As everybody is generally somewhere, it was difficult to contradict this statement. Besides it is imprudent for a private to contradict a corporal, who has many ways of making himself disagreeable or the reverse. So the prudent Scot acquiesced.
“Well, I am a paceable boy meself, and hate fighting,” said Grady.
“But still it seems a pity to make such iligant fortifications and not to thry them. Is there not sinse in that, now, Kavanagh?”
“I don’t know about sense, but there’s a lot of human nature in it,” replied Kavanagh. “I know I learned to box when I was a lad, and was never happy until I had a turn up to try my skill without the gloves. And a jolly good licking I got for my pains.”
“To be sure!” cried Grady. “And if ye get a new knife ye want to cut something with it, or a new gun ye must be after shooting with it; and so on with anything at all. And now we have got the fortifications one is a thrifle curious to know if the Johnnies could get into them.”
I don’t know whether many of the company wanted to be attacked, or, indeed, if any did, but certainly there was a restlessness about them. They listened all day for firing in the direction of Matammeh, some lying down with their ears to the ground to hear the farther. But all was still as the desert only can be, and the great battle which was expected had certainly not yet begun. But expectation of a fight excites men, and if at a distance they itch to be in it, this feeling even actuating men who fail to show any particular heroism when the pinch comes.
However, wishing or not wishing to be attacked could make no difference; the Arabs were not likely to consult their feelings on the subject. There was no alarm that night, and all but the men on duty slept soundly by the bivouac fires. In the course of the next morning the camels were to be taken to the outside well to be watered, and a few impediments which blocked the gap being removed they began to move out. The leader had gone twenty paces, and three others were following, when Grant, one of the lieutenants who was in the gallery of the look-out with a field-glass, shouted, “Halt! Come back!”
The man with the leading camel looked round to see if the order applied to him, and saw the lieutenant beckoning to him. “Come back at once!” he repeated. The four camels went to the right-about not a bit too soon; for a puff of smoke spurted up from a mimosa bush beyond, and the vicious whiz of a bullet hinted to the leader of the camel nearest to it that it would be better for him not to stop to wind up his watch or pare his nails before he got under shelter.
Pop, pop, pop, pop! A camel is a big mark, and it was clever to miss the lot. One indeed had a lock of hair chipped off him, as if the marksman were an artist who wanted a painting brush; but that was the nearest approach to a casualty.
The other bullets went high over everything, save one or two, which struck the sand and sent little stones flying about in a dangerous manner. But they came in contact with nothing vulnerable, and the four were back in the enclosure presently.