Seymour was a highly-intelligent animal (taking seven-and-five-eighths in hats), who argued with a kind of implacable ferocity, and when he sat down to bridge would never stop before two or three. But all his argument was for mental exercise and not from conviction, and his fiercest encounters were wont to end in a thrust of bathos at which the mess roared. He was a fine intellectual and physical animal, as keen in riding and shooting and bathing as in dialectic.
The Captain was a diminutive, ceremonious Scotchman, commanding deference out of doors, bullied to death in the mess by his Subalterns. The contrast between out- and indoors was striking. The last letter of the law in discipline and ceremony was observed outside the mess, but at table no Australian officers' mess was ever more informal. Barriers of rank were thrown down, and none but surnames tolerated by the least even unto the greatest.
That mess was as luxuriously appointed as a civilian home. Easy-chairs, writing-tables, messing-tables and their appointments, punctilious servants, matted floors, made one forget for a few hours daily that a war was in progress. For the man who makes himself at home on service you are commended to the English officer. And in a permanent camp such as this he excelled himself. Eating was delicate, glass and silver shone and prevailed. Hours for meals were late and irregular: breakfast at 8.30; lunch light, and at any time; dinner at any hour between 8 and 9.30, and long-drawn-out, so that you generally rose from table between 10 and 11, and sat back for pow-wow after.
It was a rare day there was not game in the mess. Adjoining the sweet-water canal was a lagoon, reed-fringed and with reed-islands where you could row a mile and believe yourself in Australia; no sand to be seen. Three times a week we shot. There were duck and snipe and teal. The Sheikh of the village furnished half a dozen shot-guns and as many boats and boatmen, and came himself, carrying a gun (and proud he was of his shooting—and justly so).
One man one skiff was the order. We would set out at 4.30, after tea, and return at 8. The danger was to forget the duck in the still beauty of the evening. As you watched the reddening west over the reeds, the birds coming across the ruddy ground would recall you to business. Shooting was easy, so we got a lot. The place was untrammelled. Except for an occasional General who came up for a day's sport (the Staff had got to know the Mahsamah Lagoon), there was little shooting done, and the water had not yet become a scare-area. The Sheikh did a little on his own account. The underlings he provided knew their work, and would ejaculate and advise in Arabic: Talihena! Bakaskeen kebir! (snipe—big one!)—in a hoarse, excited whisper, as the birds rose on the breeze. Aywah, you mutter, making ready. They would strip and go into the reeds waist-deep for birds fallen there. Quaiys kiteer! (fine), greeted a hit; and if you missed, a consolatory Malish! (never mind), Bukrah (perhaps to-morrow), uttered with a gentle ironical intonation. Rowing back there was always baksheesh in cigarettes or cartridges—or both; and some, with their skins wet and muddied from wading, deserved it. Some did not.
The natives fished the lagoon systematically with nets, at night. You encountered them as you pursued duck. They regularly exported crates of fish to Cairo and Zagazig. When the nets were spread they would "beat-up" the fish with tomtoms in the boats. You might hear their solitary cries and their rhythmic tattoo on the water all night.
They fished with lines, too—to order. If you gave them an order at the camp for a dozen they would have them back in half an hour, wriggling on a string. They were proud of their craft, and would throw you a triumphant glance, as who should say, "Let's see you do that!"
The Arab village lay on the banks of the canal. Comely villagers they were, with well-featured women and men with a continent, contented air, living by fishing or growing of crops. The camera they funked, and that distinguished them from the raucous, dissolute denizens of Cairo, who delight to ape attitudes for the photographer. They showed all the best qualities of the fellaheen. There was no obsequiousness in the men, as in the capital. There is no crowd more cowardly and villainous than the Cairene mob. But the men at Mahsamah, when the sojourning Australians attempted to commandeer their canal-ferry, pushed them incontinently into the stream. This was conduct unprecedented in the Egyptian. A town-and-gown fight ensued. Skulls were cracked, and the Australians had by no means the better of it. There was a dash of the old fighting Bedouin blood in these fellows. There was to be no bullying here; and there was none.
Only the station-master had forfeited his independence of spirit. He alone of the whole village was in habitual contact with "the public." It had wrought in him a fawning plausibility the more contemptible by its contrast with the sturdiness of the surrounding natives. He lied by habit; the fictitious way was more natural with him than the way of truth. In official dealings he lied first, and afterwards modified it into truth. Regardless of consistency, he said invariably what he thought would please. Railway time-tables with him varied with the estimated temper of the inquirer. This seems incredible, but it is true. He was the only village inhabitant who ever invited you to take coffee; and he (the potentially dignified station-master) alone, in all the village, was ever known to solicit baksheesh—an oily, yellow, perennially-smiling, small-bodied, altogether small-souled railway-official, in him seemed incarnated the slavish spirit of officialdom in all Egypt.
Bathing in the Canal was forbidden along its whole length. There lurked a parasite that played Old Harry with livers. It ravaged the natives in rare cases, though, having drunk and washed in the canal from infancy, a sort of immunity was claimed for them. But there were victims to the parasite to be seen amongst them—no pretty sight.