The revelry of Christmas had hardly subsided when embarkation orders came again. In the mist of a December morning we struck camp and moved out from the stone pier to the waiting transports—wondering, most of us, when embarkation in the service would cease to recur, and how long it would be before embarkation would come for that long voyage across the Pacific to a Christmas under the Southern Cross.
CHAPTER II
MAHSAMAH
"The ——th and ——th Divisions will move from —— to —— in flights of —— thousands daily. Two hundred and fifty camels will be allotted to each flight for baggage-transport. Mahsamah will be the end of the first stage.... You will proceed to Mahsamah, taking with you —— thousand rations, establish a depôt, and issue rations to the flights for twenty-four hours."
So ran the order. Confound the flights! Why can't they train it? Mahsamah's out of the world. These camps in desert places are ghastly. We shall be enforced hermits. Entraining, they could get the whole thing over in four days; this way it'll take fourteen. The weather's getting midsummer. The battalions have just had a fresh boot-issue. They'll be sore-footed and sick and sun-stricken. What's the game with Headquarters—to harden the men or impress the natives?
What's that to you? You've got to go, whatever garbled motives Headquarters may have. So get your supplies aboard, and your men, and leave in the morning.
So we found ourselves sweeping over the desert at 9 a.m., with tents and camp equipment in the guard's van and half a dozen trucks laden with supplies trailing behind. The sweet-water canal tore beside us, and patches of irrigated land emerged at intervals into the field of vision, and the low sand-dunes standing away towards Ismailia grew higher; and before the canal fir-groves could become more than a blur in the east we halted and got down, and had our trucks detached, and the train moved off canal-wards, and we set about looking for a site on which to build.
And there was no time to waste. The first flight had left Tel-el-Kebir that morning, and any moment their advance-guard might loom up on the heat-hazed horizon and come in soliciting grub.