Then each, seizing the other's hand, drew his sword and 'fell in.'
The mystery involving the fate of Maude and the movements of both her and Hester were a source of intense pain, perplexity, and grief to the two friends now, even amid the fierce and wild work of that eventful 10th of February.
CHAPTER LVI.
THE BATTLE OF KIRBEKAN.
On the night before this brilliant encounter the greatest enthusiasm prevailed in the ranks of General Earle's column at the prospect of a brush with the enemy at last, after an advance of eighteen most weary miles, which had occupied them no less than twenty days, such was the terrible nature of the country to be traversed by stream and desert. As a fine Scottish ballad has it:
'With painful march across the sand
How few, though strong, they come,
Some thinking of the clover fields
And the happy English home;
And some whose graver features speak
Them children of the North,
Of the golden whin on the Lion Hill
That crouches by the Forth.
''Tis night, and through the desert air
The pibroch's note screams shrill,
Then dies away—the bugle sounds—
Then all is deathly still,
Save now and then a soldier starts
As through the midnight air
A sudden whistle tells him that
The scouts of death are there!'
At half-past five in the morning, after a meagre and hurried breakfast—the last meal that many were to partake of on earth—the column got under arms and took its march straight inland over a very rocky district for more than a mile, while blood-red and fiery the vast disc of the sun began to appear above the far and hazy horizon.
Of the scene of these operations very little is known. Lepsius, in his learned work published in 1844, writes of the ruins of Ben Naga, now called Mesaurat el Kerbegan, lying in a valley of that name, in a wild and sequestered place, where no living thing is seen but the hippopotami swimming amid the waters of the Nile.
Taking ground to the left for about half a mile the column struck upon the caravan track that led to Berber, and then the enemy came in sight, led by the Sheikhs Moussa Abu Hagil, Ali Wad, Aussein, and others, holding a rocky position, where their dark heads were only visible, popping up from time to time as seen by the field-glasses.