Chapter Twenty Two.
Sword versus Bayonet.
After the skirmish which was fatal to poor Binks, and in which Grady effected his clever capture, the convoy had not been annoyed, save now and then by a distant shot which fell short; but in the afternoon of the day that Kavanagh got his information about Harry Forsyth, such as it was, out of the man Grady had taken prisoner, bullets fell closer again.
They had entered a wide valley, and there was water on the south side of it, near the black rocks. No zereba was formed here, possibly because troops could not be spared to guard it, or the spot was considered too near the next wells, or there was good reason to know that there was no force of the enemy of any consequence in the neighbourhood. Whether it was the cause or not, this latter fact was probably the case, but there were individual sharp-shooters about who were inclined to make themselves a nuisance.
Perched high up among fantastic blocks of stone, which would have tempted an artist to draw out his sketch-book, they got excellent shots at the party below them, and as there was no chance of a return, they being entirely concealed, and their presence merely indicated by the little puffs of white smoke which spurted out here and there, there was nothing to disturb their aim. For nothing spoils a rifleman’s shooting like being exposed to accurate fire himself; which was probably the reason why duellists, who could perform wonders in the shooting gallery, used so often to miss each other at twelve paces in the days of single combat, when George the Fourth was Regent.
The range, however, was a long one, and the fire plunging, or perpendicular. Now horizontal fire has this characteristic, that if a bullet misses one object it goes straight on and may strike another; or it may pass through a fleshy substance which does not offer too great resistance, and strike another beyond. But a plunging fire, if it misses the object aimed at, goes into the ground and is harmless.
And so it happened that no mischief was done for some time, though several bullets came thudding down in the midst of men and camels. At length, with the fatality which seemed throughout this campaign to attend upon non-combatants, a shot struck a poor Egyptian camel driver on the neck, passing through his spine, and shortly afterwards a surgeon was wounded in the foot.
There did not seem to be more than two or three riflemen firing at them, but they were far above the average in marksmanship, and more dangerous, at a distance, than a score of ordinary soldiers of the Mahdi. Six men, of whom Kavanagh was one, were told off to dislodge them; not more, because they would certainly retire before a strong body, and return, when they withdrew from the pursuit, to their former positions and practice. Indeed, the officer who went with the six thought that number too numerous to show, and advanced in front with a file only, while the others had orders to creep up on the flanks, concealing themselves entirely, if possible.