yards of the shore before lying down, to look, with their erect necks and partly submerged bodies, just like gigantic waterfowl. As for those that were driven ashore, want of food and the evil treatment received during their transit had reduced them to the most miserable plight. Their bones were almost starting through their skins; and while at the best of times, when well fed and watered, a camel in its utterances is a most doleful, murmurous creature, these poor brutes lay as if dead upon the sand, uttering feebly the almost human moaning and complainings peculiar to their race.

Whether from mismanagement or callous brutality, the treatment of the unfortunate mules and camels landed on these desolate shores was painful in the extreme, and droves of hundreds untended were wandering about, striving for a few days’ existence by plucking scanty shoots, previous to sickening and dying.

The scenes, Henty says, were frightful everywhere, but worst of all at the water-troughs, where the half-mad animals, especially the mules, struggled for a drink at a time when water was almost worth its weight in gold. They fought wildly for a draught of that for which they were dying, biting and kicking till many of them in their weakness were knocked down and trampled to death, a fate which at least saved them from perishing miserably under their burdens upon the road.

Thoroughly angered by the neglect, and in accordance with the intense desire of the practical man to have everything done orderly and well, Henty busied himself and inquired why these scattered mules were left untended, to learn that nearly the whole of the mule and camel drivers had deserted. In fact, at the beginning of the arrangements in connection with the transport, everything seemed to have gone wrong. The mules and camels were dying of thirst and neglect; consequently the advance brigade could not be supplied with food. Someone was in fault, but, as is often the case, the mistakes of one are visited upon no one knows how many. But there, it is easy to find fault.

It must have seemed almost bliss to get away from the misery and confusion in the neighbourhood of Annesley Bay. At least there was the hope of ceasing to be tormented by the flies that were increasing and multiplying, as they did farther north in the old Pharaonic days. There was the prospect of a weary desert journey over sand and rock, with a pause here and there where wells existed with their scanty supply of water, or others were being dug, but there was the promise of a pleasanter existence afterwards, since the camp station was nearly five hundred feet above sea-level, with a likelihood of comparative coolness.

It was a long and dreary ride, with nature apparently against the intruders. As a consequence, with animals as well as with man everything seemed to go wrong. One of Henty’s principal complaints was still of the flies, which he considered to be, up to the present, the greatest nuisance he had met with in Abyssinia. He declared them to be as numerous and as irritating as they were in Egypt; but he consoled himself with the fact that they went to sleep when the sun set, and as there were no mosquitoes to take their place, he was able to sleep in tranquillity, that is to say, to lie down in the sand. Water, of course, was too scarce for a wash; but here again there was consolation—a good shake on rising, and the dry clean sand all fell away.

Still, there was a fresh anxiety for him in connection with the traveller’s greatest worry, that is, luggage. He was much troubled by the fact that the troop of mules which bore the officers’ necessaries had not turned up, and one of the missing animals was the carrier of his own luggage and stores.

On this march Henty had his first experience of the desert wells. These wells were dug in the bed of what in the rainy season must have been a mighty torrent fifty yards wide. He states that he had seen many singular scenes, but this was the strangest. The wells were six in number, about a dozen feet across and as many deep. All the water had to be raised in buckets by men standing upon wooden platforms who passed the full buckets from hand to hand. The water was then emptied into earthen troughs, which soon became mud basins, and from these the animals were allowed to drink to the tune of a perpetual chant kept up by the natives, without which the latter seemed unable to work.

Round the wells was a vast crowd of animals—flocks of goats and small sheep, strings of draught bullocks, mules, ponies, horses, and camels, and about them stood the regular inhabitants of the country in their scanty attire, armed with spears, swords like reaping-hooks, and heavy clubs. The women among them were either draped in calico or picturesquely clothed in leather, and plentifully adorned with necklaces of seeds or shells.

Here, too, the trouble with the thirsty animals was often terrible, the camels being especially unmanageable. One of them, for instance, because its pack had slipped beneath it, began to utter strange uncouth cries, kicking and plunging wildly, until it started a stampede among the mules, many of which had probably never seen any of these ungainly beasts before.