Playing with Fire: A Story of the Soudan War

by James Grant

We have stated that Roland and his comrades were left stationed at a point where they were menaced by two forces of the enemy.

'These were,' says Colonel Eyre, of the Staffordshire, in his 'Diary,' 'the tribes whose people murdered poor Colonel Stewart. They are entrenched twenty-three miles in front of us up the river, and sent word that they were to fight. They have a large force on the Berber Road, forty miles on our flank; they were here two days ago, and took all the camels in the district. We are encamped on a wild desert, with ridges of rocky hills about two miles inland. We have pitched our tents.'

There we shall leave them for a time, and look back to Korti, where some boats of troops arrived from Hannek, twenty-three miles lower down the Nile, and in one of these, tugging manfully at an oar, came the rescued Malcolm Skene!

His disappearance many weeks before—nearly three months now—was well known to the troops; hence—though in that fierce warfare, a human life, more or less lost or saved, mattered little—his sudden appearance in camp, when he reported himself at the headquarter tent, did make a little stir for a time; and thus he was the hero of the hour; but great and forward movements were in progress now, and there was not much time to waste on anyone or anything else.

Though he had missed his corps, the Staffordshire, by about twenty-four hours, it was with a source of intense satisfaction that he found himself among his own countrymen again—once more with the troops and ready for active service of any kind.

One thought was fully prominent in his mind, never again would he be taken alive by the Soudanese.

A horse, harness, and arms, belonging to some of the killed or drowned, were speedily provided for him, and, by order of the General commanding, he was attached to the personal staff—pro tem.—of Sir Herbert Stewart, as his great knowledge of the country and of Arabic might prove of good service.

Considering the treachery of Hassan Abdullah, his long detention in the zereba of the Sheikh Moussa, and what his too probable end would have been after the deportation of Zebehr Pasha, with the recent close and deadly struggle he had for life in the grasp of Girolamo, and how nearly he escaped recapture and slaughter, Malcolm Skene had now a personal and somewhat rancorous animosity to the Soudanese.

Now that he had not perished in the desert, in the river, by Arab hands, or in any fashion as his troublesome presentiment had led him to expect when he left Cairo guided by that rascal Hassan on his lonely mission to Dayr-el-Syrian, he felt a curious sense of mortification, compunction, almost of regret, concerning the very tender and loving letter of farewell he had written to Hester Maule; and began to think it would be somewhat remarkable and awkward if—after all—he should again meet her face to face in society.

Then again, as often before, he seemed to see in fancy the conservatory at Earlshaugh, with its long and faintly lit vistas of flowers, rare exotics, with feathery acacias and orange trees and azaleas overhead; the gleam of the moonshine on the adjacent lakelet; the tall slender figure and soft dark eyes of Hester; and to his vivid imagination her words and his own came back to him, with the nervous expression of her sad and parted lips as she forbade him ever to hope, and yet gave him no reason why!