The Sheikh Moussa certainly proved an acquisition that day, for he took them a route diverging somewhat from that which they had been following, and so cutting off some three miles of their journey to the wells where they were to halt till the moon was up. And three miles when the water is running low are a matter of tremendous import to the traveller in the desert. After that the General often sent for the Sheikh Moussa to ride with him on the march; and he questioned him, and compared his answers with the maps and plans he had. And the more he was tested the more genuine did the man appear. The tribe, too, to which he claimed to belong was known to be friendly, and not as yet overawed into owning allegiance to the Mahdi.
And so the square dragged slowly on from well to well through the long scorching mornings and the bright moonlight nights, and was swallowed up in the desert.
Chapter Ten.
Sent out Scouting.
It is one of the first principles of warfare that an army should always keep up communication with what is called its base, that is, the safe place from which food, ammunition, stores of all kinds, and fresh men to supply the place of those who fall, can be sent to it, and to which the sick and wounded may be returned. But as there is no universal rule in anything, and people have often to do what they can, rather than what they know to be best, it so happens that columns have sometimes to be launched into an enemy’s country without any communication with seaport, town, or friendly frontier, so that they are entirely self-dependent, with no resources beyond what they have at hand, and liable to be attacked on all sides.
This is termed being “in the air,” and is a very great risk, which is only voluntarily incurred for the sake of gaining some equally great advantage. In civilised warfare failure under such circumstances means surrender; in expeditions against barbarians it involves utter destruction.
Hicks Pasha’s little army was now thus isolated, and, after several days’ march across the desert, matters began to wear a very serious aspect. As has been said, ten miles a day were the utmost that could be accomplished, and the distance between the places where water could be obtained increased as they advanced.
Water was carried by camels in tanks with galvanised linings, which kept it fresh, and free from the nauseous taste which it gets from the skins in which travellers generally have to keep it. It is true that there is an earthenware water-bottle, which is in much request, and the inhabitants of a town on the Nile earn their livelihood by manufacturing them. But the porousness of the clay, which keeps the contents so deliciously cool, makes them very brittle.