Eventually Smythe came back to say that he had been tracking wagon wheels for at least five miles, but they could not be ours, for the tracks led steadily in a northerly direction towards the Turkish lines.
After duly strafing Major Ripley for having, this early in his command, lost his transport, I set off in quest of the rovers.
Luckily my charger Betty was in splendid condition, and I certainly put her on her mettle that morning. I took up the trail that Smythe had abandoned, followed it for seven or eight miles at a steady canter, and then lost all trace on hard ground. I had to cast round in a big circle before I found it once more, then I went on again for another three or four miles when I met some Australians. On asking them if they had seen a column of wagons going northward they said, "No, we have been along here for a couple of miles, but we have seen nothing."
This was very disheartening news, and I almost felt inclined to give up the quest in this direction and turn back; but having come so far, I made up my mind to go on, even to the Turkish lines themselves, before I gave up the hunt.
I was then about eight miles short of the Turkish position, or what had been the Turkish position at the foot of the hills towards which the tracks still led.
When I had covered another few miles, to my inexpressible relief, I at last caught sight of the Transport, steadily pursuing its way northward!
I made Betty put on an extra spurt and soon caught them up. It is lucky that there was no grass about, or the prairie itself would have caught fire when I at last overtook the Transport Sergeant. The language addressed to the jackdaw by the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims was angel talk compared to mine.
When I ordered him sharply to get back at once to where he came from, he was so confused that he promptly turned his horse round and began to ride off towards camp—leaving his baggage wagons still calmly proceeding in the opposite direction.
I called the dazed sergeant back and told him very forcibly to halt the column and take the wagons back as quickly as possible to his original camp. I was never able to get any satisfactory information from the sergeant (who by the way was a Welshman and a Christian) as to what induced him to trek off into the unknown in such a mad fashion. I can only imagine that the devil, who lives in the Jordan Valley, had impersonated Major Ripley and had ordered the sergeant to push for all he was worth for the Turkish lines, leaving us without food, water, cooking pots, or ammunition—in fact leaving us "beggars by the wayside."
My chase of the transport wasted some precious hours, but I was back in camp soon after 10 a.m., where I found the battalion full of bustle and activity, preparing for concentration on the Auja bridgehead.